Aidan Warner receives Innovation Award at Cork Kerry Community Healthcare Staff Recognition Awards

Aidan Warner, who was the HSE South representative for arts and health before retiring this year, received an Innovation Non Clinical Award at the recent Cork Kerry Community Healthcare Staff Recognition Awards, recognising his work as Principal Community Worker, South Lee, and his contributions to arts and health practice in Ireland. 

The “Making A Difference” staff awards were presented to members of staff who exhibited the organisation’s values of integrity, learning, partnership and respect. The winners in all but one category were nominated by fellow members of staff, and the overall winner in each category was selected by an independent panel of judges. One category was open to the public to nominate in.

The Innovation Non Clinical Award recognised Aidan for the following:
Aidan recently retired after 40 years of service. Aidan had a capacity to take risks and facilitate his team, his colleagues and his community to see their own leadership potential in applying innovative practice. Aidan embraced change and was committed to larger possibilities. He was committed to embedding arts and health across all services by seeing the vision and the value of creativity in people’s wellbeing.

Aidan led the Cork Arts and Health Programme (CAHP), a HSE initiative based in the South Lee Community Work Department. CAHP aims to promote the arts and health agenda within the health and related NGO sectors. It operates in the context of a social model of health and focuses on contextualising the work vis-à-vis issues such as social inclusion, health and wellbeing and community development. Aidan was a member of the original artsandhealth.ie Editorial Panel, helping to support the development of the website in partnership with WHAT, Create and his fellow panel members.

Aidan’s perspective on ‘A social model for health’, commissioned by artsandhealth.ie, can be read here:
https://www.artsandhealth.ie/perspectives/a-social-model-for-health/

Further information on the Cork Kerry Community Healthcare Staff Recognition Awards can be found here.