 My name's Peter and I've worked in social work for the last 50 years. I started off as an unqualified social worker and had all sorts of strange roles that don't happen now like moving homeless families and delivering bath aids, all sorts of things. It was just really assisting other qualified social workers at that time. But after a while I started to get a sort of small case load on my own, mainly I think of older people and people with a disability. After about seven or eight years I did a course for working with people with visual impairments and it was teaching people Braille, Moon, Typing and daily living skills. At that time I worked mainly with people with a visual impairment but also other people as well. After about 10 years I did the social work training. I went to Portsmouth Polytechnic, sponsored by West Sussex so it was good I was actually paid a full wage to do the training and when I came back I had to work with everyone really. It was sort of children and families, older people, physical disabled people, mental health, learning disability, all the things that we do now. The next move was to the community term for people with learning disabilities which was I think about 20 years ago and it's a multi-disciplinary team with health professionals and etc. And the most recent changes is to lifelong services although there's still the learning disability bit we also now work with people with a lifelong physical disability. That's where I'm now really. It was very sort of informal to start with when I first started. I shared an office with home care managers, it was quite a good experience actually sharing with them. They were very welcoming and very nice. It was quite informal and it was a strange setup because there were two offices when I started. It was at the time when the Seaboam report had come out and there was now amalgamation of children's services and welfare and mental health all into one. The recording was all by hand, there was no typing in those days I don't think it was all hand written. To get something done you just had to go and ask someone, you didn't have to fill a form in. It was very informal whereas today there's actually a process for absolutely everything. I guess it is legislation because there's been more and more legislation over the time and we have to justify what we do and to show that we're doing the job we're supposed to be doing. And it's things like, I mean the Mosaic now, there's a process for absolutely everything. I think that's the big change. I always think things go round in circles a little bit and there's sort of trends I think that have happened. Like for example at one time it was very sort of community-orientated. We had patch offices in Midhurst and Starrington and little offices where there was only a few people so it was very much close to the local community. I wonder whether something like that will come back in the future. I think it's like to stay separate children and adults. There may be changes within the particular services but very difficult to predict I think exactly what will happen in the future. I won't enter it because I wanted to make a difference. I think I was probably a bit idealistic then and I'm probably more realistic now after many, many years but I hope that it can make small changes in people's lives and enhance their sort of quality of life. So that's what I see my role as being. There's a few and just speaking generally it's lovely to see people achieve what they want to achieve. I've got three people now who I've known for many years. I started off working in Bogner and I'm back in working in Bogner now and they've sort of come full circle with me almost. So I've known them for about 35 to 40 years probably, three of them and I have been their social worker all the time. On and off I've been their social worker. They've really come a long way in that time in their different ways. They're all very different, but they've come a long way. And it's so nice to see that they've been able to with lots of setbacks, I think, but also achieve what they want to in their lives. You know, and to be part of that and to sort of share it with them. And they're just really nice people as well. So it's really nice. It's the people I work with, the customers I work with that are really lovely and I enjoy working with them. And colleagues have been great, including managers. I mean, have been really, really good. I think the quality of managers is so much greater now. They're very supportive and very, very helpful from my immediate manager up to the sort of higher managers I've had contact with. So that's been really good. And the team, I mean, is very, very supportive. I mean, they're lovely people and they're very supportive of each other. And that includes some health people. You know, most teams in social work don't have health people alongside them, but the health people are a great asset to the team as a whole as well. So it can be emotionally draining, but it can also be very rewarding. And I suppose that's why I've stuck it for 50 years. So one or two times, I thought, is this really the right thing for me? But I've always decided it is and always, always carried on.