“What we experience ultimately shapes who we become. When we unpack our experiences, we access true learning, true potential, and true vision, that shapes the world we create.”
About New Generation Social Work
New Generation Social Work commits to the idea – how do social workers create a sense of learning and meaning throughout their journeys? And over time, how do social workers reach and develop a sense of clarity about their own ideas, experiences and judgement?
Join us, on a creative and exciting journey where we endeavour to discover so much more about ourselves as professionals, in the hope that together we can build on the intrinsic and raw internal resource – we all share – coined as passion.
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About Ash
Hello! My name’s Ash. I am a professional who has worked with children since the age of eighteen ranging from residential care, working with children and adults with learning disabilities, to working in education, management as well as front line statutory practice. I qualified as a social worker in 2017 and along the way my experiences and observations called towards many questions I felt just needed to be deep dived into. I am fascinated about professional experiences, and how their journeys shape their vision and views.
In social work, we hear many debates. Were quite an opinionated bunch which is great. Some of us have deep and technical understanding of matters, whilst others hold superficial ideas and thought that require unpicking. Nonetheless, over the years, I’ve realised that opinions and views help identify what’s actually important to people. Since I sat in the classroom at university, and right up to front line practice, I noticed students and professionals quarrel about complex issues. For example, the differences between safeguarding and child protection, bureaucracy, the role of social work shifting from relational to administrative practice. Oh, my personal favourite – the point of academia in practice? What’s been interesting to observe is that most of us hold personal views, but were not quite sure what the actual answers are. I sure don’t! But that’s what makes it all exciting. I don’t think there are absolute answers. Social Work is a complex profession.
So… my ideas are drawn from the quarrelling. In my own search for meaning (and maybe answers), I take off on a journey that allows me to capture professional imaginations in search of understanding what their quest for meaning and learning is and has been all about. My perspective, however is different. Usually podcasts and discussions of the like are affiliated with people of status and influence. I believe in the status of those on the ground which is where the focus of dialogue for this project lies.
