The life and work of Patricia Brenninkmeyer.
Episode 2: LIFE AS A SOCIAL WORKER.
The seeds of Patricia’s passion to work in a children’s home were sown as she sat by the windowsill in Perugia, gazing upon Umbria. It was at this moment that she decided she would choose the vocation of residential social work that would involve immersion in a children’s home. Indeed luck was on her side when she wrote to a friend of her mother in Belgium who ran a children’s home requesting a months work experience in order to get a feel of the vocation. In fact Patricia somewhat felt the urge to skip her postgraduates degree at St. Andrews that her parents wished for her. Regardless, she went on to pursue her degree at St Andrews hence putting off her social work training for 4 years.
Upon finishing her degree, Patricia went on to do a two-year diploma in applied social studies at Liverpool University in 1961. courtesy of this course,Patricia was sent off to the poorest areas in Liverpool where she was yet again faced with the harsh realities of life as those she was helping lived lives totally different from that she was accustomed to. “I had loads of sympathy for people and plenty of common sense but boy, did i lack experience!.” she best described her situation in Liverpool. The true nature of difficulties of fieldwork made their keen impact felt. She worried that there was little she could do to improve these people’s lives. Patricia later managed to secure a work placement with immigrants in London in 1962 which she met with great excitement as it would be of valuable experience to her as a social worker. Patricia was shocked by the living conditions of the west Indians with whom she worked in England following the Nottingham race riots of 1958 that sparked a great deal of racism in the area.
It is by this profound love for residential social work that would later lead Patricia to Child Welfare and Adoption Society (CWAS), an organization that had been founded by Father Rawlinson in 1958 with an aim of providing a better future for the city’s vulnerable, orphaned children by providing them with good care and protection.
Written by Karungi Mary Providence.