About the Awards

The Caring Award recognizes a professional and a paraprofessional staff person of an agency who has exhibited the compassion, skills and service that sets their contribution apart and/or whose actions on a particular day or over a period of time exemplify caring in home care.

The Advocacy (Giraffe) Award recognizes a provider agency or person (including both elected and appointed officials) who took risks or “stuck their neck out” to improve the home care industry, clients and workers through their advocacy efforts.

HCA's highest honor, the Ruth F. Wilson Award, is bestowed upon an individual who has demonstrated exceptional dedication and made a significant contribution to home care over a period of time.  With this award, HCA recognizes someone whose work has had a dramatic effect on home care, reaching beyond a single agency.  The recipient will have strengthened the practice of our profession, raised the standards of quality and care for patients, or advanced the level of understanding and mutual cooperation among the home care community, legislators, federal and state agencies, health care providers and the public. This prestigious award recognizes an individual who has made our services stronger and more visible and who has never wavered from his or her support of home care. 

DOWNLOAD THE OFFICIAL AWARDS PROGRAM

Susan Rappaport — winner of HCA's Caring Award

Susan Rappaport has been a social worker with Jewish Home Lifecare System's Manhattan Long Term Home Health Care Program (LTHHCP) for the past 21 years. In that time, Susan has been a mainstay of the Central Harlem community where she has dutifully provided top-quality care during her entire tenure at Jewish Home Lifecare, after beginning her career as a social worker on behalf of foster children.

Ms. Rappaport goes above and beyond in every way, always exhibiting immense patience, compassion, persistence and unflagging optimism. Her ingenuity is shown in her ability to equip her patients with applications for any and every entitlement, tax benefit, or resource possibly available to them; her caring and patience in all levels of professional engagement make her a favorite of patients and staff alike; and her upbeat and patient demeanor, as well as her famous persistence, are well known to representatives at the various governing agencies that social workers routinely interact with.

The refrain "I'm not Rappaport" is common among Ms. Rappaport's colleagues as an expression of praise for her incomparable dedication. Even when others voice consternation at the shortage of affordable housing options for patients in Manhattan, Ms. Rappaport dutifully applies herself to her task by making calls to housing managers, requesting that her patient's name be added to waiting lists, and obtaining the needed applications.

Through such acts of perseverance, Ms. Rappaport helped a patient obtain housing in a low-income senior building outfitted for the disabled by a local church — just one example of her relentless advocacy on behalf of patients.

For her incomparable compassion, dedication and professionalism, Ms. Rappaport is the recipient of HCA's 2009 Caring Award.

Sallie Chapman — winner of HCA's Caring Award

Home health aide Sallie Chapman has been an exemplary member of the Eddy Home Care team for the past four years. She is reliable, patient and demonstrates excellent hands-on care.

Over the past year, Ms. Chapman has provided services for a variety of challenging patients, including terminally ill women, post-stroke patients and individuals with chronic illnesses such as diabetes and COPD. She has also been very successful in working with patients suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia.

In one situation, Ms. Chapman was able to encourage a confused patient to exit the DayBreak bus and enter back into her home every day. She also gently convinced the patient to accept care for her incontinence and safely kept the patient from wandering — which was no easy task. Ms. Chapman is at the top of the list for recognition by patients, their families and case-managing nurses. The Eddy Home Care has received several written commendations praising Ms. Chapman for her compassion and professionalism. For instance, the family of one terminally-ill patient wrote that "Sallie gave our mother loving and compassionate care during her long illness." Others have said she: "is always professional and is devoted to her clients"; "is very professional and skilled at what she does"; "always smiles"; and "Lifted my spirits with her smile."

Such accolades earned Ms. Chapman recognition in November 2008 as Eddy Home Care's aide of the month for being a great mentor and role model for new employees and for her willingness to travel anywhere to meet patients' care needs.

Her positive outlook, outstanding patient service skills and dedication represent the best of home care today. For this reason, she is the recipient of HCA's 2009 Caring Award.

Tracey Sokoloff — winner of HCA's Advocacy (Giraffe) Award

Tracey Sokoloff, Administrative Director of Isabella Home and Community Services, epitomizes the unflinching drive to seek new and visionary approaches for providing efficient, effective, up-to-date, evidence-based, and cost-effective home care services.

Like no other, Ms. Sokoloff has a special capacity for grasping the big picture, conceiving a vision, and then applying that vision toward achieving her mission on behalf of patients with seemingly boundless persistence, drive and energy.

As stated in the letter nominating Ms. Sokoloff to receive this award, "Isabella's leader is a woman who has more ideas about how home care needs to be delivered, more commitment to see these ideas manifest, and more energy to make it all happen than I remember any one person having."

Isabella's recent growth as an organization is a testament to Ms. Sokoloff's vision. Five years ago, Isabella had no Licensed Home Care Services Agency (LHCSA) or Social Service arm. Today these services are now a thriving addition to Isabella's scope of service — programs that owe their existence to Ms. Sokoloff's ability to turn her vision into reality.

She adamantly advocates for the best services possible, and remains objective and generous in the use of her gifted ability to serve the community with a vision solely motivated by her determination to improve the lives of patients.

Ms. Sokoloff's nomination came with several letters of support from industry colleagues who stated the following: "Tracey is a dynamic personality and she possesses an endearing wit with great intelligence. Tracey has the ability to process the realities of reimbursement, policy, patient care and personnel issues to create solutions. She is not a victim of the system. She evaluates for the purpose of looking at the potential for answers in providing better patient care."

Because of her unflinching ability to venture out on the limb to improve the environment of home care delivery for patients, Ms. Sokoloff is this year's recipient of the HCA Advocacy (Giraffe) Award.

Marilyn Liota — winner of HCA's Ruth F. Wilson Award

Visiting Nurse Service of New York's longest-serving veteran nurse, Marilyn Liota, RN, BSN, MA, has worked at VNSNY since 1952 and has devoted her life to the health care of New Yorkers. At 80 years of age — VNSNY colleagues recently celebrated her birthday in unprecedented fashion, designating it Marilyn Liota Day — Ms. Liota remains a visionary home care nurse leader and continues to play a key managerial role.

In the latest chapter of her distinguished career, Ms. Liota leads more than 400 nurses and other clinicians in providing compassionate care to 3,600-plus patients daily in the Queens region. Scores of colleagues contributed a groundswell of testimonials in support of her nomination for the Ruth F. Wilson award, calling Ms. Liota a "living treasure" who acts as a beacon in the field of community nursing, leading and inspiring countless nurses and other clinicians to rise to their highest professional standards.

Ms. Liota joined VNSNY at age 21, after graduating from Columbia University School of Nursing, and has stayed with the agency for more than half of its 115-year history. She started her career as a staff nurse, treating patients on Manhattan's Lower East Side and following in the footsteps of her role model, VNSNY founder Lillian Wald.

Quickly promoted to a supervisory role, Ms. Liota managed VNSNY's West Queens office, led Maternal Newborn Pediatric services, and now heads the Acute Care program in Queens. Over the years, she has mentored hundreds of colleagues — among them VNSNY Chief Operating Officer Joan Marren who states: "I began my career with this agency and under Marilyn's tutelage as a novice nurse in 1970. In my various roles with our agency and as Chief Operating Officer since 1995, I have considered Marilyn a highly valued nursing colleague. I personally can attest to her dedication to patient care — and the pioneering creativity and unstinting support she brings to coaching nursing staff and students. I gratefully add my own name to those of hundreds of nurses whom Marilyn has mentored over the course of many years."

Beyond her devotion to mentoring the nurses who have worked with her over the years, Ms. Liota also has been a long-time advocate of nursing education — and a pioneer in this field. Known among her fellow Columbia School of Nursing alumnae for playing an active networking role, she also stays closely involved in nursing education in her community.

Ms. Liota has opened doors for countless nursing students in her borough, enabling them to obtain clinical experience in home care nursing. More than 15 years ago, she began collaborating with faculty from an area nursing program that has contributed to the development of VNSNY's widely recognized internship programs for new BSN and ADN nurses, with particular emphasis on continued educational advancement for ADN graduates. Her creativity and leadership paved the way for establishment of these programs.

While going on to earn baccalaureate and master's degrees in nursing herself, Ms. Liota has for years championed her staff's professional development. She encourages colleagues to go back to school and builds up their confidence to tackle new roles and consider greater job responsibilities. She does so unselfishly, even when her career counseling brings her hardships as a leader, as when she loses gifted co-workers to the very career opportunities that she motivated them to pursue.

Compassionate patient care lies at the core of Ms. Liota's values. On her desk sits a treasured photograph of one of her very first patients: Jennie, an elderly Italian-American immigrant who suffered from diabetes and failing vision. "She lived alone without family or friends in a tenement apartment, with a bathtub in the kitchen, layers of peeling paint, and a statue of St. Lucy, patron of the blind," Ms. Liota says, remembering Jennie's sweetness, loneliness, and how daily nursing visits to administer medication were Jennie's whole world. Ms. Liota keeps Jennie's picture as a memento — and as a "reminder of what our nurses do every day."

HCA is proud to offer Ms. Liota our highest honor, the Ruth F. Wilson Award, for her distinguished career as an exceptional leader in the home health field.

© 2009, The Home Care Association of New York State (HCA)
www.hcanys.org