Turning the Page

The Irwin Mitchell & KIDS Writing Competition: Turning The Page

We’re delighted to reveal the winners of our writing competition, Turning the Page! We’ve had a great response and were incredibly impressed by the standard of these stories. There were some truly moving, inspirational pieces, and we’d like to thank everyone who entered. Our judging panel has looked at a shortlist of entries, and we’re pleased to announce the winners and commendations for each category.

Caroline Stevens, CEO of KIDS, said: “We’ve been amazed by the level of entries received from people all across the UK wanting to share their stories and experiences with us. Disability touches the lives of so many and it’s been fantastic to read so many positive personal accounts.”

Take a look at the wonderful winning entries here. We have also produced a book to showcase some of the wonderful entries. You can buy the book for £10, with all proceeds going to KIDS - find out more about the Turning the Page book.

Winners

5-11 winner – Lauren Gormley
5-11 commendations – Leo Jolly and Sophie Handyside
12-17 winner – Lucy Collins
12-17 commendations – Lucy Dolton, Jack Dolton, Louisa Buck and Christopher Finnes
18+ joint winners – Sara Meredith and Nicola McQuaid
18+ commendation – Helen Woollam

About Turning The Page

Turning the Page was a writing competition that invited both disabled and non-disabled children and adults to share their experience of disability or supporting a disabled person. Together with our partner KIDS – a leading disabled children’s charity – we wanted to hear positive, inspirational stories of your experiences.

We were looking for short stories and poems of up to 500 words. All levels of writing ability were welcome. We were interested in your personal understanding of disability – this might be life in school or the workplace as a disabled person, or that of a family member or friend.

Winners were judged on individual merit and not necessarily their standard of writing technique.

Prizes

There were two prizes in each age group:

First prize: an Amazon Kindle Fire e-book reader and £50 book voucher
Commendation prize: a £25 book voucher

Judges

The people with the tough job of choosing the winners were:

Lucy Gannon, an award-winning British TV scriptwriter who has written many TV dramas, including 'The Best Of Men', which told the story of the first Paralympic games
Dr Emily Talbot who is a Clinical Psychologist in Paediatric Neuropsychology based at Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham. Emily has collaborated on the creation and use of a number of children’s publications from the aspect of narrative therapy
Caroline Stevens, CEO at KIDS
Stuart Henderson, Personal Injury Managing Partner at Irwin Mitchell

For more information, download the competition pack here

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