The Brilliant Awards (or 'The Brillies' as they're known) are our annual staff awards, where you get to nominate someone you work with to be recognised for all their brilliance.
Anyone in the organisation can nominate someone for an award, and it's a really lovely way to say thank you, or to let someone know you're loving their work.
You'll find all the details you need to make your nominations on this page.
How to make your nomination
Each of our award categories has a set of criteria that the person you're nominating must meet to be in with a chance of winning the award.
To make your nomination, you'll need to fill out a simple form that asks you to write about how your nominee meets the award criteria.
Please make sure you write enough detail in each box for the judges to make a decision: remember, it’s up to you to tell them why the person you’re nominating should win.
Nominations that aren't detailed, for example, if they're just one sentence, won't be submitted to the judges. We've had some of these in the past, and it means the judges don't have enough to go on to make their decision.
The rules (please read carefully before you nominate)
- You must be able to explain in detail how the person you’re nominating meets the award criteria and tell us in your nomination form.
- You can make nominations in as many categories as you like, but you can only nominate one person for each of the four Star of The Year Awards, so choose your nominee wisely.
- You can nominate the same person for more than one award (for example, you can nominate the person you nominated for Star of The Year for another award, too).
- These awards are just for PSS staff.
- Shared Lives carers can’t be nominated for Brilliant Awards, and any nominations for carers won't be passed to the judges.
- Volunteers, including peer supporters and quality checkers, can't be nominated for Brilliant Awards (we have Volunteer Awards to recognise our volunteers instead), and any nominations for volunteers or peer supporters won't be passed to the judges.
- If your nomination leads to the person you nominate winning the award, you will be asked to record your nomination on video for the ceremony.
- Shared Lives carers can only nominate PSS staff members for the Pride of PSS Award - and they must use the form. Any nominations we get from carers that don't use the form or are for other categories won't be passed to the judges.
- You can use AI to polish your spelling and grammar, but we can tell when AI has written your whole nomination. Our awards are about authenticity and we want to hear your voice in your nomination. Awards that are written entirely by AI may not be submitted to the judges.
- Nominations must be sent in on or before Friday 28th August.
Please note: nominations that don’t meet the criteria or that don’t follow these rules won’t be submitted to the judges.
The categories
Support Worker Star of the Year 2026
Our Support Worker Star of the Year Award will go to a fantastic support worker from our Making Days or Community Support services who has really stood out this year.
This award is for someone who:
• leads by example, putting their all into what they do; and
• has made a difference to the people they support, their team or the way the service works.
Families and Communities Star of the Year 2026
Our Families and Communities Star of the Year Award will go to a special someone who works within our customer service, Women's Turnaround, Wellbeing Centres (Upbeat Liverpool), Parent-Baby Service, Making Days and Community Support teams (but please nominate support workers for Support Worker Star of the Year instead of this category).
This award will go to someone who:
• leads by example, putting their all into what they do; and
• has made a difference to the people they support, their team or the way the service works.
Shared Lives Star of the Year 2026
Our Shared Lives Star of the Year award will go to a someone from one of our Shared Lives teams around the country who has been truly ace and shone this year.
This award is for someone who:
• leads by example, putting their all into what they do; and
• has made a difference to the people they support, their team or the way the service works.
Central Services Star of the Year 2026
Our Central Services Star of the Year Award will go to someone brilliant in our finance, learning and development, communications, people and culture, tech, property services or quality team.
This award is for someone who:
• leads by example, putting their all into what they do; and
• has made a difference to the people they support, their team or the way the service works.
The Belonging Award
Making sure everyone feels they belong at PSS is everyone's job, and we want to recognise the people who have gone out of their way to make our organisation as inclusive and welcoming as possible.
This award is for someone who has:
• gone out of their way to help make PSS a more welcoming place to be;
• made sure someone feels like they belong at PSS;
• made changes to how they do things to be more inclusive; and/or
• shown commitment to learning how they can be more inclusive and help people belong
The Brilliant Leadership Award
You don't have to be a manager or team leader to win this award - anyone can be a leader, even if it's not in your job title.
This award is for someone who:
• creates a positive environment at work;
• is caring and looks out for others;
• has been brave enough to try new things, solved a problem or made improvements to what their team does; and
• lives by their values.
The Working Together Award
Working together with the people we support to make sure they're able to live their lives on their own terms is a huge part of what we do at PSS.
We'll give this award to someone who:
• worked closely with people we support to make a positive difference to their life or to the services we offer;
• supported people who use our service to have a voice at PSS and/or in their community; and/or
• pushed the boundaries to support people to do what they love, despite any challenges that came their way.
Pride of PSS
It's the biggie!
This is the award for that person who’s big-hearted, determined, genuine, professional and open-minded through and through. It will be given to someone who's an amazing example of what it means to work here at PSS.
When you think of someone who's all-round awesome, who do you think of?
The judges
This year we've got a host of different judges whose job it will be to pick out the winners in each category.
As usual, we'll also have our judging panel made up of award winners from previous years.
When we send the nominations on to the judges, we’re going to remove the names of the people who made the nomination. This means that the judges’ decisions will be based on what you write in your nominations alone: they won't know who made the nomination.
The Brilliant Awards ceremony
This year, The Brillies ceremony will be held in person on Thursday 8th October in Oh Me Oh My in Liverpool City Centre. It'll be a relaxed and fun evening with food, drinks and of course, our all-important awards!
To book your place at the event, please email our People and Culture team at peopleandcultureteam@pss.org.uk. When you get in touch, please let us know about any special dietary requirements so we can make sure these are catered for.
If you’re looking to stay over for the celebrations, let us know in your email too. We’ll be in touch with you around hotel details and everything else we’ll need to know to book this for you.
If you have any questions, please drop the people and culture team a line: peopleandcultureteam@pss.org.uk