In King's Hill, Andrew Russ is 26 and a qualified engineer who decided engineering wasn't for him and went to UKC to read psychology. At the end of the first year, he changed to psychology with clinical psychology and also signed up with a firm for work in the summer holidays.

"I didn't get a single phone call from them," he said. "So I decided to do voluntary work instead and I hoped it might be linked in some way to what I wanted to do."

Andrew approached the Voluntary Services Manager for the Kent & Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust thinking he might get work in the hospital shop and was amazed to be offered voluntary work in the clinical psychology department at Medway Maritime.

"I worked there all summer helping out at the memory clinic; just chatting to people in the waiting room and helping them feel at ease. I was allowed to sit in on the feed back meetings. I helped out at the gardening club. I felt it really eased me in and I was able to ask myself is it for me and realise it was what I wanted to do."

Throughout his degree, Andrew continued voluntary work at the hospital one day a week and also through the holidays. "It was brilliant. I was part of a team of volunteers. I befriended several clients and I had regular supervision with the consultant. Volunteers in such work are a supplement not a substitute but you felt very useful; you felt you were contributing. The one thing volunteers have is time."

For his final year project, Andrew researched mild cognitive impairment which would have been impossible but for his voluntary role. And he presented his research at the hospital.

He graduated in July and was the winning candidate for an assistant clinical psychology post at the hospital beginning in September. "Without voluntary work," says Andrew, "I would not have known about the job and I certainly wouldn't have got it. Clinical psychology is a very competitive field and it will take many more years to get there. But without voluntary work and the experience it gave me, I would never even have got on the first step."