17 Sep 2021 Volunteer News

The Kirkwood receive the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service and celebrate the great volunteer team

The Kirkwood were delighted to welcome the Lord Lieutenant Ed Anderson to our gardens in Dalton on Friday 17th September, where he presented us with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

The Kirkwood were delighted to be honoured with The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service earlier this summer. The prestigious award was given in recognition of The Kirkwood volunteers’ outstanding contribution to helping local people affected by life limiting illnesses across Kirklees. The award is one of the highest a voluntary group can receive and we are exceptionally proud of all our volunteers and what they do.

The Kirkwood have a diverse volunteer workforce of over 800 members, who help in every area of our work, from raising funds to supporting those in our care to offering a listening ear to patients and families in need.

The Kirkwood is one of just 241 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. To be recognised in this way is a real feather in the cap for our dedicated volunteers.

The award was presented to The Kirkwood’s founder and Life President, David Stocks, in the beautiful gardens at The Kirkwood site in Dalton by Ed Anderson, The Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, in front of volunteers from across the charity.

David Stocks, whose many years of hard work and dedication led to the foundation of The Kirkwood, was delighted to be presented with the award at the event.

David said: “Today is a very good day for The Kirkwood, to be recognised by the Queen is an unbelievable honour, the volunteers really deserve every bit of praise, what they do for us is just tremendous and I would like to personally thank them too.

“Without them we wouldn’t be able to do half the things we want to do. We have been going for 40 years, I have been here from the very start and to go from just raising £4.50 in the beginning to now being one of the most recognised charities in Kirklees is just brilliant.”

On presenting the Queen's award, Lord Lieutenant, Ed Anderson, said: “It’s a real honour being here today to present this award, I would like to thank every single volunteer who works with The Kirkwood, it’s not often that a hospice wins an award like this so it is a really big thing but well deserved at the same time.”

John Johnson, Volunteer Services Manager, with The Kirkwood, was proud to see all the volunteers being recognised for their hard work. He added: “Today has been a great day, and days like this make the volunteering all worthwhile, we are incredibly proud of all the volunteers.

“I am so proud to lead the volunteers and we wanted to make sure every type of volunteer was here today. Obviously we would have liked to have them all here today but that wasn’t possible, so we wanted to make sure that there was at least someone there from every team.

“The volunteers are the lifeblood of The Kirkwood, without them we couldn’t do the amount of things that we do, we have been running for 40 years now and I can’t wait to see what we are going to do in the future. The last 18 months have been difficult but hopefully we are getting back to normal now.”

On receiving the award, Pat Hewitt, who volunteers with The Kirkwood Fundraising Team, said: “It’s great to invited here today to be recognised for all the hard work we put in as volunteers. We volunteer because we love doing it and we want to help make a difference.”

Gardening volunteer, Linda Roberts, added: “We have a fantastic Gardening Volunteer Team who make this beautiful garden as good as it is. The patients and visitors absolutely love it. I also help in the Denby Dale shop and that’s a really important part of the way I volunteer.

“To receive the award is brilliant and very much appreciated. We’ll continue to do the good work we are doing and trying to improve even more things as we go along.”