Jennifer has been a qualified social worker for 25 years, graduating from Glasgow University in 1999 with a Masters in Social Work. She brings a wide operational and strategic experience to the post, drawn from her career in local authority and HSCPs, working in Children, Adult, Older People, and specialist Social Work teams, and through her national leadership role in Social Work Scotland as the Head of Policy and Workforce. Prior to moving to Scotland, she worked in America in multisystemic children and family teams, learning disability residential homes, and in mental health teams, while also volunteering for Samaritans and Women’s Aid organisations.
She has held roles in Children and Families and Adult social work teams carrying forward statutory and early intervention roles and has lead across local and national teams on operational and strategic areas. She has practice experience supporting complex transitions, learning disability, mental health, dementia, care home and care at home reviews, public protection, including ASP, MAPPA and CP. She has held strategic responsibilities for developing professional assurance and performance frameworks, strategic planning, including public protection, statutory interventions, and risk, and professional governance, ensuring collaboration and partnership working is embedded in approaches. Nationally Jennifer has provided social work professional input into developments around the social work and social care workforce, learning and development, and leadership.
Jennifer is passionate about relationship-based practice in social work and social care and the impact this can have on delivering rights-based interventions and support. She believes social work and social care can be positive and transformative experiences for people and is committed to reflecting the profession’s core values, ethics and rights-based approach in her interactions with others.