Mary Goode is Chief Executive of Headway Cambridgeshire and this is her experience of a typical working day:

5:00: I live between Bury St Edmunds and Diss so it takes me quite a long time to get into work at the Ida Darwin Hospital in Fulbourn. I get up early and tank up on coffee. I always drink the de-caffeinated variety, so the buzz is purely psychological. I’m hyper enough without caffeine. The journey to work is accompanied by Radio 4’s Today programme which is where I catch up on the latest news because the alternative is to read all the news online; and I like John Humphries.

7.30: I get into the office really early because I can get a tremendous amount done before the rest of the team arrives from 8.30 onwards.

9.00: Our hubs in Fulbourn and Peterborough offer a programme of activities aimed at cognitive and social rehabilitation following brain injury as well as social inclusion and leisure activities. The clients arrive from around 9.30am for a range of different sessions. Catching up with their news is often the best bit of the day for me.

10.00: I nip out to visit the chickens that live in a coop behind the building. We had three chickens called Snap Crackle and Pop, but Crackle and Pop died (we still don’t know why). We had three more donated by a client. They are White Leghorns and they’ve been named Sophia L’Hen, Lae West and Audrey Peckburn but I defy you to tell them apart. We have four healthy birds at the moment but I mustn’t say that too loudly in case the fox hears. They are good layers and we sell their eggs to help raise money for the charity.

10.10: I catch up with some team members to talk about a service we would like to develop in Wisbech alongside our community support. We know it’s a big black hole as far as many services and infrastructure is concerned, not least our own, although we do have an adult-learning course which has been very successfully delivered in partnership with the Ferry Project.

12.30: The clients do quite a lot of cooking as part of their rehabilitation. They make a mean sausage roll, but today my waistline was glad for some delicious leak and potato soup. I usually dodge the washing up.

1.00: I shut my usually open office door and focus on writing a grant application to the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust for an additional Hospital Brain Injury Coordinator. There is too much work for the one person we already have in post and we would really like to extend our support to people who have either a traumatic brain injury or an acquired brain injury.

2.30: New gym equipment arrives at the hub in giant packing cases. The gym is one of our most popular services and really helps brain-injured people to maximise their fitness and the new equipment will make a real difference.

3.00: I have a meeting with the clients and an agency that have been helping us to design a board game. The game was originally invented by hub users as a way of helping them retrain their memory, but is now moving forward with a proper design and marketing strategy. The clients are all very enthused by the smart look of the box and I am heartened by the way they want to be part of what could be a good social enterprise. We have to think laterally about ways to find funding and we have developed a project called Mind Your Head, which is aimed at finding and designing products that will help brain injured people to lead as full lives as possible.

4.30: I receive a phone call from the wife of a client who is worried about being able to pay the transport costs to get her brain injured husband to the hub.

Unfortunately, transport funding has been cut and she has been told that it will cost her £128 a week, which is the entire amount of her pension. We are continually struggling to provide a service against the background of cuts. All sorts of groups are looking at the lack of community transport and other ways of moving vulnerable people around the county, so fingers crossed something really positive will come out of it.

6.00: I usually leave at around five, but sometimes it is later. My trustees keep telling me to work fewer hours, but there is so much to do. I am always glad to get back to my peaceful cottage. The first job is to feed my orange cat called Henry who was a stray from Sawston and who now leads the life of Riley in Suffolk.

9.00: I go to bed early, but I love reading, usually detective novels. I think what I really like about them is that there is always a resolution and answer – unlike most of my days at Headway. When I go to bed I try not to look up at the ceiling because then I am reminded that I dodged painting it when I did the walls last week.