ABSTRACT

Like so many people who are attracted to a career in social work, I came to the profession in a roundabout way. I do remember, even though it was some time ago (in the mid-1970s), that I wanted

to work in the public sector when I completed my undergraduate studies in philosophy and politics. In 1978, I had to make a decision whether to accept a place on a postgraduate diploma course that would eventually lead to a Master’s in Social Work, or study for a Ph.D. Life as a student seemed so much easier then than it is today. Grants and subsidies were provided by the state for postgraduate study in the UK, and so, looking back, I feel very fortunate, and in some ways privileged, to have had these choices. I decided on the Ph.D. option and spent three full-time, and a number of part-time, years of study to complete my thesis. My Ph.D. focused on the concept of violence, as interpreted by a number of important late nineteenth-and twentieth-century political theorists. I have to say that my studies tended to drift along in a way that would not be allowed today in universities; Ph.D. students who may be reading this chapter will know what I am talking about, because there is now much greater pressure on students to complete their Ph.D.s in three or four years. I wanted to do something more pragmatic at the same time as my studies, something to do with ‘the real world’. I therefore became involved in voluntary work with older people, and this experience helped me when I applied for my first full-time job as a social work assistant in the field of the psychiatry of old age, and later when I became a mental health social worker in Belfast.