Teaching Partnership Celebration Event & Awards Ceremony Event – Dec 2022
Thank you to everyone who attended the Teaching Partnership’s annual Celebration Event & Awards Ceremony on 7th December. We hope you found it a positive end to the year and enjoyed having a reflective space to feel proud of the social work profession and all the great work you do every day for children, families and vulnerable adults!
We had a warm welcome from Dawn Secker, Interim Assistant Director Adult Social Care at the Royal Borough of Kingston, who reminisced about her involvement in the early days of the Social Work Teaching Partnership, the exciting ideas everyone had and the aspirations of what we could achieve by coming together. Dawn spoke fondly of seeing the Partnership go from strength to strength and reflected on some of its key achievements, including the continuing professional development provision, the rollout of trauma informed practice training and the independent clinical supervision offer for new social workers, as well as the importance of bringing professionals from different areas of practice together.
Following this, we heard from two individuals from the Partnership who each spoke about their journey in social work. Dermot Brady, Kingston University, who is nearing the end of his career and starting to think about retirement (!), and Verity Marklew, Wandsworth Children, who is just in the beginnings of her career, having recently completed her Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE).
Dermot and Verity both spoke about how they found themselves drawn to social work as a career. Dermot reflected on his colourful career journey (if you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Dermot, you will know that this was littered with funny anecdotes). He was even able to embarrass his boss, Professor Wilson Muleya, Head of Social Work Department at Kingston University, with the story of how they first met! It was inspiring to hear of Dermot’s passion projects, including the Caring Dads programme and his work with perpetrators of Domestic Violence, as well as his contributions to Practice Education at Kingston University. More recently, Dermot has been involved in the development and delivery of the Social Work Apprenticeship at Kingston University (for which he won an award as part of the later Awards Ceremony!).
Verity gave a very open and honest account of how she found social work, having originally studied to be an artist, before settling on Social Work as a career after spending some time working in a school. Verity also spoke about her involvement with the Teaching Partnership, which began with co-delivering a workshop for Practice Educators as a student, where she bravely shared her own lived experience of having dyslexia. After completing her studies, Verity went on to work for Wandsworth Children, completing her ASYE and then moving onto the Early Professional Development Framework through the Teaching Partnership which she is thoroughly enjoying. Verity is due to start a new role in Wandsworth in January, congratulations Verity!
This was followed by a video montage and a sing-a-long to Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move On Up’ before we closed with an Awards Ceremony and final reflections from Sharon Evans, Lead Partnership Practice Consultant. A huge well done to all the winners and special mentions as well as to everyone who was nominated. All those shortlisted, special mentions and winners will soon receive a certificate and voucher. Also a big thank you to those who took the time to make nominations and our shortlisting panels for making the final decisions. We hope seeing the joy and pride of those who received an award made it worthwhile!
You can download the Video Montage here:
Download the Awards Ceremony presentation here:
