Mark is a newly qualified Social Worker with a locality team in Rotherham. He told us about swapping education for social work, and how the social work degree apprenticeship programme opened the door to a career in the profession.

Mark’s career has been defined by work with children and young people. He started out as a teaching assistant specialising in working with young people with autism, before becoming a teacher. After taking some time out of teaching, Mark decided to switch to children’s social care. This decision led to roles in family support, as well as managing a children’s centre.

“I’ve always had co-working relationships with social workers, so that was always a job I was interested in. I was never academic at school, I left as soon as I possibly could do! So I thought social work was something I would never get the opportunity to do, because I didn’t have the academic background or the funding to go to uni.”

When Rotherham’s Edge of Care service launched in 2017, Mark took up a role as a Senior Parenting Lead. While working there, the first degree apprenticeship places became available, and his range of experience made him an ideal candidate. A big factor in his decision to go for it was the support and encouragement of managers and colleagues:

“My manager at the time sort of pushed the form over to me and said “I’ve half written your application, if you want to finish the other half?” and about five other people emailed me and said “Please tell me you’ve applied!”. It was a bit of a light bulb moment for me, and I thought I must be good at what I do if all these people are telling me to go for it.”

This made Mark one of the first people to complete the degree apprenticeship in Rotherham. While it was a bit of a step into the unknown, the overall experience was a positive one:

“We were kind of the flagship for it, which was fun, but challenging. Obviously we were the first to do it, so we had to work out how we balanced doing a degree with working a full-time job! There was a lot of learning that came out of that, and it’s been really successful in Rotherham, we’re on the fourth intake of people now.”

Mark’s current role in Rotherham is with a Locality Team, which brings a lot of variety, as well as the unpredictability that comes with any frontline social work role. Typically the team will always try to allocate cases to play to individual practitioners’ strengths, which is something Mark particularly appreciates:

“I have a knack with teenage boys who are challenging and maybe on the wrong side of the law every now and then. I’m really good at getting them on board and helping them calm down a bit. So my current caseload has a lot of that kind of case, which I absolutely love.”

Locality team work tends to be longer-term, so there are opportunities to incrementally create positive change. For Mark, the most rewarding part of working with young people tends to be the moments when they demonstrate the trust he has worked to build.

“Working with challenging teenagers, the reward for me is that first phone call, where they call you for help rather than you having to call them. I know I’ve done something right when you get that unprompted contact.”

Although locality work currently seems to suit Mark, there are some other specialisms which might interest him in the future, such as youth justice or practice development roles. Regardless, he is keen to pursue a career within Rotherham:

“I don’t know what it is about Rotherham, but I can’t see myself leaving anytime soon. I know the trajectory Rotherham is on, and I know it’s a good one. I can see that they’re actually supportive of staff, and the opportunities they’ve given me to progress my career are not something you’ll get in every local authority.”

As someone who has found a real niche in social work with Rotherham, this is why children’s social work matters to Mark:

“It matters because we give children a voice. For me that’s what it’s all about, supporting and empowering the young people. The next chapters of their life are not written yet. For me what a good social worker does is to support young people to write the next chapter of their life, not to write it for them. You have to put the child at the heart of everything you do.”