Wow. We are really thrilled to have been shortlisted for Brighton and Hove Company of the year at this year’s Brighton and Hove Business Awards.  What an honour. Although the work we do designing and delivering healthcare services and solutions now takes us to all corners of England, Scotland and Wales we are, at heart, a vibrant, local, employee-owned company with most of our 200 colleagues living in all parts of the city and many of us having grown up and been to school, college or university here.

We are a diverse lot and we love our city and the communities we live in and serve. Our purpose is ‘to create more possibilities for care in every moment’ and many of us volunteer and work with charities in the city. Whether that’s befriending, working with refugees or young people or sitting on the Board of local charities such as the Brighton Women’s Centre and Brighton Housing Trust. Recently, shocked by the sanitary deprivation in Hangleton, our colleagues Lindsay and Katie created  an initiative in alliance with The Hangleton & Knoll Project to make period products available to local girls and women who otherwise, would struggle to access them due to lack of resource and often shame or embarrassment.  They do it all in their own time, get their supplies through donations made by Here colleagues and the initiative has also been supported by Hangleton and West Blatchington Food Bank, The University of Sussex Student Union and The Red Box Project. The products are available to women and girls through Here’s GP Practice, Benfield Valley Healthcare Hub and the local library.

We love our city and we love working together here. In this last quarter, every single one of our leavers told us through our exit survey that their day to day work had been meaningful, that they had created supportive friendships here and that they would recommend working here to friends and family. That’s 100%. We pride ourselves on doing work that matters, that is meaningful and that enables us to develop our own sense of purpose in our work.

Thank you so much Brighton and Hove Business Awards for this recognition. We will continue to work for the people who use our services and solutions, striving to ensure people get the right care at the right time in a way that suits their individual needs and circumstances. And we hope that others may be inspired to join us in our vision and ambition to radically transform how we care for each other, and to manage our collective resources sustainably and equitably for the benefit of all. Thank you Brighton. It all starts here.