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I’m Tracy Townsend and I’ve just done the postqualifying award for children and
families. I’m Sue Best and I’ve completed the same course, the specialist award in social
work, and I’m Teresa Bufton and I attended the same course as my fellow colleagues. Well
I did my DipSW in social work at Birmingham University in 2002-2004 and the quality of
the sessions and lectures built me up to be who I am now and you know, returning to Birmingham
in 2010, you know, the same quality of lecturing, the support’s there, it’s a good campus,
there’s not many things missing. And for me, I was very fortunate that my Local Authority,
Worcestershire County Council, actually supported me to come and study at Birmingham University
and, as Tracy has said, it’s been a really good course. The quality of the teaching,
the range of content and also other agencies that have come in as part of the course, have
really helped with my skill base back at work. And I agree with what both of my colleagues
have said. We have attended the course together and it’s been a really valuable course and
great content and lots of support. Having eight years post qualifying coming to do the
post qualifying award with Birmingham, I think that has taught me and enhanced my learning
to go on up to the management positions and I’ve just got promoted to an acting manager
at the moment. For me, I qualified in 2007 as a social worker and having completed this
course I’m now in a position where I am a consultant social worker, but we’re going
through a restructure actually which is exciting and the next post that I’ll be applying
for is an advanced social work practitioner. And I qualified in 1999 so coming back to
a course many years later has really helped me to reflect on my practice to date and build
on those skills and develop them more in practice so that I can support students and newly qualified
social workers in the future.