It's a great pleasure, on Yorkshire Day, to be able to announce that a mother-of-two from Bradford has been named as Yorkshire Woman of the Year. Many congratulations to 51-year-old Yvonne Oliver for winning this award, which has been sponsored by the BBC and the Variety Club of Great Britain.

It is well deserved. Mrs Oliver had overcome her own addiction to alcohol only to discover that her two children had become hooked on heroin. It was a discovery which changed the radio producer's life. She realised how severely the fabric of the whole community had been affected - as do so many other parents when they come up against the devastating realities of addiction and its consequences.

Mrs Oliver decided to do something about it. She took a job as a community worker on Buttershaw then decided to use a start-up grant to single-handedly open the Ripple Drugs Service on the estate to treat the effects of drugs misuse on both the users and the wider community.

The scale of the need for such a service is made clear by the 2,000 clients now on the list of Ripple, which employs 60 workers.

Yvonne Oliver's story is a tremendously positive one for Bradford. It must also be a great encouragement to other people who might find themselves in a similar situation. With courage and determination, she says, you can do anything.

She has demonstrated that she has plenty of those qualities. For using them to help so many others, she is a truly worthy Yorkshire Woman of the Year.