The RCPsych Awards are the annual awards ceremony of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the professional medical body responsible for setting and raising standards of psychiatry in the United Kingdom.
Raf joined Cygnet in 2016 as our first Expert by Experience. In 2018 he was appointed our first full time Expert by Experience Lead. Since that time he has been involved in setting up and leading Cygnet’s Expert by Experience programme, championing People’s Councils at site, regional and group level and embedding the concept of co-production at every level of the organisation.
More recently Raf has also set up the Music 2 Empower initiative that aims to bring the positive effects of music therapy to our services. Another initiative that Raf has been heavily involved in is Co-Sustain, which raises awareness and educates individuals on meaningful changes they can make to have a positive impact on the environment.
Raf was nominated in the Patient Contributor of the Year category by Jon Van Niekerk, Cygnet’s Group Clinical Director. Explaining why he put Raf’s name forward Jon said: “It was my pleasure to nominate Raf for this prestigious award due to the impact he has on raising the patient voice at Cygnet in an authentic and meaningful way. The only difficulty I had was that there were so many examples of how he contributes to patient experience at Cygnet that I struggled to choose what to include!
“Raf is one of those rare individuals that approaches everything he does with passion, humility, tenacity and a wicked sense of humour. I believe he thoroughly deserves to be rewarded on a national level, not only for all he does for Cygnet, but also the mental health sector as a whole.”
Upon finding out that he had been named a finalist in the awards, Raf said: “It is an honour and privilege to be nominated for this award by our most senior clinician within the organisation. The co-produced work and projects being recognised as part of this process, such as Music 2 Empower and Co-Sustain, would not have been possible without the wider teams support and for that I would like to thank everybody at Cygnet Health Care.”
All the finalists will find out who the winners are at a live streamed ceremony in London on Wednesday 9th November 2022.
Best of luck Raf from everyone at Cygnet Health Care.