Social care blogger wins national writing award

Smith's blog, called Working with the Underclass, has proved controversial with social workers for its critical view of many young people and staff working in the care system.

However, the Orwell Prize judges were glowing in their praise:

"Of course, we knew that we were picking another anonymous public sector blog with a name that would have the irony meter pegged in the red zone. We could have agonised for hours and then passed Winston Smith over as too difficult, too dark, too much of a risk but we were charged with judging the best. Winston Smith's blog was the clear and unanimous choice of the judging panel.  There is a directness and clarity to his philippics that left them in our thoughts long after we had finished reading, but that was not enough. What carried the day with us was his passion and conviction that we should know what wrongs had been done in our names in some of those places where most of us choose not to look.

"There will be an inevitable interest in Winston Smith now that he has won an Orwell Prize but it is our hope that wider attention will fall on improving the situations that he describes so vividly rather than on the writer himself."

It's certainly worth checking out the Winston Smith blog and I'd be interested in your thoughts on it.