Deborah Miles is a social worker at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ).  Within the library Deborah focuses on supporting public libraries. Rather than providing direct services to socially isolated individuals or to those experiencing homelessness, the SLQ ensures that public library staff are better equipped to help these members within their own community.  This is done by building skills, providing funding, advocating the role of libraries, attracting partnerships and creating policies).

 

The team that she works with places an emphasis on staying FIT (Funding, Ideas/Innovation and Training). Deborah works with both library staff and prospective social work students to engage their community. One way they do this is by using the WELCOME Toolkit* (We Love Community Outreach Model of Engagement).

 

Deborah believes that social work and libraries are both diverse jobs and they work well together.  “The language of librarians is the language of social workers: we both want access, advocacy, engagement, development, wellbeing and inclusion.” There is a natural parallel between the two, both professions spend a considerable amount of time consulting and engaging with the community. And there has long been a focus on partnerships that help to bring people together to learn, create and develop an inclusive community.

 

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