Public Service Mutual of the Year Runner-Up

East Coast Community Healthcare has been voted runner-up Public Service Mutual of the Year in the prestigious UK Employee Ownership Association (EOA) awards.

ECCH was also highly commended in the category of Employee Ownership Culture Award.

The awards, which are run by the EOA and sponsored by Baxendale, celebrate the significant contribution employee owned businesses make to the UK economy. They were presented at a ceremony in Birmingham on Monday (19th November).

Chief executive Jonathan Williams said: “We are so proud of both these commendations. It’s an affirmation of the dedication of our staff in delivering consistently high quality care to our patients and clients. And it’s great to be recognised for our culture because everyone at ECCH is genuinely proud of how we work and achieve together. This year we introduced a culture programme to underpin our core values because we felt everyone within the organisation would benefit and it would make ECCH even stronger. The very fact that our employee ownership has increased by nearly 30% in the past four years demonstrates how firmly our staff believe in ECCH, what it stands for and what it delivers.”

ECCH, which has its headquarters in Lowestoft, is the 24th largest employee owned organisation in the country with more than 80% of its employees having opted to become shareholders. This gives them a say in key decisions but they do not receive dividends because, as a community interest company, ECCH’s surplus resources are reinvested to benefit the local community or used to support good causes.

This year 96% of service users said they would recommend ECCH’s services in the NHS Friends and Family Test survey. The survey also showed 100% of respondents would recommend ECCH’s pioneering Out of Hospital Teams which have proved so successful since they were launched in Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth that a third service was launched in south Waveney earlier this year.

ECCH this year picked up the financial shortfall to keep a number of services running such as the Family Nurse Partnership which supports teenage mothers in the Waveney area. ECCH also ran a training course for young unemployed people in partnership with The Prince’s Trust, offered free safeguarding training and baby life-saving classes in Lowestoft and Beccles and set up breastfeeding cafés to support parents in Waveney, despite cuts to its funding for breastfeeding support.

ECCH is one of only a handful of healthcare providers in the country to be granted ISO14001:2015 status by the British Standards Institute for reducing its environmental impact.