ABSTRACT
The above is an extract from a poem written by Bee Harries, a service user consultant and mentor. When she and I were devising the MA in advanced social work – practice education we explored this metaphor to represent the qualities we wished to embody in the programme. We hoped it would provide emotional, intellectual and practical nourishment for the participants, recognising that for some this had not always been available in their workplaces or in previous experiences of education. We saw the vine as representing their growth and development as professional leaders, the branches the different directions in which this could take and the fruit as its outcomes for service users, social workers and others. I drew the intertwining branches of a vine hung with purple fruit to illustrate pathways
through the programme and how the different modules could contribute to participants’ development in various professional leadership activities and roles. After Bee’s untimely death, I used this poem and picture in a session celebrating her life, which sought to help participants identify their own sources of nourishment and strength and imagine new professional ambitions for themselves and their social work leadership.
