Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone who has inspired you in your career. It is part of Community Care’s ongoing Choose Social Work campaign, which aims to champion the brilliant work social workers do every day and inspire the next generation of practitioners.
In this entry, youth justice case manager Kezia Robinson celebrates children's social worker Rosie, whom she refers to as the 'Beyonce' of her service.
Rosie is described as a practitioner who tirelessly explores every avenue to support a child, drawing upon her cross-agency contacts, creativity and affinity for storytelling.
Rosie always goes above and beyond for every child.
She works with the most high-risk children, who are facing exploitation and hugely complex circumstances. She will always be the loudest voice in the room if she thinks services aren't doing enough to support a child, and will tirelessly contact whoever it takes to address that.
'She exhausts every possible option'
I have worked with her on a case where a child needed to gain care leaver status, which they had been wrongly denied.
She reached out to family solicitors all over the country, contacted the ombudsman and helped the young person fill in subject access requests. She did everything she could. The young person did not get the status, unfortunately, but Rosie exhausted every possible option and avenue to help them.
She does this for every young person I've ever seen her work with. She is always with her bag in hand, running between appointments, her phone ringing constantly.
Using creative avenues to bond with children
As a social worker, she also finds innovative ways to communicate with children.
To help one child, she once told a story about two frogs who fell into milk. One drowned, but the other kept swimming, turning the milk into butter. She used AI to produce an image of the scenario - how creative!
She never fails to provide the most incredible support to children in our city.
I joke she is the Beyoncé of the youth justice service, because she really is that brilliant!
How to nominate a colleague
Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock
You can nominate anyone who has inspired you in your career – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.
Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form. This could be with a letter or a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.
*Despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry.* If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com
