About the award
The RCPCH &Us Voice Champion Award recognises paediatric health workers who have gone over and above to support RCPCH &Us projects. The nominees are scored against the four core values of RCPCH &Us which provides a structure to identify and evidence the impact of their support.
Educate
Collaborate
Engage
Change
Anonymised forms are assessed independently by our RCPCH &Us young people’s judging panel.
The 2025 winner
RCPCH &Us judged and voted on the 2025 awards and made the final decision about who the winner is.
The judging panel said:
You volunteered your time to speak to the children, young people and families who are Experts by Experience on the UK Paediatric Epilepsy Programme Board to get their advice and guidance on the next steps of implementing the SUDEP safety checklist.
By doing this in a series of one-on-one meetings, you gave each individual the space and opportunity to think about this complex, difficult and upsetting topic. You supported them with their understanding whilst raising awareness and empowering them to be able to be part of a resource to help there to be robust conversations between clinicians and families which inspired us as the panel.
And the winner is…Dr Rohini Rattihalli. Congratulations!
Previous winners
2024: Paediatric Diabetes Team at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust won the award due to their committment to engagement and voice, undertaking training, coaching and hosting your own clinic chat. The team have gone on to advocate for meaningful voice and engagement in service shaping, inspiring their colleagues, trust and others.
2023: Epilepsy Specialist Nurse, Jill Conium was chosen by the panel due to her hard work volunteering across countless evenings, Saturdays and other times to support the work of the Epilepsy12 Youth Advocates, going to Birmingham to support young people at a national youth conference, and joining 7 year olds online to be interviewed about being a nurse.
2022: Dr Ambalika Das has been committed in her work to support young people to make good choices to stay healthy happy and well and have a voice by educating others and to build stronger communities together. Dr Das worked with RCPCH &Us to create and develop a youth social action project toolkit for use in schools and youth groups
2021: Dr Mike Linney has been outstanding as an advocate for children and young people. His commitment and dedication to the RCPCH Engagement Committee as chair where he has helped young people, parents and paediatricians to collaborate together on improving child health looking at children's rights has made a huge impact.
2020: Dr Camilla Kingdon was chosen for advocating for, and creating opportunities for, children and young people’s voice to inspire paediatricians at the RCPCH Annual Conference, joining young people to help plan their conference sessions and RCPCH &Us birthday celebration, whilst ensuring their voice is strong across the conference programme in 2019 and 2020.
2019: Dr Mike Farquhar was chosen for his work with RCPCH &Us young people over 12 months to help develop the NHS Rainbow Badge programme, including going to Herts Pride to run a market stall with the young people to support the development of the wider Rainbow Badge project.
2018: Professor Judith Ellis was chosen for her advocacy and support in helping to change how children and young people are seen and heard in RCPCH, working with children and young people to develop RCPCH &Us, and coming to enjoy project celebrations with them.
We would like to thank all those that support RCPCH &Us each year, and a special thanks to the judging panel for having to make such a tough decision!
For more information, please contact and_us@rcpch.ac.uk.