So, you don’t need a passport to go from England to Scotland, but that is not the point! Don’t you just love social work for all the variety that it offers? 

There are so many different roles in so many incredible organizations. If you have the capacity of a newt, as far as work sustainability goes, you could not have a more perfect profession.

My established time in a job has always been two years or less, and the fact that social work is happening all over the world means I can pursue job offers anywhere. When I moved from England to the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides of Scotland, who would have thought a city girl could hack it in the Scottish outback? It was such a picturesque place, and the team of three that I joined had marvelous routines like coffee at eleven o’clock and tea at three. My clients were sometimes so far away that I could only see two in a day. And with the Scottish legislation, it could have been anything—a meeting with the Proculator Fiscal, a court report, or a mentally ill patient detained in the police station. It was a serendipitous place to work.

And it was that experience that convinced me it would be wonderful to work in Eire, the Emerald Isle. Working in Ireland brought a whole new set of challenges, not least the fact that in the early nineties they were only at the start of implementing any social work legislation, and all the policies and procedures were in their infancy. But what a marvelous place to live, and what a wonderful job to get into the community and get to know the people!

I continue to use my job as a passport to new adventures. I can’t add much more, as I have just applied for a job in Gibraltar!