The next year he set up the service's first volunteer team. At that point there were ten of them; today there are 100 uniformed voluntary members, who in the last year gave more then 10,000 hours of their time. Ranging in age from 17 to 72, they help educate vulnerable groups about fire safety, work in the community to cut arson and hoax calls, and give practical help like fitting smoke detectors.

Volunteers are full of appreciation for the long, unsociable hours Aldwin puts in to make sure they're supported, dropping in on their work in evenings and at weekends and always being available on the end of the phone, says team leader John Briffett. "I believe Roy has played an inspirational role in the development of this volunteer scheme and truly feel it would not be achieving what it does today without him," he says.

Aldwin, who's been involved with volunteering since he was 18, including as a special constable - he received a long service award before retiring from the role in 2007 - says he's driven by a desire to help vulnerable people in particular. "I absolutely love working on community safety issues - anything that improves the safety and environment we live in," he says. "That's what it's about. I've done that all my life."

He's as effusive about the volunteers as they are about him. "They don't replace anything we've done previously, they enhance it. They're the unsung heroes. They're so professional people think they're part of the service, even though their uniforms say that they're volunteers. "We've attracted an outstanding group of people. They're amazing." Some have even become personal friends.

Another benefit of the scheme, which is soon to expand into trading standards work to help stamp out rogue traders, is the opportunities for personal development it offers volunteers. "Many people come to us when they're unemployed and have gone back into full-time employment," Aldwin says. "They've all said it helped them through that period of unemployment and helped them get new roles." The experience of seeing his team members grow in their roles is "wonderful", he adds. "I had a dad come up to me and say his son was more confident, helpful, driven. I felt really humbled - I said 'it's not me, it's the service!' It's a really nice scheme, it really is."

Aldwin, who is married with daughters aged 15 and 21, is also an active school governor and manages a partnership between local businesses in Hemel Hempstead to reduce crime in the town, a role that is part paid and part voluntary. "I can't express in words how delighted I am," he says of being shortlisted for the public servant of the year award. "For me, it recognises all the volunteers I work with. I love that."

By Rachel Williams

Too often they are not given the opportunity to prove that they can hold down a job after a long spell in prison. But that is not the case for inmates at Norwich prison where community liaison prison officer Damerell has helped offenders into employment after creating a work experience programme with the local shopping centre. 

Since it was set up two years ago 80% of the 89 offenders who have completed the eight-week scheme left prison with a job lined up – more than double the national rate. And of that group only one of them has reoffended since being released from prison. Damerell says: “Prisoners do really want to change their lives but quite often they aren’t given the opportunity to prove themselves. If you can get prisoners on that first step then you can also reduce the re-offending rate which also benefits victims of crime.”

When the scheme was first developed with the Chapelfield shopping centre just a 20 minute walk from the male prison, offenders were involved in re-opening its waste recycling plant, collecting and sorting rubbish from the centre shops. The experience not only boosted the prisoners’ own employment skills and confidence, but also helped to reduce the amount of rubbish from the complex sent to landfill cutting it from 37 tonnes a month to just three tonnes. Today offenders can also be found at Chapelfield working as part of the maintenance and cleaning teams as well as alongside customer service staff at the centre’s information desk.

Damerell, 48, who joined the service 20 years ago, says retailers have been keen to get involved with the scheme even when they knew the criminal background of the offenders who are all low-risk prisoners with a varied criminal history from drug-related offences to burglary. He says: “There is 100% disclosure – everybody knows the prisoner’s offence. I’ve had no adverse comments from the retailers, all of them are fully on board.” The work experience programme has been so successful that Damerell is recruiting more local employers to the scheme while other prisons from across the county are hoping to copy the Norwich model.

Damerell has also helped establish a volunteering programme at the 767-inmate prison in partnership with local charities and other community groups. Every month the prison declares a community day where a group of offenders, as part of their rehabilitation, spend time outside the prison doing voluntary work alongside prison officers and other volunteers and charity workers. He says: “The benefit to the prisoners is that they get to mix with normal people outside of the prison environment as part of a group all working together.” Since Damerell set up the scheme prisoners from Norwich have clocked up 85,848 volunteering hours between them. 

Damerell, who has worked in re-settlement for the last 10 years, says he has no plans to career change: “Having a job on release from prison totally changes a prisoner’s life and that of their family 100%. For me the satisfaction comes from helping somebody achieve that and at the same time reduce  the re-offending rate and protect victims of crime  I really enjoy getting up in the morning and coming to work -  I don’t think everybody can say that.”   

By Debbie Andalo 

It has now supported more than 10,000 patients and carers. Staff at this Bridges service, which aims to allow people to die at home, with dignity and with loved ones around them, use a narrative-based assessment process - asking patients to tell their own story in their own time - to ensure all their needs are being met. Fifty volunteers are also involved, helping with tasks like driving clients to hospital appointments, befriending and running bereavement groups. Many of the volunteers are people who've previously been helped by Bridges themselves. "That compassionate way of caring generates compassion as well," says Patel.

The biggest need Bridges identifies is for domestic help in the home. "The more gaps we can fill in people's support needs the greater chance they have of being able to remain at home. One lady said 'your life doesn't stop just because you're dealing with end of life issues - you still need food in the fridge, and the bin still needs taking out'. "It's the little things, like letting the carer have a break each week, that make the big differences." Sometimes staff even identify needs patients didn't know they had, lets them access support they didn't know they were entitled to, or teases out reasons for problems that a clinical assessment might miss. A woman who said she was depressed because she couldn't get out, for example, eventually explained that this wasn't because of mobility issues but because she had lost so much weight through illness that her clothes no longer fitted her. The Bridges worker was able to get her a grant for new outfits. "Unless people know there's a solution to a need they won't perceive it as a need," Patel explains.

Malcolm Bailey, the chief executive of Murray Hall, describes Patel as a "leader of leaders". "Her strong professional commitment to building a comprehensive service for un‐met need was matched by her humanity in the dignity that she helps people achieve at an individual level," he says. "Manjula has made a significant contribution to death, dying and loss in the 21st century."

Patel is also working on Compassionate Communities, a project aimed at building communities that no longer shy away from death but instead offer support and help to those at the end of their life. "When you go out to meet people who are at the end of life it's about asking them all the things that matter to them, and if there's anything they'd like to do before they get to the end," she says. And when that's done well it helps the carer in bereavement too. "They can carry on knowing they were part of a good journey for their loved one."

By Rachel Williams

At every key stage of her eldest son Joe’s life, Tomlinson has used her own experience to help other parents in a similar position and pushed back the boundaries in the care of disabled people. She says: “I was brought up to believe that if you really want something you have to get out there and get it – may be that was a good grounding.” 

When her oldest son Joe was left with complex disabilities after contracting meningitis at the age of six months she was told by doctors and other health and social care professionals that he was unlikely ever to walk and his chances of living a normal life were slim. “Everybody was writing him off. That was a really tough one to take,” she says. But Tomlinson, who admits it would have been easy to lie back and sink into depression “and allow the system to walk all over me”, decided to take on the system in order to create the fullest life for Joe that she could. 

Today her efforts seem to have paid off for Joe, now 22, lives in his own home next door to his parents in Wigan, he has his own personal budget and runs his own recycling social enterprise Odd Socks. Tomlinson says: “He is living an ordinary life and every kid in our community knows Joe and they see him as part of the community.”

As Joe has grown up Tomlinson, 45, developed a career in the care sector and, at the same time, acquired an expertise about the needs and aspirations of disabled children and their families. When her son was a toddler she set up the disability advice and advocacy charity Wigan and Leigh Scope which later became Embrace Wigan. Today the charity employs 10 staff, with an army of volunteers and has a turnover of more than £500,000.

When Joe was a teenager, she was instrumental in persuading statutory agencies to give him his own personal budget so that he had the package of self-directed care to meet his own needs. Joe was one of the first people with complex disabilities to have a personal budget thanks to his mother’s campaign. She realised that something had to change when Joe was 14 and in an out-of-borough special school. In the space of just six months Tomlinson realised that his care and support had been delivered by 46 different people. “It was completely out of order. I had to do something about it because the money being spent on Joe was phenomenal but the outcomes were rubbish. There were no outcomes for him and nothing for the council.”  

Tomlinson, using her own family experiences, went on to co-found the social enterprise In Control which has been at the forefront of developing self directed care and helping disabled people and others achieve the package of support they desire. Forty-five-year-old Tomlinson has since created an on line market place where users can buy their own personal care package with a choice of free or paid for services. Called “Shop4Support” Tomlinson is confident that it will soon become the “Amazon and eBay” of self-directed support. 

By Debbie Andalo

Some 70% of local parents who have sought her help to achieve that first step back on the job ladder have gone on to find employment. She has helped more than 500 parents enrol on basic skills courses while the same number again have gone on to complete child care, social care or family support qualifications. And this academic year Wilson will witness the first group of parents to graduate with degrees in early years and childhood studies after she developed a partnership with London Metropolitan University which delivered lectures off-campus in rooms at the children centres. She says: “The satisfaction for me comes in seeing people move on - to see the change in them. They become different people.”

Wilson says most of the adults she works with at the 18 children’s centres in the borough are women aged over 25 looking to go back to work after having children; many are single parents. All of them are keen to find work the only problem, she says, is they do not know how to take that first step. “Some of the women who come in can’t even look me in the eye. But once I start working with them they realise that they can do it - it’s just about having that belief in themselves. People have the potential – you just have to bring that out.”  

One of the biggest dilemmas for parents returning to work is whether, once the costs of child care and the possible loss of benefits are taken into account, they can still afford to go to work. It is an issue which Wilson tackled head on by setting up an independent welfare benefits advisory service. The service, which runs sessions at each of the children’s centres, has generated £1m in new benefits payments to parents and, crucially, also offers them a back-to-work calculation so they can see if their figures add up. Says Wilson: “They can find out what they need to earn to enable them to go back to work, it’s about giving them the information about work related benefits which they can access but didn’t know about.” “The service has been a great success especially when you consider its running costs are £35,000 a year.”  

Wilson also realised that some parents need additional support to boost their confidence before they can start looking for work. To address this, she established a casual staff pool so that parents, who have completed the relevant qualifications, can “cut their teeth” by taking on casual work within the children’s centres where they still feel secure.  

She also saw the need to establish a structured volunteering scheme so that unpaid work was a step towards paid employment. Wilson says: “Although we had been running volunteering for some time it needed to be more organised to ensure that people moved on. Sometimes people can get stuck in volunteering and aren’t encouraged to move on.” Now volunteers are offered a three-month volunteer placement with mentor support which has taken many of them into paid work. Wilson says: “We have had a lot of success with people moving into work because they realise themselves that they have potential and can see that they can do things.” And it is that visible transformation which keeps Wilson in the job. “People just have this bounce about them. Everybody I see wants to work - they want to do it but just don’t know how.” 

By Debbie Andalo