End of summer, preparing for final year.

I can’t quite believe my 2 month summer has come to an end. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d fill it but in the end it was ridiculously busy. I spent a bit of time back at the WhoCares Trust charity, I spent 2 weeks and 3 Sundays, on an incredible camp, mentoring 16 year olds. This has been my favourite bit of the summer and I’m sad to be saying goodbye to them this weekend. I’ve been back to adland to freelance. And I’ve completed my training to be a Prince’s Trust mentor next year. I’ve also spent a bit of time thinking about and reading up on my dissertation topic – which as it stands, is about the lack of emotional support/the role of the support network for care leavers…and am coming to the end of organising my big annual charity event which takes place next weekend. So…. This week I went to have a meet and greet at my new placement team, a local authority Children in Care team. Generally, I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity. This was my top choice for a placement team, and the area of foster care is one of the main ones that inspired me to move into social work, within a broader passion for social justice. I’m also pretty nervous. It’s going to be an extremely different environment from the last placement. In my first placement, the first 6 weeks were an induction period where we held no cases, and even when that changed, it grew slowly to 3 clients, all of whom lived in the setting and so were also ‘managed’ by all the staff there. This time, I have already been told 3 ‘cases’ allocated to me, before I’ve even begun. But there sounds like a heap of learning opportunities, and basically I just hope I’m up to the job. I was thinking a bit about the role – and how on the one hand, you’re trying to get your portfolio done for uni, and hit your key roles etc, and on the other hand you’re trying to impress your practice educator and do a good job. And I think its quite easy to forget, as a student, the third area – in this case, to do a great job for the children I’ll be working with, the whole reason we all chose this career. Whilst that may sound like I’m not doing it for the right reasons or ridiculous that I would even forget this – I don’t think that’s the case, I just think it’s easy to become bogged down in the targets you are being set and the task at hand, i.e to pass the MA! And so, to remind me of that constantly, I stuck on the wall a fantastic double page spread from the WhoCares magazine, entitled ‘social workers read this’ written by young people, with quotes as to what makes a good and bad social worker. Tomorrow comes an opportunity to recap on some of the law, ready for my first week next week. Here’s to a challenging but hopefully fantastic final year, and the chance to reinforce and reward my decision to change career! P.s If anyone has any idea how to sort the formatting in Blogger and make the paragraphs that I can see when i write the post, actually appear when i post it, i'd love to know!!