Anna Elliott

I started work with the Open University as a Staff Tutor in the Social Work Team in Wales in Sept 2022 . 

My professional background is in Youth Offending, Child Care Social Work and Professional Development and Leadership . 

I have worked in the University Sector since 2017 

I have a BA Social Science London Met 1988

Dip HE in Social Work Exeter University 1991

Practice Teacher Award Chichester University 1998

PGDiploma in Management in Public Sector Partnerships Office for Public Management  2002 

A Diploma in Teaching in the Life Long Learning Sector Yeovil College 2013 

MSc Professional Development 2017

PG Teaching Certificate UWE 2020 

My current role is an Academic Role with cluster management responsibility for K123 Introduction to Social Work and the year 3 optional module KE322 Youth and Family . We are a small team in Wales and are all involved in a variety of ways across the whole programme . Social Work in Wales is delivered in Partnership with our Local Authorities and some Voluntary Sector organisations who all sponser students to undertake the BSc Social Work. A core requirement of the Social Work programme is to work in partnership both with our sponsering LAs but also with Service Users and Carers. This is supported by the Social Services and Wellbeing Act Wales (2016) . Working with and developing our Service User and Carer group is one of my key roles in the team and I am very passionate about their meaningful involvement in all aspects of our programme . I am also reaching out and working with Universities across Wales to develop coproduction initiatives for use in Social Work programmes across Wales.  

We are currently involved as a group in coproduction in the re write of our second and third year Social Work Practice modules. 

I worked on coproducing resources with a colleague Sue Walton both when working at Somerset County Council and at the University of the West of England where along with young people in care we developed annimations for use in training on young peoples views on social work supervision and also on the importance of students seeking feedback from service users 

One of my other areas of interest personally and professionally is Health and Wellbeing. My Masters focused on Recruitment and Retention of Social Workers in Somerset where I undertook a research Project on how Mindful Leadership supports the retention of social workers. 

I worked with Mindfulness UK on developng and delivering this project and was invited to speak at afew conferences. 

I am a qualified Yoga Teacher with the British Wheel of Yoga and a qualified Mindfulness Instuctor . 

My other great passion is the Environment and my committment to do everything I can to protect and conserve our environment.   

I qualified and have delivered Forest School training. Undertaken a Permaculture course and worked voluntarily both in New Zealand and in Somerset on raising environmental awareness through community events. 

Since working at the Open University I have studied a Microcredentials course on Building Sustainability in your Organisation and Carbon Literacy. Working in Wales the legislation on Wellbeing of Future Generations underpins the responsibility for all organisations to consider how what they do impacts on future generations. 

My mission is to link with others across the University Sector to integrate the UN Sustainable Development Goals (STGs) into our teaching programmes starting with involvement in Module re writes of second and third year Social Work practice modules .  

I have advised a colleague on building sustainability into the Masters in Educational Leadership and Management  and am working with colleagues from STEM on building the STGs into assessment in Physics modules.  

I would like to further engage with students , our partners and service users and carers on how to integrate sustainability in what we do to meet the OUs committment to sustainability.