PROFESSOR KEITH MCLAY: We now come to our Honorary Award. These are awarded by the University in recognition of somebody who has made a very significant contribution in their field and I have great pleasure in inviting Professor Warren Manning, Provost Innovation & Research, to give the commendation for the conferment of an Honorary Master of the University to Janet Foulds. Professor Manning.
PROFFESOR WARREN MANNING: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, honoured guests, graduands of 2023 and all our guests here today, it gives me great pleasure to present Janet Foulds for the Award of Honorary Master of the University.
Janet is a social worker, practice manager and a visiting Professional Fellow in Social Work at the University. She's devoted almost 50 years of her career to the practice of social work in the region. She was instrumental in setting up Derby City Council's Child Sexual Abuse Unit which she managed for many years.
Born and raised locally, Janet attended Spondon Park Grammar School and was the first in her family to attend University. She achieved the Certificate of Qualification in Social Work and a Diploma in Social Work from Sheffield City Polytechnic in 1979 and began her career as a social worker with Derbyshire County Council
As a member of the Derbyshire Crisis Response team, Janet was a social work responder at the Kegworth Air Crash and the Hillsborough Football Stadium disasters in 1989. Both chaotic and devastating incidents took place in the full glare of the media and involved many tragic cases of trauma and bereavement.
Janet joined the City Council's Child Sexual Abuse Unit in 1994 and became the manager of the unit a couple of years later. She became an expert in this field and was consulted across the UK and beyond as the notion of child sexual abuse became more recognised in society.
She has been a longstanding member of the British Association of Social Workers. She was appointed UK Deputy Chair in 2002 and UK Chair in 2003. She also chaired the Standards and Ethics Committee in 2004. These appointments provided valuable experience in taking practice issues to government and led to many requests for radio and television interviews. Throughout her career she has been called upon to present expert evidence to national reviews, select committees and high-profile court cases.
In 2011, Janet won the Social Worker of the Year Award for Innovative Practice in recognition of her role in identifying the need for a child sexual abuse service in Derby and her reputation as 'a fantastic advocate for the social work profession.'
Janet is now semi-retired after completing 49 years of service. Throughout her career, she remained steadfast in her advocacy for human rights, social justice and the protection of children and young people. She continues to support the social work profession and advises courts as an expert witness, and she shares her valuable experiences, knowledge and ethics with students and practitioners here in Derby and across the East Midlands.
Throughout Janet's career, she has valued the support of family, friends and social work colleagues. It is fitting that she's celebrating her achievements here today with a few of those close friends and colleagues, Cheryl, Pauline, Tonimarie, Maris, Maria and Bruce.
Chancellor, in recognition of her significant career in social work and her support for the University, we are delighted to award Janet Foulds the Honorary Degree of Master of the University.
JANET FOULDS: Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, honoured guests, graduands of 2023 and all of our guests here today. I am deeply honoured and delighted to receive this award and consider it a real privilege to be acknowledged by the University of Derby in this way.
As this award is in recognition of my social work career I would just like to say a few words about that. At the start of my working life I had no idea what I wanted to do. As many people in Derby did in those days I went to work at Rolls-Royce as a computer clerk. Rolls-Royce was a very good employer but I soon realised that computers were not speaking back to me. So I decided to take a job at Kingsway Hospital in Derby as an occupational therapy assistant. I became proficient at making teddy bears, running keep-fit sessions for patients, and undertaking some group therapy.
Whilst working there, a student social worker on placement, Frank Conway, asked if I had ever considered social work as a profession. I considered it, applied for a job with Derbyshire County Council and that's how my career in social work began.
Social work brings us into contact with the very best of human nature and unfortunately sometimes the very worst. It's not always the easiest job and social workers are often more likely to be the target of blame rather than given awards, so today is a very special day for me.
So working closely with some of the most vulnerable people in society means that we experience some of the highs and the lows as a result. I can reflect on some of the joys, the sorrows and some rather interesting challenges.
The joys have been working with teams of wonderful, committed and very talented people, some of whom are here today. Helping children and families to recover from the trauma of abuse. Seeing children in care thrive with foster parents and adoptive parents and knowing that we're making a positive difference.
Sorrows, well working closely with people through sad and distressing personal times, hearing children's accounts of abuse, you don't forget about that, and witnessing and being involved in large-scale disasters such as at the Kegworth and Hillsborough tragedies.
Challenges, well dog packs in Chaddesden, actually a menace for social workers, and I can tell you no one prepared us for this in our training. How to deal with dogs, piranha fish in a tank under the stairs, that was during a home visit, true. Giving evidence in court in a court case in Australia, no, the Council didn't pay my fare to get there, so evidence was given over the phone in the early hours of the morning and I just had to close my eyes and imagine hot sunny beaches as I spoke to the judge from a cold wet and dark Derby.
Challenge as a manager when a swarm of bees decided that our office was a good place to stay and invited their friends, thousands of them, the swarm descended, an urgent health and safety call advised me that if we did not get the bees out of the roof space quickly the ceiling might fall in on the staff, oh dear, Keep Calm and Carry On. Always varied. A day in the life of this social worker could see me in the morning spending time in the sandpit with puppets while listening to a child, later providing case supervision for team members and in the afternoon attending a case conference, and on return to base trying to deal with the perennial problem of a faulty heating system. This happened on such a regular basis that when I left my last post at the unit I was presented with a plumbing heating manual and a spanner!
So versatility is the key. I should have listened more to my father who was a pipe fitter by trade. Although most of my practice has been in Derby, my horizons were broadened by my work with BASW, the British Association of Social Workers, saw me involved in events and activities across the four countries of the UK and being involved in a national level brought many requests for radio and television interviews which was a baptism of fire. Most social workers tried to avoid the media and there I was giving interviews.
I recall one phone in when Mr Angry from Purley came on to give me the benefit of his advice about dealing with sex offenders. It's unrepeatable here I'm afraid. On another occasion I received a request for a radio interview about dangerous dogs, what I wondered did I know about dangerous dogs, maybe the experience in Chaddesden had taught me more than I realised! Perhaps the scariest experience of all for me was facing Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, that tested my courage to the limit and led to a better understanding of the phrase 'feel the fear and do it anyway'. I'm glad to say that I survived that encounter.
So, to you graduating today, time to celebrate your success. Congratulations to you all and well done, you've worked hard to get to this stage, can be justly proud of your achievements. As you embark on your careers there will be many challenges and rewards and I can assure you that your skills will be in great demand. Referrals to Health and Social Care are rising to a level not previously seen, so you won't be out of work I'm sure.
I urge you all to take pride in the work that you do and use your voice to speak out on behalf of the people who use services and on behalf of your respective professions. Put your knowledge and skills to good effect and remember why you came into the work. Use your personal qualities to build trust in the professional relationships that you make. Working together well is the best professional practice but it needs investment, it is you the person who will make a difference.
One example springs to mind of good working together for me, I had a phone call one day from a police officer who I knew quite well and she said, "Janet, there's been a murder, can you bring your toys?" We, the police officer and the social worker, working together to interview a child witness 5-year-old.
So, grateful thanks for listening to me and for recognising my achievements today. I am proud to call myself a social worker. In accepting this generous award I would like to pay tribute to the excellent and life-changing work being done every day by social workers and health professionals in this county and beyond. I would also like to thank my lovely family, my friends, my social work colleagues, my former team at Leopold Street and members of my professional association, BASW, who have supported and encouraged me throughout my career. Also to my bell-ringing friends who've celebrated this award with me, I owe them all so much.
Finally, I'd like to thank colleagues from the University of Derby for the excellent partnership we enjoy and which enables us to bring research and practice experience together in teaching and seminars for the benefit of students and practitioners across the region. I hope those of you who are graduating as social workers will feel proud to be social workers and I hope you'll be as inspired by the work as I have been.