Mature student Joyce Ohene-Adomako changes her career
It was after working in another profession where she did not find any fulfilment that Joyce decided to pursue another one. After discussing the matter with an educationist in her church, based on her background and previous experience, he suggested social work.
Joyce followed this up with online research and realised the availability of jobs with good salaries. She found that having a qualification could be a route to gain more experience, ultimately enabling her to work for an international organisation, so she went for it.
Supportive environment
After speaking with previous students at LSBU and realising how convenient the University's location was, Joyce decided to study at LSBU. "Social work was a new course to me and initially I found it difficult to understand the course outlines. Early on I did not ask questions since I did not want to look stupid before the class."
However, as time went on Joyce became increasingly confident. "In the second semester I started mingling and opening up at group sessions by making contributions and asking questions." Joyce credits the lecturers for creating a supportive environment which allowed her to express herself:
There is support and encouragement from both lecturers and friends. Every student is given equal opportunities to learn without any favouritism.
Helping people
Joyce has just finished her first placement, at an after-school club working with children. Her role was to observe how children interacted amongst themselves and to prevent any harm coming to them. During the role she had the opportunity of mediating in settling squabbles and advocating for better services like buying age appropriate toys for the children. "I learned to listen more to the children and to treat their concerns as serious as I would treat an adult service user."
There was one experience on placement that stands out for Joyce "For the purpose of confidentiality, we do not use their names. This service user, Child C, was about 9 years old and on a pick-up from school I noticed that she was upset with tears in her eyes." After watching the child refuse to tell her friends or the club's staff what was wrong, Joyce asked the girl. With time and care she got to the cause of the problem; the young girl's friends were not being very nice to her. Joyce gave the girl a strategy for when her friends were mean to her again. Joyce was happy that the girl had trusted her enough to share her problem and assured her of assistance anytime she needed it.