The moment I realised... being a social worker was for me

I am currently a social work master student. I want to be a social worker because I think basically society is unfair. Not everybody has the same opportunities, or chances, or abilities.

And even when they do, when they have everything, sometimes the difficulties of life hit in a way that they can't manage on their own or with the family, friends, in-laws, institutional support they have.

That's really where social work comes in, to help people to either find what they want and help themselves, or to help them access the services or other supports they need to be able to get through that particular life situation. 

Or maybe it is to make changes to the environment that they're in with other people or institutions, so that they can be supported through that period of their life, or for the rest of their life if needs be.

I became an adopter. I have two wonderful boys. I've had them for six and a half years now. In the process of becoming an adopter, I had a fantastic social worker, who really inspired me. The reason she inspired me was because of the way she got myself and my partner to look into ourselves, to look for difficult experiences from our past and really helped us to draw the insight out of those experiences. She then added muscle and meat to those by attaching theories to them that helped give us insight into how our experiences, especially of loss, would be really helpful to our future children, who will have suffered loss, because all adopted children at least have lost their first parents, apart from anything else that may have happened to them.

It was that, in that thinking process, at that moment, I realised I could potentially have that power to do something like that for other people. To protect, to help, and to draw insight. And that was the moment I realised that I wanted to be a social worker.