Marco Notarangelo

My name is Marco Notarangelo. I’m a social worker and registered with the SSSC. I’m currently working with the Through Care and After Care Service for young people in care or leaving care, in Dundee City Council’s Social Work Department. Before this I worked in the Children and Families Service Intake Team which involved for example carrying out assessments for requests for social care support.

The Through Care and After Care service supports young people leaving local authority care into independent living. It’s now widely acknowledged that care experienced children and young people are at increased risk of poor life outcomes including low educational attainment, unemployment, homelessness and poor physical and mental health when compared to peers. It’s the aim of the team to provide a range of needs led services and support to help make what can be a difficult and problematic transition into adulthood more positive.

After leaving school with no idea what career path I wanted to follow, I became involved with a local youth work team and a learning centre based at Dundee Football Club called Kick It Kick Off (KIKO). KIKO was part of Dundee’s offsite education service (secondary education provided away from mainstream school) which aimed to sustain young people within education and the community.

I spent 10 years full time at KIKO, working with some of the most hard to reach, needy and vulnerable young people in the city. I found I had a passion to support these children and young people to develop and promote life changing opportunities.

I was 28 when I started my social work degree. The experience of working in a range of settings, including group work and one to one with young people, in child protection case conferences and at children’s hearings, helped me immensely in my studies. It gave me the confidence and drive to study and research various topics and fields within social work to inform my learning.

My first job after qualifying was in the Child Care and Assessment Team as a frontline social worker carrying out initial assessments. Getting this statutory child protection experience was invaluable and I learned so much about legislative procedures surrounding investigations and assessment.

However, I found myself frustrated at the limitations of being able to fully support the families on my caseload as assessments had a limited timescale of three months.

When the opportunity came up to work in the Through Care and After Care Team I jumped at it. I felt this area of social work allowed me to re-engage with adolescent young people who need in depth one to one support. In this I have the opportunity and autonomy to produce developmental pieces of work to support and meet the needs of the people we work with.

It has turned out to be everything I expected and more. The opportunity to provide long term support, tackle the ongoing and ever changing challenges they present and face, as well as create new and exciting programmes of support, makes this the ideal job for me and anyone else who enjoys this area of work.