Against this backdrop of inspiration, the Southern Health and Social Care Trust with their project ‘Seasons of Life’ was announced as the overall winner of the 2025 Picker Experience Network Awards.
Delivered in schools, ‘Seasons of Life’ recognises that grief extends beyond bereavement to include experiences such as parental separation, care placement, refugee status, and family imprisonment. Led by a multidisciplinary team, the trauma-informed initiative combines clinical expertise with creative approaches like narrative and art therapy and is inclusive of neurodiverse and ethnically diverse participants.
The Picker Experience Network Awards recognise outstanding excellence in patient experience. They celebrate projects, teams, individuals, and initiatives that have made exceptional contributions to care, engagement, service delivery, and wellbeing from the perspective of patients, carers, families, and staff.
In April 2024, Picker acquired the Patient Experience Network (PEN), uniting two organisations dedicated to understanding, measuring, and improving people’s care experiences. This collaboration brought together Picker’s international expertise in person centred care with PEN’s long-standing commitment to recognising excellence.
PEN has always aimed to be practical, inclusive, and trusted, with core values of uncovering good practice, celebrating it, sharing what works, and encouraging collaboration across health and social care.
Congratulating colleagues from School Nursing, Paediatric Psychology, the Trust Bereavement Co-ordinator, Cruse Bereavement Support, and Quality Improvement — who worked with schools, and most importantly, with young people and families to co-design the project — Colm McCafferty, Director of Children and Young People’s Services for the Southern Health and Social Care Trust, said:
Ruth Evans, Founder and former Managing Director of PEN, said:
Picker’s team of researchers and data scientists are available to support organisations in understanding, measuring, and using workforce and user experience. For queries about our services or to request a call, please contact info@pickereurope.ac.uk.