Why am I doing the course?
Within the household I grew
up in there was a constant buzz of conversations about politics, social issues
and particularly my mother’s work. Until
I was 10 she worked in a day centre for those with mental health issues, I
regularly went to work with her during school holidays and sick days (in fact
I’d fake illness to go with her!).
There are some key memories
that ignited my passion and started to form my value base. I remember being shocked at the age of 8 or
so that firemen were paid less than Bros!
When a service user from my mum’s day centre died she was the only one
at the funeral. And most significantly
the anticipation of a labour government, I remember this feeling that
everything wrong with society was suddenly going to be righted over night.
The realisation that it wasn’t
hasn’t and could never be hit hard and I felt I needed to do something (I’m an
activist according to Honey and Mumford!) so I went off to work for my local
authority in a children and families team.
I was very happy holding cases and facilitating contact however I saw a
lot of bad practice and found my opinion wasn’t as valued as a social worker’s. I also found myself getting more and more
frustrated as I could see the bigger picture and the injustice on a larger
scale. After a lot of deliberation and
tentative enquiries about other professions I decided that the social work degree
was for me – some days I’m excited about going out and starting the next part
of the journey, other days (like today!) I feel that being a social worker
means being in a constant state of dissonance!
A couple of interesting
links:
New Labour – ten years on:
http://www.listeningtowords.com/lecture.php?id=1380
Professional Dissonance:
http://www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/profile.asp?guid=e473c464-3d3b-4a58-9465-b6361ed7783c