People

Moving continents

In a globalised world your skills are becoming more transferable than ever, in almost every career or subject, including social work as well as childhood and youth. These skills are transferable not only across organisations, but also across borders, or even continents. Yvonne Hore, a recent OU MA graduate in Childhood and Youth, sheds some light on a career in social work policy and practice, which led her from East Anglia to the North Island of New Zealand.

On a bright, sunny, June afternoon in the centre of Milton Keynes, Yvonne joined a crowd of proud, beaming participants of yet another graduation ceremony held by The Open University. Nevertheless, in some respect she stood out, if only for a simple reason that probably no other graduate travelled longer distance than her to get there. Nearly 12 thousand miles to be precise. She is based in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, and works for the Ministry of Social Development.

When she first moved to the other side of the globe a few years ago she initially worked as a front line social worker with Child Youth and Family in order to familiarise herself with the systems, culture and standards in New Zealand. 

Working on a new policy

In August 2012 she joined the New Zealand Child Youth and Family's National Office, a section of the Ministry of Social Development, at a critical stage of preparations of the White Paper for Vulnerable Children.  It is a major government initiative aimed at providing significant advancement in child protection and seen as a milestone in ensuring that vulnerable children receive the best care and support they can get. Although the paper itself created a heated political debate, it was generally accepted that the New Zealand model of welfare, the envy of many other countries, had to advance in the area of social care.

In her job Yvonne has been focussing on enhancing services to support caregivers (foster carers) to provide high quality care.  This has involved reviewing policy and practice, strengthening social work policy and practice, developing new initiatives and identifying where services can be contracted.

What comes handy for this role is both her professional background and her education and qualifications. Initially, she had been working with Cambridgeshire County Council in their social services department. Her employer sponsored her Open University course, leading to her receiving BA in Social Work as a member of the first cohort to graduate in this field. Following her graduation, she was offered a secondment to try a number of other teams, but eventually moved into a dedicated kinship team specialising in assessment work. 

However she was already thinking about moving her career in another direction and taking full control of her options. She decided to strengthen her hand and continue the path of university education, opting again for the OU. She says: ‘I wanted the flexibility of distance learning but did not want to be tied into another sponsorship arrangement, so chose to study the MA in Childhood and Youth rather than a practice based social work MA course’.

Towards the end of her course Yvonne started thinking about working abroad. At the time a number of her colleagues were considering places like Australia and Canada.  She explains: ‘In part this was due to the nature of social work in the UK being hard hit by cuts and changes, and also wanting the adventure of going somewhere new.  I had this in mind when I chose the MA course with the Open University as I knew I could potentially finish the qualification in New Zealand if I selected UK only courses first, while I was still in the UK’.

Transferring her life and career to the furthest country on Earth was a big enough challenge, and adding an ongoing university course was initially a burden. Yvonne says: ‘I had to factor in some additional organisation for the time difference, and I had to restart one module as it had been a particularly busy time just after I had made the move.  The flexibility of working on modules meant I could take a break if needed and build the modules around me, rather than be committed to a continuous course.  I was also able to arrange to take an exam at one of the local universities in Wellington.’

A day in the life of a government researcher

The effort paid off in the end as the university course and the job for the government converged. In her work she concentrates on reviewing research and literature and writing papers recommending ways forward for social work in New Zealand. Although the subjects of her modules were different to the subjects her department deals with, yet the skills she developed in reading research and literature, and writing assignments for her degree, were similar to the ones she puts into practice now.

Yvonne is keen on creating new links between her work and university research. She has received encouragement and support from her current manager, and she is now actively looking into developing a PhD project out of some of the work she is doing. Yvonne thinks there are limited areas of in the social work which could be developed into a PhD research project in childhood and youth. However she feels that, if she was successful in identifying some research project, this may lead into a doctorate in government studies instead. She is already working on the academic aspect of her current work. She is planning to turn the literature review she has completed into a peer reviewed article for the Social Work Now journal.

 

To publish your first novel is difficult enough. To deliberately open yourself to direct comparison with Charles Dickens seems like a suicide mission to a budding writer. Not to James Benmore.

He is a graduate with a BA in Literature from OU, who last April had his first book published, entitled Dodger. It is a ‘sequel’ to Dickens, based on the character from Oliver Twist, Jack Dawkins – the Artful Dodger – who comes back from a penal colony in Australia and enters the world of other Dickens stories.

Benmore is now working on his second Dodger book. Shortly after the book launch Platform discussed with him his writing journey and profession.

What were you doing in 2006 and what was behind your decision to study A215 Creative Writing at the OU?
Back then I was working as the manager of my family's furniture retail business in Welling, Kent while studying for the OU in the evenings. It was a good job but I always regretted not getting a degree earlier. I knew I wanted to be a writer from an early age and so was looking for a way to get into it. I never would have had the confidence to start writing properly if the Open University hadn't provided me with such a great way of discovering if I would be any good at it.


What was the key benefit for you in taking the creative writing module?
Confidence, really. Up to that point my ambitions to be a writer had not been tested in any real way and there was always a chance that I wouldn't be very good at it. But the course got me writing to deadlines and I produced a number of short stories, poems and pieces of non-fiction which I was surprisingly happy with. That year I sent off one of my short stories into a competition and came second. I also received a lot of positive feedback from my fellow students which meant a lot. Looking back at that work I can see that a lot of it was pretty rough around the edges but the realisation that it didn't completely suck strengthened my resolve to pursue it further once the module was completed.

How did it inspire you to take your writing further?
Well, it gave me the bug and I knew that I wanted to take my writing to a higher level if possible. My tutor on A215, the author Tom Lee, sent me a very encouraging email after I completed the course saying that I should consider applying for a Masters next. He gave me a very decent reference which I used to get accepted into the then very new creative writing MSt course at Oxford. And this was where I came up with the idea for Dodger.

Before I studied with the OU all my attempts at writing failed because I wasn't aware enough of a literary tradition and so was sort of writing blind. But by making a study of great works of literature I was able to give my own writing some context and learn from some of the masters. Not least of all Dickens.

Tell us about the inspiration behind Dodger?
I got the idea for Dodger when I was thinking about how much I enjoy the characters of Dickens in particular and how they all seem to live their own lives off the page. I've always wished that Jack Dawkins – the Artful Dodger – had been a character that Dickens returned to throughout his work and I started to imagine how much fun it would have been if he'd started cropping up in other Dickens novels as a recurring character. This gave me the idea for the first chapter in which Dodger is caught while trying to steal a silver snuff box from Mr Pickwick and I wrote the scene as part of the Oxford writing course. The rest of the book just sort of snowballed from there.

I think the book changed quite a lot throughout the three drafts that I wrote but I always knew I wanted it to be told in the first person by Dawkins himself. I wanted his strong, unapologetic cockney dialect to provide an alternative look at the events and characters from Oliver Twist and to take the reader on a journey into his new adventures.

How was the "journey to publication" and what advice would you give to others embarking on the same?
Writing a book is one thing but getting it published is a lot tougher and requires a lot of patience. I was lucky in that I was approached by my agent after I gave a public reading from the first chapter and obviously good representation is a big step forward. But the publishing industry can be very resistant to new ideas and voices and I got a lot of rejections before I found an editor ready to take a punt.

My advice to other writers trying to get started is to do your best to get your work seen by as many people as possible. It’s important to get an agent first as publishers only take represented authors seriously as a rule and so you must make attracting a good agent your first priority. So approach them professionally, with your best work that is well-presented and that you are confident about, and hopefully you'll find someone who can get passionate about representing you. Public readings, like the one I did, are sometimes good to do if you're trying to get your work noticed and it helps to have things published in magazines and on the internet. It’s a long road to get published and it might feel as though you aren't getting anywhere. But stick with it and they can't ignore you forever.

What can you tell us about the sequel?
I'm halfway through the sequel now and it seems to be coming together pretty well. Obviously when I wrote the first one I didn't know much about the process of writing a novel but learnt as I went along. This time I feel much more experienced and I've plotted the story out in far greater detail and thought about my themes and characters a bit more deeply. Also, when I started writing book one I was essentially talking to myself. I didn't have an agent, a publisher or anything. Now I'm writing a book which I know will be published which means I'm approaching it much more professionally and producing more words a week. Hopefully the sequel will be out next year.

Posted 9 July 2013
 

John Oates is best known as an academic developmental psychologist at The Open University, but he is also an accomplished photographer and filmmaker. His photos, portraying the life of the Roma community in Eastern Hungary, will feature at this summer exhibition at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes (28 June – 8 September 2013).
 

 

John Oates said:  'My most extensive artistic work consists of a large corpus of still images from a series of systematic photographic studies in disadvantaged communities in different parts of rural Hungary, linked with the filming of two award-wining documentaries, and also with the establishment of a programme to support poor families; Biztos Kezdet (Sure Start).

 

'A selection of these images was presented in a series of ‘black box’ diptychs as part of the 2nd International Visual Methods conference exhibition at the Open University in 2011, and the films and images have been used by Amnesty International and other bodies to promote Roma rights.'
 

To find out more about the exhibition at MK Gallery called MK Calling click here.
 

Click here to watch a video about John Oates and his research.

Posted on 27 June 2013.