Blog content: Winning the Pride of DPT awards

Experts by experience: Young advisor, Zero

Upon finding out I was nominated for the pride of dpt awards I vividly remember my eyes widening as I received the email, “is this real?” I wondered to myself before confirming it was infact real. After an embarrassingly long amount of contemplation on whether or not to get excited. Looking back on the moment, it feels almost sad to see my lack of confidence and my pure refusal to believe I could have won anything in regard to my work as an expert by experience. Now, after the awards have taken place, I most certainly am proud of my work. I feel deserving of the recognition, I feel deserving of the award itself (inspirational colleague award, non clinical) and I feel confident and most importantly grateful for the opportunity to be apart of such a lovely award ceremony. 

Reading the nomination that was sent to me, each word was carefully chosen and reflected the work I had put in to my role as a young advisor. It was so heartfelt and made me realise the importance and the value in what I do, which I always have recognised to some extent. However, when you’re nominated for something as significant as an award; you tend to second guess yourself. But the words written completely disregarded my temporary uncertainty and being able to sit at the award itself provided me with even greater clarity. 

Attending showed me just how important the event is. You’re celebrating everyone, winners, nominees, everyone. Because you’ve all achieved such great work and that sense of community is so profound, you could truly see the joy all around you. If you perhaps didn’t win the award but were still nominated, you were still encouraged nonetheless and the main takeaway I recognised was that everyone in the room was a winner in some way or the other. It wasn’t an award that you were ‘fighting’ for and there was not a sense of competition, it was simply just friendly recognition for one another. Morale is such a key factor in such a difficult profession and it so evident in the room that keeping that morale high was achieved, I find myself feeling extremely lucky to be able to have witnessed it. 

The role of young advisor is so important in today’s society for a number of reasons. I find myself able to advocate for young people’s voices and keep their needs at the focus of everything I do. Being able to keep services relevant is something so valuable and important to me considering I was and still am a service user myself. Winning the award doesn’t just reflect my personal work, it reflects how crucial the use of young advisors as a whole is.