They think it’s all over – but Alan Peaford (left) tells Rory McGrath that the CdLS Foundation has barely started.

We knew we were good – but we didn’t know we were THAT good. The “online” version of Reaching Out has scooped a top national prize for being Britain’s best online magazine.

The prize was given at Europe’s largest publishing awards organised by the UK’s Communicators in Business (CiB) where there were almost 1,000 publications judged by professionals.

The Foundation had been told that it was a winner of an Award of Excellence certificate and chairman Alan Peaford attended the dinner at Brighton’s Grand Hotel. Then came the big shock.

Excellence

“They called out the names of the awards of excellence winners and we were there among organisations like Shell, Reed Elsevier and Barclays Bank and then they called us out as the winners. It was incredible,” Alan said.

The crystal trophy was presented to Alan by TV personality and comic, Rory McGrath in front of nearly 500 representatives from industry.

“It was great awareness for us. The CiB donated their raffle to us.”

The site is produced for the Foundation by Trident Communications and was designed in New York by Trident’s Kristen Swenson and implemented on a regular basis by Neil Williams and his team in London.

The site was sponsored by Gallaher Limited which enabled all of the special coding work to be done.

“One of the judges has been in touch since the competition to ask if he can use the CdLS web site as an example of ‘best practice’ in a lecture he is giving for Executives of voluntary organisations”.

Every story that appears in the paper version of Reaching Out goes on the online version.

Section

Once an issue is replaced, the Trident team select the stories that carers and professionals may want to go back to and these are archived in a “background” section of the site.

“This is very useful for us as often when parents call for a query we can go straight to the web and pull off a copy of the relevant story and send it to them,” Alan Peaford said.

The paper version of Reaching Out – produced by Trident’s team in York – also received praise from judges.

Quality

“We are very proud of these results,” Alan Peaford said. “Trident staff give up their time to help us produce top quality work. The win was great for them too.

“We are punching way above our weight with our site and our newsletter.

“I know from the messages we receive from so many families around the world how much they appreciate the information we publish.”