This month, we’re proud to announce that we’ve won yet another award – this time for the Best Mental Health First Aid Training Organisation in Southern England, at Corporate Vision’s Education and Training Awards 2024.

Proud? Yes. Pleased? Yes, of course. Corporate Vision do a lot of research to identify potential winners, verify data provided by the organisation, and look at online reviews – but crucially, these awards are, frankly, not really worth the email they’re sent on. We ran relatively few mental health courses last year, and hardly any of my reviews are from this field (that’s not to say it’s not important – just that it makes up only a small percentage of the work we do.)  

Corporate awards such as these are largely a money-making exercise for the awarding organisation. I’ve never entered an award that I haven’t won (sometimes they even ask me which title I think I should be awarded!) – and once you win, the emails with the costs come popping up. The awards cost nothing to enter, but if you’d like a trophy, that’s a couple of hundred pounds; a framed photograph of you receiving the award with a write-up, or a framed certificate, or a personalised digital image for the bottom of your emails are similarly priced. The cost of having a write-up in their magazine (delivered to thousands of people, of course) is huge – the largest package of PR and award comes to over £6,000! Needless to say, I have never taken the option of a paid marketing package – particularly when my award is for something I very rarely do. Why didn’t they award me a physical First Aid Award? Probably because there were other companies that do that who don’t do mental health, so they’re doubling their chances of making a sale.

My job satisfaction doesn’t come from being able to declare that I am ‘award winning’. My rewards rather than awards are what counts – the lightbulb moments when learners realise why we do first aid actions in a particular way (by learning the ‘why’, I firmly believe that people then understand and remember the ‘what’), the smiles and laughter on courses as learners have an opportunity to learn and enjoy at the same time, and most importantly, the messages I get from people who’ve attended courses who have then gone on to use their skills for the benefit of others, sometimes saving lives or making a real difference to someone’s outcome. Providing a stable financial environment for my family (including an expensive three years of university support, which we’re just embarking on!) is obviously important too, but I could do that in a lot of different ways. The career path I’ve chosen has benefits for everyone, and we’re now also moving into the world of employing staff and creating financial stability for others, too.  

Were you one of the 1200 people we trained in first aid last year on formal courses? Or one of over 200 who have attended free community training in how to do CPR and use a defibrillator? If not, why not? Could you be a life-saver?