Senior Adoption Practitioner

 

Joanne has over nineteen years of experience in Social Work, qualifying in 2002 and initially working in a Short Break Care Unit in North Tyneside for children with a range of severe disabilities.  She then moved into frontline social work in North Tyneside before moving to a Children with Disabilities Social Work team in South Tyneside in 2008 where she remained until 2014.  In 2014, Joanne commenced working as an Adoption Officer for South Tyneside Council, before moving to a Supervising Social Worker role in a private fostering agency in 2018.  Joanne also worked as a Short Break Foster Carer for Barnardos from 2016 to 2019 and has worked as a sessional Form F Assessor for a variety of fostering agencies over the years.  

Joanne is committed to her professional development and completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Child Care Social Work at Durham University in 2006.  She also completed her Practice Education Stage 1 at the University of Northumbria in 2015 and her Practice Education Stage 2 at the University of Sunderland in 2017. 

Joanne began working as a Senior Adoption Practitioner at ARC Adoption North East in February 2021 and is thoroughly enjoying being back at work in the adoption world!  She is passionate about securing permanence for looked after children and in completing excellent quality, robust assessments of prospective adopters.

Joanne lives with her partner Martin, her two-year-old daughter Emelia, her working cocker spaniel Ava and her rescue cat Flo.  She is originally from Ballymena in Northern Ireland but moved to Newcastle to study and ended up staying. She still enjoys getting back to Ireland whenever she can to visit family and friends. Joanne and her family enjoy the great outdoors, exploring and visiting new places, both in the UK and abroad.