Compass Jobs Fair

I’ll be speaking on the 19th March in Birmingham at the Compass Jobs Fair following ‘World Social Work Day’.

It’s an event which draws together so many qualified workers and others looking for new challenges in a day full of seminars, workshops, excellent conversation and advice as well as letting employers talk up the benefits of working for their particular authority or organisation.

I’ll be presenting a seminar/workshop that I hope will be a very interactive event at 2:30pm.

I’m really looking forward to the great pleasure I get in this business – receiving views, opinions and interests from colleagues old and new. I’ve blogged before about the digital frontier and the benefits of social media for those we work with. Even in the short time since that last blog so many people have come forward with their ideas and developments of their ideas of how to be involved with technology and social media (such as creating apps and developing workshops for Joint Social Work Education and Research Conference).

I’m convinced now that the way to look at this should not be from a nervous technophobic point of view but as welcoming new  ways to help people – whatever kind of software it involves, whether it’s cutting edge or blunt existing. It’s exciting to see the ways the social work imagination can improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable in our community. I really believe that the speed of change does provoke anxiety but it should be embraced.

We can’t stop the human condition of invention but we can control it, it needn’t be prohibitively expensive either.

I want to listen to social workers who are pioneers and can take the next generation of work forward in a really meaningful way without losing the moral and ethical imperatives that underline our profession.

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