This article traces the history of Servol Community Services from its founding in 1979 by Charles Jordan MBE, exploring its mission, growth, and the pressures facing modern social-care charities. It reflects on recognition, institutional memory, and the quiet sacrifices behind community work, ending with a personal appeal to honour the charity’s origins and reconnect present delivery with its founding spirit.

Contents

1. Introduction

When you speak with Charles Jordan today, his voice often drifts back to the earliest days of Servol. He has Parkinson’s, and yet in interviews and conversations he carries in his memory a vivid, almost sacred mission: he described his life’s “job” as giving all of himself to the community. His daughter accompanied him when he collected his MBE in recognition of that service in 2005 (New Year Honours). What follows is the story of how Servol came to be, how it weathered storms, where it stands now, and a gentle suggestion to those who lead it today: visit Charles Jordan, remember him in your narrative, and allow the charity’s soul to reconnect with its roots.

While public records confirm Servol’s incorporation and stated 1979 origins, the account of its earliest formation and ethos draws primarily on conversations with Charles Jordan, his family, and community oral histories: reflecting how grassroots initiatives often precede formal documentation. As with all lived histories, recollection is shaped by time, emotion, and perspective. That does not diminish its value, but it does mean this piece should be read as a reflection grounded in experience, not as a definitive institutional chronicle.

2. From Vision to Birth (1979 onward)

In 1979, in Birmingham, Charles Jordan founded what would become Servol. The context was urgent: mainstream mental-health and social services often failed to understand the cultural, social, and emotional realities of Black and minority ethnic communities. Charles recognized that effective care needed to be rooted in culture, dignity, and community, not just clinical protocols.

Charles Jordan was also a Freemason, and like many men of his generation, his commitment to service, charity, and helping others was shaped by those values. Servol was not a Masonic project, but an expression of a wider ethic of duty and care that found form in community action.

In oral histories and community accounts, early activity is sometimes associated with initiatives such as the “Pride of Jephthah” resource work, which appear to have influenced or preceded Servol’s later formalisation (that detail appears in histories of community mental-health in Birmingham). Over time, Servol became known as Servol Community Trust, delivering residential homes, supported housing, crisis & respite, outreach, and community development work, initially in Birmingham and Wandsworth (London). The original charity registration describes exactly that core service mix.

Charles Jordan served as a company secretary/director in the early years of the incorporated charity. According to Companies House records, he was appointed Secretary on 25 November 1997 (when the entity was formalised as a limited company) and later resigned from that role in December 2004.

3. Recognition, Sacrifice, Growth

In late 2005, the announcement was made: Charles Jordan would receive an MBE for services to community relations in the West Midlands. He had by then decades of labour behind him, sometimes exhausting, sometimes lonely, but always rooted in the conviction that if the system would not bend to people, people needed self-helping, community anchored institutions.

His daughter, accompanying him to the investiture, often recalls his humility: he didn’t speak of legacy, but of duty. He saw “serving the community” not as a project, but as a way of life.

Over the next decade and more, the organisation’s structure evolved:

• 25 November 1997: incorporation as a company limited by guarantee under the name Servol Community Trust
• 2 August 2011: name changed to New Servol
• 7 February 2019: name changed to Servol Community Services
• Today, it is registered as company 03470752 and charity 1125896, with its headquarters in Birmingham.

In the financial year ending 31 March 2024, Servol’s income reached over £3.33 million, primarily via government contracts, though expenditure slightly exceeded income that year.

4. Trials, Tribulations, and Heartbreak

Any institution that operates at the intersection of mental health, social care, and public funding will face storms, and Servol has been no exception.

4.1 Regulatory pressures and service ratings

Some of Servol’s care and respite sites have been subject to external inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). For example, Gillott Respite Services (Edgbaston) was rated “Requires Improvement” in 2019, with recommendations to strengthen medication management and leadership oversight. Other sites, such as School Road (Moseley), have achieved Good ratings. (These mixed results reflect improvement efforts but also the challenge of maintaining consistently high standards under pressure.)

Servol is registered under provider number 1-101653561, and its regulated activities include personal care and accommodation for persons requiring nursing or personal care.

4.2 Human and legal tension

In 2021, a case landed before an Employment Tribunal: Mr L. Kelly v Servol Community Services. The tribunal dismissed unfair dismissal and breach-of-contract claims, and other claims were withdrawn. But litigation in the charitable sector, especially in frontline services, can exact both fiscal and emotional tolls, particularly when staff retention, morale, and resource constraints are already under strain.

4.3 Funding volatility and commissioning pressure

Servol’s operating model depends heavily on local-authority contracts and NHS/mental-health commissioning. The climate in Birmingham and more broadly in UK adult social care has become more unpredictable in recent years: austerity pressures, budget cuts, rising demand, and shifting policy priorities all squeeze charities like Servol. In Birmingham itself, a municipal Section 114 notice (essentially a declaration of insolvency) in 2024–25 led to budget reworking, which inevitably impacts how much resource is available for contracted social-care providers.

Under all that, the emotional weight on leadership, on care teams, on service users is great. Mistakes can cost lives; in tight times, corners are hard to avoid; in change, continuity and institutional memory can fade.

What follows is not an audit of performance, but a reflection on memory, recognition, and continuity.

5. Today: Servol Community Services (2025)

Servol now positions itself as a national charity, supporting adults with serious mental illness in the West Midlands and London, offering 24/7 staffed supported living, residential homes, crisis/respite, step-down services, and semi-independent housing.

Its website’s “Our Story” states that Servol was “established in 1979 … to promote a better understanding among professionals and mainstream organisations … of cultural and social issues affecting the mental well-being of BME people”, an origin rooted in mission and identity.

Its published services include:

• In Birmingham:
  • Beech Tree House, Moseley (residential care)
  • Alcester Road South, Maypole (supported housing flats)
  • Summerfield Crescent & Gillott Road, Edgbaston (intermediate + crisis/respite)
  • Janet Fay House, Moseley
  • School Road, Moseley
• In London:
  • Friends House (Battersea)
  • Trinity Road (Tooting Bec)
  • Bickersteth Road
  • Thurleigh Road.

Among its projects are My Path My Journey (supporting transitions after acute care) and The Phoenix Project (helping prison leavers with mental-health support).

Its chief executive is Philip Gayle, who has worked in health, housing, and substance-use sectors for decades. The board of trustees includes Val Taylor, Anthony Howell, Robin Smith, George Branch, Laura Found, and others.

Servol is also now participating in Thrive at Work, embedding wellbeing in staff culture.

Under its current leadership, Servol continues to deliver critical services in an exceptionally difficult social-care environment: a testament to the resilience of the institution Charles helped build.

That said, one striking omission remains: despite the “Our Story” section referencing 1979 and the founding mission, there is no substantive mention of Charles Jordan’s life, sacrifice, or role, no narrative space for the man who, for many years, was Servol in spirit and in practice.

6. A Personal Plea from a Friend (via Horkan.com)

My connection to this story is intimate. I am friends with Charles Jordan’s daughter, who stood alongside him when he received his MBE, the crowning civic acknowledgement of a life spent in self-giving service. Other friends of mine received help from Servol over the years, principally at their Gillott Road and Moseley facilities. In his quieter moments, Charles speaks of Servol in the same breath as family. To him, serving the community was not a job; it was identity.

He is now living with severe Parkinson’s, and in those days, especially as the charity matured and leadership changed, he sometimes expressed a wistfulness that his name, and his sacrifices, were slipping from the narrative. He fears that new managers, new language, new branding, may unintentionally efface the human core of what he built.

I believe modern Servol can still honour that past. It would not need to rewrite its mission or diminish its capacity, rather, a simple gesture: a visit from a representative of the senior leadership; a plaque or page on the website; a recognition, a “Founders’ Day”, or a “Salute to Charles” moment at annual review. It would be small in cost, but large in moral valence.

As organisations mature and leadership changes, founders are sometimes no longer present to advocate for their own stories. Because institutions are not immortal, they survive when people remember their origins. Institutions are not immortal; they survive when people remember their origins. If Servol can reconnect its present delivery with its sacrificial past, it may strengthen not only its culture and trust, but its sense of why it exists at all.

7. References & Sources

• Servol Community Services, Our Story and published service descriptions (servolct.org.uk)
• Charity Commission records and financial filings for Servol Community Services (charity no. 1125896)
• Companies House filings for Servol Community Trust / Servol Community Services (company no. 03470752)
• Care Quality Commission inspection reports and provider registration (provider ID 1-101653561)
• Employment Tribunal judgment: Kelly v Servol Community Services (2021)
• Community histories, oral accounts, and conversations with Charles Jordan and family