A social care pioneer has been awarded Wales’s top honour.

Mario Kreft MBE, the proprietor of the award winning Pendine Park care organisation and chair of Care Forum Wales, won the enterprise category at the St David Awards.

The award was presented by First Minister Carwyn Jones at a glittering ceremony at the Senedd in Cardiff.

Appropriately, he was accompanied by wife Gill who has played a major role in the development of Pendine Park since they set it up together in 1985.

They established Pendine Park because they both had elderly grandparents who needed care and the places they went to see didn’t match their requirements – so they set up their own “family care home”.

Pendine Park now employs more than 600 people in seven care homes in Wrexham, a domiciliary care company and an in-house training company.

Later this year they will be opening a new centre of excellence for dementia care on the site of the former Bryn Seiont Community Hospital on the outskirts of Caernarfon in Gwynedd.

The £7 million development which will also include 16 companion living apartments will create 100 jobs and provide a major economic boost for North West Wales.

Among the first to congratulate Mario was Wrexham AM Lesley Griffiths.

She said: ” I am delighted Mario has been been honoured in this way.

“This recognition for all his pioneering work and dedication for 30 years is richly deserved.

“Mario leads by example and is an eloquent and effective champion for the social care sector in Wales.

“He is always the first to say he has fantastic support from his colleagues at Pendine Park and Care Forum Wales and from his wife, Gill. They are very special people.”

Mario said: “I was delighted to be nominated in the first place so to actually receive the award is a fantastic honour.

“This is the perfect 30th anniversary present for Pendine Park. None of this would have been possible without the huge contribution of my wife Gill whose expertise, energy and creativity have provided foundation for everything we have achieved.

“The award is also a recognition of the huge contribution of social care in communities right across Wales, including the teams at Care Forum Wales and Pendine Park.

“It’s a huge team approach and it’s a reward for all the work that we’ve been doing together over the years to raise standards in social care and to promote the profession of social care.

“Care homes are doing a wonderful job in the main for an incredibly low cost to the tax payer.

“The contribution of the social care sector in Wales is immense because it underpins so much of the broader economic sector.

“Social care is the glue that binds our communities together and pumps a total of £4 billion into local economies across Wales whilst providing vitally important community-based services.

“It’s typically an invisible contribution because people don’t recognise it but it employs more than five per cent of the Wales workforce.

“It not only provides vital services but also enables people to remain economically active.

“Importantly, most of the money that goes to social care goes in wages that are spent in the local community.”

Last year Mario was awarded a Fellowship by Glyndwr University in Wrexham.

Mario, who lives in Denbigh, is also the founder of the prestigious Wales Care Awards which he set up to provide recognition to the dedicated people who work in social care.

The 58-year-old was awarded an MBE in 2010 and has won a host of other prizes, including the Leading Wales Award for Leadership in the Private Sector 2014.

Mario is the son of a circus bear and lion tamer, Franz Kreft, who came to Britain as a refuge from Slovenia after the Second World War and later met and married his mother, Pamela.

He was christened in a circus tent in the South African city of Port Elizabeth and raised by his grandparents, Fred and Rene Warburton, who retired to Trefnant, near Denbigh, after selling their business, the former Pen-y-Don Hotel, on the promenade.

According to Mario, the values he learned from his grandparents still provide his “guiding light”.

Pendine Park’s centre of excellence for people with dementia in Wrexham is dedicated to his grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in later life and Bodlondeb is named after his grandparents’ home in St Asaph Street, Rhyl.

“Although they are no longer with us, my grandparents who raised me would have been very thrilled about the St David Award,” added Mario.

A lack of understanding about potential cyber dangers means small and medium sized business in North Wales are putting a third of their revenue at risk.

That’s the warning from internet security expert Henry Platten, a former policeman who is now patrolling the virtual world keeping businesses safe.

He will be the guest speaker at the next meeting of the Wrexham Business Professionals at the Catrin Finch Centre at Glyndwr University on Tuesday, March 24.

The group was established by local solicitors and accountants who collaborate on a non-competitive basis to promote the development of businesses, skills and employment opportunities for professional people.

The other keynote speaker will be Neil Ashbridge, the Bank of England’s Agent in Wales.

Mr Platten, who has also worked as a BBC journalist, set up set up the Flintshire based firm eTreble9 with wife, Danielle.

A great deal of their work involves helping firms in North Wales battle cyber threats.

The firm has also created revolutionary scheme to keep children safe online.

The eCadets scheme beat rival contenders from all over the UK to win first place in the category for Making the Internet a Safer Place at the prestigious Nominet awards.

According to Mr Platten, recent research by the Cyber Streetwise organisation had revealed that small and medium sized companies are putting 32 per cent of their revenue at risk because they are falling for some of the common misconceptions around cyber security.

That, he said, leaves them vulnerable to losing valuable data and suffering both financial and reputational damage.

Worryingly, two thirds of SMEs didn’t consider their business to be vulnerable, and only 16 per cent felt that improving their cyber security was a top priority for 2015.

Mr Platten added: “There are many benefits from using social media safely and appropriately – it’s a brilliant tool for marketing, recruiting and so on.

“But going blindly into social media and integrating it into your business without being aware of some of the risks beforehand can be potentially dangerous.

“Without being aware, sometimes people can disclose commercially sensitive information that they may not wish to.

“There is a risk of being hacked via social media accounts when people bring their own devices into work and then integrate with the work system.

“There are also viruses that can easily be spread through social media and there are reputational risks.

“One misplaced sentence on Facebook or Twitter can cause an organisation untold damage in terms of crisis management.

“Businesses are at risk of being victims of crime as well with fraud being one of the top ones.

“Potentially, if your cyber security isn’t up to scratch, thieves can hack in and steal money from your bank account.

“One of the ways that that works through is that the email account you have connected to your social media account.

“If that’s the same one that you run your life with people who find it very easy to do the hacking can very easily work out your email account attached to your social media account.

“Generally you will share some personal information through your social media account which can be used to identify your password and then they simply go through the password process, match it up to your email account.

“As soon as they’re in, they see your entire life, who you bank with, your home address where your deliveries are sent.

“So an easy way around that is if you have a social media account, have a separate email account that is just for social media and nothing else.

“Data now is the most valuable commodity in the world. It’s more valuable than gold or oil.

“In looking at identity theft and fraud, small businesses are the prime target because cyber criminals know they don’t have huge internet teams working 24/7 keeping them safe.

“That’s why it’s important for small businesses to know how to use the internet and social media it in the right way.

“If you understand the risks then you can protect yourself, you can get the maximum benefit without any of the danger coming along as well to make sure that your business can run in a consistent and a smooth way without any avoidable hiccups.”

Wrexham Business Professionals spokesman Simon Griffiths, of Chartered Accountants Guy Walmsley, said: “We are delighted that Neil Ashbridge and Henry Platten have agreed to share their expert views.

“Neil will be giving us a brief update on the latest economic position while Henry will be giving us guidance about how to use the internet safely and appropriately.”