She said: "The Fremantle Trust was just being set up and this was a chance to join something new as it was beginning.

"It was a chance for me to think about what I could contribute. There was a real belief that what we were doing mattered."

Mrs Sawyers said that when the company was first set up in 1992, there were just a handful of employees. By the end of the year, that number had swelled to 1,400.

After Mrs Sawyers played a key role in organising the transfer of care homes from Bucks County Council to the trust, she said she was very interested to watch the new organisation develop.

She explained: "Service is the most important thing to our clients and the direct care that they receive every day.

"We also have to make sure that the Fremantle Trust has systems and policies to protect people and make sure we are recruiting the right people.

"We need to make sure we have the right services for the future and we are always looking to innovate, evolve and encourage as well as creating an atmosphere in which our staff can develop."

Mrs Sawyers said she has learnt a huge amount during her time with the trust as she had no previous experience with care services and stressed her role is about making life for frontline staff as easy as possible and giving them the services they need to do their jobs well."

A lot of the money made by the Fremantle Trust goes straight into service provision, Mrs Sawyers explained - the key difference between the Trust and profit making companies.

She added: "We want to keep improving services so our profit goes into making services better for the future. In the Commission for Social Care annual report, we were said to provide a better service than private organisations who offer similar services to us. We also have more staff than private care providers."

Mrs Sawyers said the future is bright for The Fremantle Trust. Project Care, a scheme to modify services and building provision, is well underway.

"Eight new care homes are being built to provide very different services for people."

She explained: "We want to transform the infrastructure in which our services are offered so our staff can focus on service users. At the moment, buildings are taking up more time than they should. We have an aging population, particularly in Bucks. We will need a different range of services in the future."

Mrs Sawyers said all the trust's staff have to have a passion for what they do.

She commented: "I am filled with admiration for every single one of our care staff and it is wonderful to have the chance to work with them daily.

"If the services they offer can make a difference to people's lives then we are doing something welcome and that is a wonderful feeling of achievement."