Gillian so proud and surprised to be awarded British Empire Medal in King’s Birthday Honours

Gillian Hagen, aged 73 has been honoured for services to the community in the mining village near Mansfield.

She said: “I’m very proud indeed. I’m so surprised as well though, because I don’t the work I do to be recognised, I just do it because I totally believe in supporting the community and doing the best I can.”

Born and bred in Blidworth, Gillian has been an active community champion since 1995, making a lasting difference to the lives of local people.

In 1996, she set up a support group for local mothers struggling with their young people’s addictions. Her dedication and skilful grant funding applications resulted in the service growing from a single peer support group to the Mansfield-based Hetty’s charity, with a crisis support line and paid staff supporting more than 200 families per month in Nottinghamshire.

Her passion for making a difference continued as she began supporting the health service with the improvement of pain management services, becoming chairman of Abbey Medical Group’s patient participation group in 2008.

She was also a key volunteer member in the redesign of cancer pathway services. bravely continuing with her role despite losing her husband to cancer.

From this experience, she now also runs support groups for people with long-term conditions.

She is also the patient representative at the Newark & Sherwood Council health and wellbeing forum and the NHS patient leader for Mid-Notts Clinical Commissioning Group – covering a population of 360,000 – raising issues and ensuring services are improved.

The patient group has remained extremely active in befriending, supporting and advising patients/carers, but with the new challenge of getting the most vulnerable to health appointments and providing food aid.

During the coronavirus pandemic she established a voluntary transport service to support vulnerable local people, leading to Blidworth on the Move being launched in May 2021 and

began transporting and befriending people across Blidworth, Rainworth and Ravenshead, serving 17,000 residents.

The food aid service was set up responding to local people’s needs, providing much-needed supplies and continues to provide meals.

BotM is now a registered charity, and has delivered 140 Christmas food parcels, provided transport and befriending and now offers support to reduce digital isolation with tablet loans and training packages.

Also during the pandemic, 2,670 people so far have received prescriptions, attended medical appointments and enjoyed access to emergency food and hot meals because of her dedication.

She continued: "The work I did during Covid with Blidworth on the Move support network, I had the networking skills and was the person to ask, but it would never have happened without all the volunteers who did the all the active work.

“I was the person who did all the speaking and the organising but there’s a team of volunteers that back all this work up so this is for them too.”

Other honours William Brown, aged 66, from Southwell, being made an MBE for services to museums and the arts, following his retirement last June after 16 years as national security adviser working with the Museums Libraries & Archives Council.