Maryanne – Assistant Social Worker

Maryanne has been involved with CRS since 1998 in a variety of roles. Starting as a volunteer helping clients get to ESOL classes, Maryanne went on to become an Assistant Social Worker,  before expanding her skill set at CPIT and having her own social work cases after 15 years of working. Maryanne has since gone on to become involved with the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) team.

“I’ve always said it’s my dream job. It’s still my dream job, nearly 24 years later.”

While Maryanne was volunteering, it became clear there was a gap in the work of CRS. Social workers would go to see clients and their more pressing work would take a back seat if a client needed help with smaller tasks, such as filling out forms or getting to appointments. From this need came Maryanne’s position as Assistant Social Worker.

Highlights for Maryanne include the rewards of seeing clients gain confidence. “You have this privilege of getting to know the families. You go through their journey, but you learn from them as well. To see that their confidence is built up and those things that have always been there, they just get highlighted even more as their confidence builds up. My experience comes from the clients, what they’ve told me, what I’ve learned from them, what I’ve reflected on as a worker.”

“We’re just passionate about what we do.” Maryanne says. “It’s a really good place to work. It’s grown so much from when I first started. We had maybe four bilingual workers. We grew out of that two-roomed office and one shared phone, to where we are now. We never knew from one year to the next whether we’d be working the next year.”