Joanne, garde d’enfant à Kidlington

After obtaining my Matriculation Certificate, I enrolled for the course of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Malta. During my years of study, I have gained experience related to children through summer school and supervised access visits, after which I started my career as a social worker with perpetrators of domestic violence and then with people suffering from mental health difficulties. I was also interested in other settings and client groups, and thus have done some overtime hours at Mater Dei Hospital.

My experience as a summer school teacher was very positive. I was always enthusiastic and full of energy when I was around children, and used to find pleasure in preparing a variety of activities through which I could monitor the progress in skills obtained. After this experience I decided to work in supervised access visits. This position helped me to become more responsible and mature, and thus was trusted with complicated cases. I felt gratified that I could build trusting relationships with both the children and the parents. Being aware of some past experiences of these children, I always ensured to give priority to the children's best interest to avoid having these children going through further abuse. Throughout these experiences I realized how calm and responsible I am when being around children.

At the beginning of my career as a social worker I was assigned to work at the Men's services. Although this was a short period of time, it helped me to improve my interviewing and confrontation skills, as well as my assertiveness. I must admit that this was a challenging period since the client group consisted mostly of middle-aged men. I was young and green, just out of university, but because of proper and experienced guidance and supervision, I have always managed to be professional in my job.

My next assignment was to assist service users with mental health difficulties who were living in the community. I consider myself as being quite an adaptable person and a quick learner. So in a very short time I was able to work efficiently and unaided in my new role. As my reference letters indicate, I have always been effective and efficient in my work. My colleagues consider me to be a very helpful, trustful and reliable person. My experience in mental health services trained me to become extremely effective in dealing with crisis situations. Since these situations require a good amount of flexibility, I have mastered the skill to become malleable with schedules.

I have good report writing skills and am able to keep to deadlines. My experience in working in a multidisciplinary team is also an asset and I consider myself as being a reliable team player. Furthermore, my experience at Mater Dei Hospital emphasizes my enthusiasm to continue learning about different social work settings and interventions. Through this experience I have become more able to work in a fast-paced environment while being as flexible as possible to ensure that interventions are carried out in a short period.

I am seeking for a job in child care since am awaiting for my HCPC registration application to be processed.