It's safe to say that the past week has been a good one for Jean Saunders - Swansea Bay's 2019 and 2020 Nurse of the Year.
After a long 18-month wait, Jean, 67 from Cockett, ventured up to Windsor Castle to receive an MBE handed over by Princess Anne herself in recognition of her years of service.
Jean started her career in health care over 20 years ago specialising in neonatal care and health visiting, but for the past 17 years she's been a part of one of the most niche departments in the Swansea Bay University Health Board: the health access team for asylum seekers. Jean's role involves helping some of the most vulnerable people gain access to healthcare, and it's one that extends far beyond nursing. You can read more Swansea stories here.
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Speaking with WalesOnline, Jean said: "I t's a very different service from health visiting and neonatal care - because this is a particularly vulnerable group of people. It's complex, it's rewarding, it's challenging, it's exhausting - it's everything you can describe. We meet the most amazing people, and do we share a lot of their journeys with them.
"It can be hard to share these journeys, but it's incredibly rewarding."
With modern slavery and human trafficking still rife, and with the migrant crisis showing no signs of improving, Jean's department is important now more than ever.
Jean said: "We're the first point of contact when they first arrive in Swansea, apart from the housing companies. We help them by making sure they can navigate the healthcare system, which can be really complex. Sometimes that can mean giving them a visual map with a picture of the surgery, if they can't yet speak English, to other more complex health needs.
"Our role is to empower people to do things, rather than doing things for them."
Jean said that while she's proud of everything she's achieved throughout her career, she recently felt particularly proud after bumping into a woman who she first met as an asylum seeker years ago.
She said: "I'm incredibly proud of how we've developed this service over the last 17 years, and as a team we're still growing and changing. I was recently speaking with somebody who was an asylum seeker years ago - I met her when she first arrived. She works for the health board herself now, which is lovely to see.
"She asked me what has changed since then, and when I thought about it, I realised the main thing that has changed is our awareness of the complexity of the issues at hand. Years ago, there simply wasn't much awareness on topics like modern slavery, trafficking and so on, but now we have the right knowledge to deal with these things better. We have to be very aware of exactly what it is we should be looking out for - that is our job."
Reflecting on the big day receiving her MBE, Jean said it was simply fantastic, and that Princess Anne was particularly warm and kind.
"It was in Windsor Castle, which was amazing. Everyone I walked past said 'congratulations', without exception. Princess Anne was absolutely lovely, and she was informed on everything we were doing. She showed genuine interest and was very knowledgeable, and she already knew about the work we are doing in Swansea Bay. She took the time to ask genuine questions, and she asked about the asylum seekers, the challenges we face and so on.
"I told Princess Anne that we're a small team, and she said to me, 'Do you think of the difference you make to the lives of people? You should be very proud.' I said, 'Yes, I am.'"
Jean's granddaughter also had a special message to pass onto the Princess.
Jean said: "My granddaughter desperately wanted to come, so she asked me to pass on a message to whoever presented the award. I asked her, 'what do you want me to say?' and she just said, 'just tell her how wonderful I am', so I promised her I would. When I told Princess Anne that, she had a real laugh about it, and she said, 'well done, you kept your promise'."
Working with asylum seekers is no easy task, and Jean points out that without her team, she simply wouldn't be able to do her job.
She said: "The first thing we do in the morning is have a cup of tea and go over everything that happened the day before. If someone comes in and says they dealt with a case that was particularly horrendous, we make sure to sit down and talk about it. It's an area you have to feel passionate about, because if you don't, you'll be burned out. I'm lucky to have a good manager - the best in the world, I think. I always tell her that."
She added: "Our team is very small, there's only five of us, but we're close. We deal with some awful things, but it's a skill that you have to develop over the years, and you develop your own coping mechanisms. It can be tough to deal with when you're new, but we have the right team and we support each other a lot. We've learned and grown together over the years, and we've rarely had a staff member leave - which I think is a good sign.
"Swansea is also a really close-knit community in terms of partnerships - we have a lot of people working with us, whether it's communities like the African community centre, voluntary partners or statutory partners, including the Home Office. I wouldn't be able to do my job without these partners."
On a final note, Jean reflected on the award: " My family are blown away, as you can imagine. I wish my father could have been here to see it, because I know he would have been incredibly proud, as my mother is."
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