Member Article

Award is ‘icing on the cake’ for Acorn

A new national healthcare award for ‘Best Contribution to the Community’ has been won by Acorn Stairlifts.

The Steeton-based company, which has factories in West Yorkshire and Scotland, was announced as winner when the British Healthcare Trades Association held its annual awards evening and dinner in London. TV and radio presenter Penny Smith, who hosted the black tie event, presented the award to Acorn’s European and UK Operations Director Nick Wilson.

“We’re thrilled to be the inaugural winner of this new award,” said Mr Wilson. “It recognises our goal to be a socially responsible company through local and national partnerships with various charities, and to offer practical help to people in exceptional circumstances. This approach is good for our company in so many ways and to win an award for it is the icing on the cake.”

Close to its West Yorkshire head offices, Acorn has a longstanding partnership with the Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice at Oxenhope. As well as donating stairlifts for some of its patients, Acorn staff support Manorlands through a variety of year-round activities, this year hoping to raise around £23,000 to support its vital work.

Acorn also has a national partnership with renowned charity Marie Curie, donating up to 60 stairlifts per year for its patients across the UK. It enables them to stay in their own homes while being cared for by Marie Curie nurses, simultaneously easing pressure for beds at the charity’s network of hospices. Acorn has also donated specially adapted wheelchair accessible vehicles to both Manorlands and Marie Curie, meaning wheelchair-reliant patients can access a variety of day services and therapies provided at their hospices.

In addition, Acorn donates stairlifts in cases of exceptional need, where they will greatly improve quality of life for people who could not otherwise obtain one. Other community initiatives include sponsorship of the Acorn Wensleydale Flyer bus service in the Yorkshire Dales, helping alleviate social isolation in rural areas, and sponsoring Acorn’s local football team, Steeton AFC.

Judges for the 2016 BHTA Awards were impressed by Acorn’s commitment to supporting good causes and the range of activities it undertook. They expressed the hope that more companies will follow Acorn’s lead in making positive contributions to the communities which support and sustain them.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Duncan Smith .