Colin Ogden – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Volunteer of the year

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Colin has been a stand out member of the volunteer team at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust for eight years. Since joining the trust as a volunteer driver, he has been instrumental in the development of the service across the Trust. The service started in 2013 as a group of people wanting to help those struggling to get to their outpatients appointments. Shortly after starting Colin began helping with organising driver rota’s, arranging cover for absences and also dealing with any queries that were raised. Colin supported with the recruitment of volunteers drivers. He has been involved in the selection and induction of many volunteer drivers. He is so well known and admired that drivers regularly chat over the phone he gets to know them and their families really well. He takes all new drivers through their local induction. Having been a driver a short while and been offered donations from patients to the trust he suggested the implementation of an envelope scheme whereby patients if they wanted to, could make a donation to the Trust’s charitable funds. This is a measure of how valued our drivers and Colin is by the local community, (the very people our drivers support). To date our envelope scheme has contributed to over £8,500 to trust charitable funds. Having regularly supported patients attending their chemotherapy appointments. Colin decided that he wanted to support the staff and patients on the unit. In addition to his driving role, he now volunteers on a Friday morning and does his best to put the patients at ease by keeping them company during treatment, making cups of tea and doing his upmost to raise a smile to the patients and staff on the unit. Colin’s thoughtfulness and commitment to supporting our patients has extended further to recently cutting a patient’s grass. Realising this patient was struggling, he offered to help. In addition to this, once he has finished his volunteer shift in the chemotherapy unit, Colin will then collect any medication for delivery from the hospital pharmacy. He checks if there are any food donations for the foodbank. Then he delivers these on his way home from the hospital. The trust implemented a food campaign during 2020 as a means for trust staff to give something back to the local community for the support received in donations during the pandemic. Colin has been instrumental in promoting the campaign at the University Hospital of Hartlepool and coordinating the delivery to the local foodbank from various drop off points around the hospital. Colin does not only go the extra mile for patients, he goes the extra mile for the Trust and for his fellow volunteers. On top of that, he has been a fantastic support to staff within the volunteer services team and we cannot thank him enough. https://www.nth.nhs.uk/news/hartlepool-giving-generously-to-its-local-foodbanks-as-part-of-covid-19-thank-you/ https://helpforce.community/connecting/news-stories/volunteer-drivers-north-tees-and-hartlepool-nhs-foundation-trust