At last year’s Social Worker of the Year Awards, Omaid Badar won both the children’s practitioner and overall winner’s prizes, with one judge describing him as “everything the profession is about when it’s at its best”.

The 29-year-old Kirklees Council social worker has overcome more than most on route to those accolades.

Omaid was born in Afghanistan, then ravaged by civil war, became a refugee and, aged 14, made a perilous journey to England, enduring extreme hardship in pursuit of a safe haven.

In an interview with Community Care, he opened up about his journey from being a young boy in Afghanistan to a social worker in England, his approach to working with children and how he handles those difficult days.

You made a very daunting journey at age 14 from Pakistan to England. What was your experience like of being a refugee?

You first need to understand that I was born in 1994 in Afghanistan, a war-torn country. I was a month old when we lost our dad. I don’t even know if he held me because, as a one-month-old, what could you possibly remember?

That situation forces you to leave your homeland, become a refugee. We travelled to Pakistan, where we lived in refugee camps and areas that were so dangerous the police were not allowed in.

It got to a point where my mum was really worried for my safety [and decided to send me away]. At the time, I had lost many people and I didn’t want to lose her too. I was going out, seeking a safe haven, but was I going to see my mum again? Was I going to be able to hug her again?

And it wasn’t a pleasant journey. Most of the time we weren’t told where we were going. We would be stuffed in cars, inflatable boats and vans, sometimes 80 people, squeezed in together, one on top of the other. There was no room to breathe.

At times, we would be walking at night so the border police wouldn’t see us, because they would shoot at us. It’s not an easy journey, you have to accept that you might not make it to the next day.

There were days when we had no food and survived just on water. And when they did bring food for us, it would be stale bread that would be so hard to crack we would dip it in yoghurt to break it.

I travelled that way to Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, and eventually reached Bradford, England.

I had been told to seek a police officer the moment I arrived, but I can’t say my first encounter was a good one. They did speak to an interpreter and understood why I was here, but then they put me in a cell.

It was so cold. My shoes and clothes were all ripped and the only thing they gave me was a blanket full of holes that didn’t keep me warm. But in the morning, a social worker came in.

I still remember her name, Lucy. As soon as she saw me, she hugged me. I think that was the first time I felt emotional warmth and I just cried.

She took me to social services and then shopping at ASDA for clothes. She quickly found a temporary placement for me and then I moved to a children’s home and my schooling was arranged.

What was your time in care like? How has it informed your practice?

My experience in care had its ups and downs. I faced bullying and discrimination but also received support and care from some staff members. These experiences shaped my approach to social work – respecting cultures and being honest and committed to the children I work with.

Lucy wasn’t my social worker for long. After her, there were a few temporary ones for a few months and then I didn’t have a social worker for a long time, probably because I wasn’t creating problems.

But, at the same time, I realise now that you’re supposed to see your children once every six weeks.

I do that for the children that I work with. And if they need to see me more, I will make time and go visit them again because they need that.

I never got the answer why a social worker never came to see me. I am grateful to Bradford, but I would advise social workers to be committed to their children, to be open and honest with them.

Tell them if there’s something you can’t do, tell them that you’ll go and see if you can find alternative ways, but don’t promise them because children hold you to those promises. And then if you can’t fulfil that promise, they won’t trust you.

What inspired you to become a social worker?

My key worker, Jerry Phillips. He’d always find me and speak to me when he was on a shift, bring me books to read, come to my school meetings and review meetings.

He was patient with me, made me understand that nothing should be taken for granted. ‘Today you have support, tomorrow you won’t, so make sure you learn how to be independent,’ he’d say.

He taught me how to cook and was my go-to person. He always used to talk about school, education, standing up for your rights. But if you do anything wrong, put your hand up and say that. There’s always a way out.

When he asked me why I wanted to be a social worker I said, ‘What you did for me, I want to do for every kid out there, because you changed my life’.

He made me believe in myself, had faith in me, was committed to me. He was open and honest with me. I want to be that role model for the children out there. To this day, I still see him. He came to my graduation and he was proud.

What is your approach to social work?

I have just completed my fifth year as a children’s social worker and I’m loving it. I come to work and I’m always in a good mood because I know I’m here to help change families’ lives.

My approach is to always explain what my role is – because there are misconceptions about what a social worker does – and have an open mind.

On paper, a person can look like a monster, but when you visit them, you realise they might have never been given a chance. And change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes us [social workers] being committed.

As a social worker, my values are to be committed to the people I’m working with, to be honest and open with them and to create an environment where they feel comfortable talking to me, they feel listened to and not judged.

I think clarifying that you are not here to take the children helps; [I] explain which plan they’re going to be on and whether it’s consent-based.

I say to them: ‘There’s nothing we cannot work on. But we need to communicate and work around it. If I can’t do anything in my power, there will be other services that can come on board and help you. I’m here to support you and help you get to where you need to be because you don’t want social workers to be involved in your life all the time.’

They’ll naturally be worrying about what’s going to happen. You need to reassure them so they feel that you’re working together – involve them in decision-making and ensure you’re doing things with their consent, not without.

I think because I’ve been through it, I can also relate to the children more. I can understand what is happening to them, provide them with what they need from me and work with them using a restorative approach.

How do you handle difficult days?

After a difficult day, I always take a step back and reflect.

If I’ve tried everything and it didn’t work, let’s get another fresh pair of eyes to see if there are other ways to deal with the situation.

For me, supervision is like therapy. Whenever we miss a [meeting], I will put on another date straight away. You have to be accountable, you can’t just leave everything to your manager.

There, you can challenge your hypotheses, make informed decisions, identify other forms of support. There are things that you might not know that your manager might know and give you advice. Peer supervision with your peers, formulation meetings and multi-agency meetings [also] help.

What also helps me is that when I go home, I’ll start cooking. Cooking is therapy for me. I’ll cook my favourite dish or go to the gym and just try to switch off because, even when I’m going on holiday, sometimes I keep thinking, ‘Oh will that child be safe?’.

My team also helps a lot. If someone is struggling with a case, we share responsibilities to take some pressure off.

Working this way means we don’t have many people going on sick leave or stressing over caseloads. I’ve been in practice for five years and haven’t taken a sick day.

I even come in on Eid, choosing to give that time to my children rather than celebrating.

What is your ambition as a social worker?

I plan to go into the United Nations and be an ambassador for children. A lot is happening in the world and, as a social worker, I cannot just stay quiet, because my job is safeguarding. It hurts me to see children in the world at risk. It hurts me because I’ve been through it.

I’ve been blessed to have an opportunity to grow and I want to be a voice for the children and families that I work with because their lived experience is all that matters.

All the children out there deserve to live peacefully, to have an opportunity to live in an environment that is free from emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, criminal abuse. Such traumatic events stay with you for a lifetime.

My traumatic events have stayed with me, but I’m fortunate enough to have found resilience in that and have people that I can speak to. But children out there are going through hardship and difficulties without shelter, education, food or financial stability. It’s hard.

I want to be able to do something so they can be where I am.

Advanced fostering practitioner Vivian Okeze-Tirado was working at home when she was crowned overall winner at this year’s Social Worker of the Year Awards.

She had been handed the social justice advocate award earlier in the ceremony for her work creating diversity workshops for foster carers and social work colleagues following George Floyd’s murder in May last year.

Okeze-Tirado was “shocked” to win the first award because she was up against five other “top contenders”.

At home with her son and husband, she had the ceremony playing on one laptop while working on another.

When the hosts introduced the overall winner, Okeze-Tirado had no idea they were describing her until they read out her name.

“At that point I just fell on the floor and started screaming with joy,” she said.

Career change

Okeze-Tirado and her family moved from Ireland, where she had worked in the banking sector, to West Sussex 12 years ago.

She considered continuing with her former career but had a change of heart after volunteering at her local children and family centre.

“I remember chatting with some teenage mums and I just felt there was something in me that wanted to reach out to them,” she said.

She already had an undergraduate and master’s degree in business administration but spoke to local universities about entry requirements for social work courses.

To gain necessary experience, she got a paid job at a children and family centre, where she worked for a year and a half before enrolling at the University of Brighton.

Okeze-Tirado said she enjoyed her time in Brighton but did not think there was enough diversity within her course, which she said “had an impact on my learning”.

After graduating, she joined West Sussex council’s fostering team, where she has been for the past seven years.

Despite inheriting a sizeable workload, Okeze-Tirado “enjoyed the role from the very beginning”, and said she “threw [herself] into work”.

“I didn’t just come in to tick boxes or to get paid,” she said. “I came in to make positive change.”

Acting as referee

As a fostering social worker, Okeze-Tirado matches the needs of children in the council’s care with appropriate foster carers before doing “everything” to keep prevent placements from collapsing.

In some cases, she said, it can be “difficult to get that partnership working between the foster carer and the child’s social worker”, with fostering practitioners like Okeze-Tirado caught “in the middle like the referee”.

Ofsted rated West Sussex as ‘inadequate’ at its most recent full inspection in 2019, citing “significant staff turnover” as one contributing factor.

Okeze-Tirado said she was proud to have been a “consistent figure” for foster carers over the past seven and a half years, during which time she has also stepped in where there’s been a gap in the child’s social worker.

A special boy

One of Okeze-Tirado’s first referrals was a 12-year-old boy who had suffered a bereavement and needed a foster placement.

She persuaded a foster carer who had specified that they did not want to take a child over 11 years old to make an exception for the boy. They too had suffered the loss of close family member, and Okeze-Tirado thought they would be an ideal match.

The foster carer agreed but when the placement started was shocked when she realised Okeze-Tirado had only read about the child’s situation, assuming she had met him by how highly she had spoken of him.

But the placement was such a success that the foster carer eventually became the child’s special guardian – and he went on to become a head boy of his school.

Okeze-Tirado stayed in touch and said every time she was told of the boy’s achievements throughout his school and college career, “it was like hearing news about my child”.

“I am happy to say I had coffee last week with the foster carer [now special guardian], where she was updating me on where he is at. He is doing well. He is about 20 now. He has finished college,” she said.

Time for social workers to act against racism

After George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis last May, Okeze-Tirado wrote an open letter expressing her outrage at the “crime against humanity” and calling for action.

“I didn’t want to keep silent, because as social workers we promote social justice and social change,” she said.

She shared the letter with one of her managers, Jill Seeney, and together they thought about a progressive way to utilise it and an acrostic poem she had written called ‘Diversity’.

“We felt that some of our children’s self-esteem had dwindled very low because of George Floyd. So we decided to start the workshop,” she said.

The workshop, initially for foster carers, explored use of the ‘secure base model’, developed by Professor Gillian Schofield and Dr Mary Beek, alongside a discussion about the Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the world and diversity more generally.

“We found that many foster carers came for the training,” she said. “We then had a waiting list for another workshop and a waiting list so that’s how it spiralled.”

Okeze-Tirado said having the support of her manager, a white British woman, was helpful and enabled the workshops to be better received initially.

“If it was just me bringing that model, I’m not sure that people would have engaged as such,” she said.

“But in having an ally that was white British and the two of us standing side to side, [that] was encouraging so that people could see it is not just me speaking about my experiences.”

Okeze-Tirado does now present most workshops by herself, speaking at Brighton children’s services anti-racism day and delivering a talk at the University of Chichester recently.

She said it is challenging for her to juggle the talks alongside her workload and that she sometimes does not know how she finds “the time or the strength or the energy to do it”.

“The only thing that drives me is passion to impart that knowledge. Especially when people are interested in acquiring the knowledge,” she said.

She encouraged West Sussex to hire its first equality, diversity and inclusion officer across the council, as well as advocating for the creation of a role similar to that carried out by Millie Kerr, the an anti-racist lead practitioner at Brighton’s children’s services. “In terms of doing the practical jobs that I’m doing right now, I think there is still a gap,” she said.

Okeze-Tirado also had a book published this year expanding on her acrostic poem with practical steps for social workers, foster carers, and other individuals seeking knowledge about diversity and cultural competence.

“I call it a book of solutions, really. We are not just going to talk about problems in society. My slogan is, ‘Let’s not just talk about racism, let’s do something about it’,” she said.

Social workers and social work teams have an extra five days to put themselves forward for the Social Worker of the Year Awards, which recognise the achievements of individuals and celebrate good practice in the profession. The deadline for nominations has been extended to 10am on Friday 12 September.

The awards are open to social work practitioners across England and include 17 different categories, with three new accolades up for grabs this year: Mental Health Social Worker of the Year, Principal Social Worker of the Year and Student Social Worker of the Year.

Beverley Williams, independent social worker and founder of the awards, said: “We’ve received a significant amount of interest in the awards over the past week and have extended the deadline to give as many social workers as possible the chance to enter this year.”

This year’s entries will be judged by a panel of more than 30 leading industry professionals, including chief social workers Lyn Romeo and Isabelle Trowler, College of Social Work chief executive Annie Hudson and BASW England manager Maris Stratulis.

The Social Worker of the Year Awards are supported by headline sponsor Sanctuary Social Care, corporate partners the College of Social Work and BASW, category sponsors Christies Care and Core Assets, and media partner Community Care.

Williams added: “I founded these awards to celebrate the achievements and successes of social workers, so if you’re part of a team that’s delivering a highly valued service, or if a colleague consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty, I would urge you to take the time this week to make a nomination.”

Entry forms can be downloaded from the Social Work Awards website and nominations must be emailed to entries@socialworkawards.com. Those who have already made a nomination to the awards may use the extended deadline to work on their entry.

The final closing date for submissions is Friday 12 September at 10am. The winners will be announced on 28 November at an awards ceremony at the Lancaster London Hotel.