News Archive

Social worker Teresa Lee has no distinction between home and work - they are one and the same.

Teresa, a UWA social work graduate, and her husband Jarrod McKenna, crowd sourced (via social media) a community home loan to buy a run-down house in Midland, that was once a meth lab.

They turned it into three small homes: one for themselves and two for refugees.  The couple support refugees while they settle in to Australia, with ‘office hours' every afternoon around a big table in the back yard, where they help the newly arrived families with every aspect of their lives.

Teresa features in a series of short films, Animating Social Work , that have been made to celebrate the social work profession and will be used to encourage undergraduate students to consider studying Social Work as a graduate degree.

"Teresa is just inspiring," said Assistant Professor Sue Bailey, from Social Work and Social Policy. "Her sense of social justice and the way she has turned it into a practical ongoing project is wonderful."

A/Professor Bailey said the community was "at a time in history when social work is even more important, as we seek to address inequality and ecological justice across the planet.

"The title for the film comes from an understanding of animating that means literally ‘to breathe life into'. Our work requires collectives of concerned and passionate individuals to come together.  When animation is understood in its full social, human and political sense, it can become a very powerful idea."

The UWA Social Work Alumni, Friends and Associates (SWAFA) and the School of Population Health recently launched the Animating Social Work film.

A/Professor Bailey (Chair) and Stephan Lund (Secretary) of SWAFA, devised and developed the film project together with help from many others. Social work is underpinned by social justice and the film highlights how social workers practice these values and work to support humans as we face challenges connected to being human now and into the future.