Kayon Phillips

I am about to embark on my second year of the Perinatal, Child, Adolescent and Family Work: A Psychoanalytic Observational Approach. For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated with the human mind, especially what we as humans do consciously and unconsciously. This fascination grew when I became a children’s social worker, and so I decided to act upon it.

My career started in law. I worked in HMCTS for 10 years and spent the remaining 2 years working in the Ministry of Justice, Public Defender Service. I studied law hoping for a lucrative career in criminal law, but eventually, I deviated to social work where I felt happier devoting my time and energy to children and families in need. I found the role to be fulfilling but challenging. This became more pronounced due to austerity cuts where there was a significant reduction in mental health services. This greatly impacted me and my role and I found myself being pushed to my limit holding onto and managing mental health issues within families that I clearly was not qualified to do. Due to this shift, I decided to study to become a child and adolescent Psychotherapist and Tavistock and Portman being my first-choice educational establishment to achieve this.

I currently work as a Children’s guardian at Cafcass. In this role, I am appointed as an expert by the court to represent the rights and interests of the child and to also provide the court with independent advice about the child’s best interest. The work remains just as intense and challenging but extremely rewarding. Not only am I continuing my practise as a social worker, I am also using what I learned with my law training, practicing within the scope of law, to represent the child’s best interest.