Paul Burns

The Good Shepherd has a long history spanning over 50 years of helping the most disadvantaged people in Wolverhampton. Historically, our work has been around crisis intervention but we have developed our services to include preventing people from becoming homeless alongside supporting recovery from mental health and addiction.

Our recovery work helps people with complex needs adapt to living in accommodation and reintegrating within society whilst also learning new and valuable skills. Our mission is divided into three different sections: ‘To end homelessness, support recovery and create pathways out of poverty.’ This approach relies on the dedication of our staff, many of whom have lived experience of some of the issues our service users face. Paul Burns is someone who continually goes above and beyond in his unstinting desire to help others. He draws on experiences from his own background in his work with our service users, never judges people and never turns them away. In summary, he gives people hope. His selfless motivation means he never seeks praise or plaudits, he just gets on with his job and seeing people recover and thrive is his only concern. That is why we are nominating him for the ‘Unsung Hero’ award.