When Pat says of Hellin "She's always been so independent" what she means is she's always want things her own way - which I think we can agree on. Amen to that, Lillian!
When Tom says of Helen 'She's so kind!' I suspect we are expected to find that a very revealing remark, because as so many have already said, she isn't notably kind. She was very unkind indeed to Hayley after John died and she upset Clarrie at around the same time by promoting Tracy Horrobin. One of Helen's many problems has always been that she is a very poor judge of character. Tracy sucked up to Helen, who was obviously very low after John's death and Pat's depression, and Helen couldn't see through that.
It was obvious from very early on in her time with Greg that she had not picked an easy man to spend her life with, but she is always too proud to admit that she's made a mistake, so she ploughed on with that relationship well past the point when common sense would have suggested drawing back, and got very badly hurt when he sank into depression, got nasty with her (was he violent? can't now remember), she left him and he killed himself.
Of course, we saw then, as we've seen so many times since, that she just can't cope with criticism or even just someone drawing attention to a less than desirable personality trait in her chosen partner. Her response to that has always been to draw even closer to the man concerned.
After Greg there was Leon, the obnoxiously supersmooth Australian barman, who IIRC more or less raped Annette - it certainly wasn't a mutual attraction between them. That happened when he and Helen were still together, I think. Helen was totally unable to see that Annette was very unhappy when she found out she was pregnant. All she (H) could seem to think was that this was wonderful news and that A could now stay in Ambridge long-term and she (H) could help to bring the baby up. She didn't give A any space at all to explain her point of view. So Annette went behind H's back to arrange the abortion and hotfooted it out of Ambridge as fast as she could.
And then we have the weird stalkery behaviour towards that journalist whose name escapes me, the heavy drinking and desperate sleeping around on a holiday she took in the Med somewhere with Kirsty, and the coup de grace - the night she insisted on driving while drunk and knocked down Mike Tucker - then somehow got Tom to take the blame because he could pass a breathalyser test and she couldn't. That wasn't kind to Tom at all. At least she did finally tell Mike the truth.
No, not getting this 'kind person' thing at all, but I suppose Tom sees what he wants to see, and in recent years that's mostly been how Helen is with Henry. She seems a lot softer with Henry than Pat ever was with her children. Maybe that's what's in Tom's mind.