When Yatta started working for us as a sessional, she didn’t realise how much working for us would impact on her future work as a social worker.

Yatta applied to be a sessional worker in our residential family assessment centres in 2014 when she was in her final year at University studying to be a social worker. After she qualified, she decided to apply to work with us as a family assessment practitioner. We were lucky to have her on our team.

Last year she decided to go and experience life as a social worker in a London Local Authority. Yatta still does some work with us supporting families who have left our centres.

She is passionate about the work we do here and how it has helped her be a better social worker. She thinks all social workers should come and experience how we work at St Michael’s.

You can watch her here on our YouTube channel explaining why she chose to do sessional work and what impact it had on her career.

If you are thinking about becoming a sessional worker or are a social work student she also has some brilliant advice.

What made her want to be a sessional worker? 

What impact has working at St Michael’s had on her career? 

What would she say to someone thinking about becoming a sessional worker? 

Final bit of advice for student social workers and social workers…

Here are a couple of shorter clips from her interview 

‘You learn to survive in crisis…”

“You are seeing the families raw”

“Building relationships with families”

We employ sessional workers to cover any staff shortages or when people need to go on holiday. As a charity, it is much cheaper for us to employ our own workers this way rather than relying on agency staff, which is very expensive.