Volunteer service driven forward for award

Added: (Thu Aug 27 2009)

Pressbox (Press Release) - The volunteers from Landywood District Voluntary Help Centre have been put forward for the inaugural ‘Patients’ Choice – Quality and Excellence’ Awards, organised by South Staffordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT).

The Centre, which is run wholly by volunteers, has been nominated for the ‘Team Award’ for the services they provide to the community.

Launched in 1976, the centre currently has a volunteer register of around 70 people of varying ages and they work with 80-100 residents a week – providing transport to appointments and organising social events.

Chris Myatt, Chair and Secretary for the Centre said: “We provide a diverse range of services to people in the area from driving them to hospital or doctor’s appointments to picking up their shopping and organising events.

“We have three vehicles that are used on a daily basis and every week we have drop-in coffee mornings, bingo, lunch clubs and also hold a one-to-one club evening for local special needs residents”

The Centre receives several minimal grants on an annual basis but is mostly self-funded, a lot of which comes from their charity shop.

Chris continued: “We all work hard to ensure that we can keep the service going by raising funds. Finding out that we had been put forward for the award was great, we were all extremely pleased and it’s a real pat on the back for all of the volunteers that work here.

“The greatest part of what we do is knowing that you have helped someone and made their quality of life better and this award nomination is just the icing on the cake.”

South Staffordshire PCT launched the Patients’ Choice – Quality and Excellence Awards in April and received nearly 100 nominations from patients and the public in South Staffordshire who had identified quality of care and sheer excellence of service and wanted to recognise this by nominating staff, carers and members of the public who have contributed to health and social care locally.

A panel of judges consisting of 5 independent representatives had the difficult job of selecting the shortlist within the six categories which will now go forward to the Awards ceremony in September.