About This Blog & Lois Pollock

My name is Lois Pollock. I'm an experienced social worker specializing in HIV/AIDS and frail aged care. Since 1995 I've been making regular visits to Uganda, and facilitating projects in rural and urban communities who are affected by HIV/AIDS. Despite troubles, Uganda is a beautiful country whose friendly and resourceful people have made me welcome time and again. I have friends there who have become more akin to family.

Thousands of HIV+ people in Uganda have their problems compounded by a total lack of life's simple essentials: paid employment, education,decent food, hygienic living conditions, and consistent supply of prescription medicines and access when needed to doctors. Social work is rendered profoundly difficult by a lack of funding and accessing basic resources for clients. This blog records the major projects I've undertaken over the past decade and a half and highlights the most current. I hope that the reports and photos here will encourage an interest in the problems faced by people with HIV/AIDS, other life threatening conditions and poverty in poorer countries.

I also hope it will inspire financial contributions to my future work in Uganda.

To date I have funded my own trips and bank-rolled each project from my very modest social work salary. Further generous support has come from a handful of benevolent friends and relatives, which has made a tremendous difference to lives thousands of miles away.

If think you'd like to contribute to a current or future trip, please click the tab at right >> labeled "How You Can Help". If you'd like to know anything more specific, contact me at

loispollock1@gmail.com

I have conceived and run most of the projects recorded here, but have also collaborated frequently with a local Ugandan group - The AIDS Support Organisation (click the tab at right >> to find out more about them) amongst others.

I hope you'll enjoy reading these accounts of my work in Uganda - and be inspired as I have been by the people I've been privileged to work for and with. The tabs at right >> will lead you to different project reports.

Thanks for your interest -
Lois Pollock, Sydney 2010

For those interested, the rest of this post presents a potted biography of my career as a social worker.

A Life In Front-Line Social-Work
a short professional biography of Lois Pollock

My entry into social work was somewhat unusual.

In the mid 1970s I was a Labour Party councillor in Hackney, East London. Hackney then was a socially deprived borough and I served on the Social Services, Environmental Health and Housing committees. As a councillor, I actively developed and promoted services for some of the most marginalised groups in Hackney including homeless, squatters and gypsies. I was a founder member of Hackney Traveler Support Group and organised peripatetic medical services and on-site schooling for the gypsy families. I also argued successfully for short term letting of empty Council properties to homeless people and organised squatter groups.

I was concerned by the poor standard of reports put before us - and the basis on which council members made decisions which would profoundly affect people's lives. I decided to undertake social work training to better understand the situations that confronted front-line social workers. After qualifying as a social worker in 1982 I managed a Family Centre on a high rise, high density housing estate in Battersea. There were frequent clashes between disaffected, marginalised Afro-Caribbean youth and over zealous police. Tensions escalated following the Brixton riots and I had to work hard to promote dialogue - and change in local policing practice. I was appointed as the first Lay Visitor in Wandsworth with the responsibility to make unnannounced visits to all the local holding cells and interview prisoners, ensuring their rights were properly upheld. Between 1988 and 1995, I held three social work positions - in Greenwich (generic & child protection work); Royal Borough Kensington & Chelsea (specialist HIV/AIDS worker) and finally in Newham, where I was appointed as a specialist social worker for the African community affected by HIV/AIDS. In those latter positions I gained a deal of experience working with people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, at a time of ignorance and stigma in the wider community. Ever the community activist, I was one of a group offering alternative funeral services to the gay community when some religious institutions refused to perform services following the death.

While working in Newham I made my first visit to Uganda. I was working with the African community and had learned a lot about issues that face refugee communities - loss of family, children, security and uncertain futures.

In Uganda I wanted to learn about the situation facing children remaining there, who would become orphans when their parent in the UK died of AIDS related illness. At the same time I was introduced to various organisations in Uganda working around HIV/AIDS - and that visit in 1995 was the first of what has become regular visits. In 1995, I felt I needed a break from direct HIV/AIDS work, not least because numbers of close friends had died. I was appointed as a Senior Practitioner Social Worker at St.Christopher’s Hospice, London. For the next five years I carried an individual caseload, ran bereavement support groups with colleagues, offered training programs internally and to the wider community and continued facilitating residential therapeutic workshops for professionals working with the dying or those with life threatening illnesses.

Somehow in the midst of a busy professional and private life I also managed a four year Master’s program in Integrative Psychotherapy, passing my dissertation and completing course work in 2000. Unfortunately, by then I had taken up residence in Australia and did not take the final viva that would have awarded an MSc. It didn’t seem important enough to travel back to London for a 20 minute presentation. My interests by 2000 were leaning considerably toward developing programs in Uganda. Having completed and passed my dissertation, gaining the gown and the cap seemed totally irrelevant.

I'm not impressed by letters after a name, even if that name is my own. I have always been skeptical of the weight placed on academic credentials alone, and the professional merit over 'hands on' experience of many senior figures in social work hierarchy. Sadly most institutions I've experienced have not been meritocratic, but rather have promoted mediocrity.

I am determinedly a front-line social worker: as are the most impressive people I've had the privilege to work with throughout my career. I've learned that if you're searching for talent, creativity, integrity and achievement in the field of social work there is a certain pay-grade you needn't bother looking above.

As a 'career path' to a decent salary, professional status (or mere recognition) this attitude has not worked in my favour!

Despite having a fully recognised UK qualification in social work, having held a number of senior positions, and having had various articles and writing published I was surprised on moving back to Australia in 2000, to discover that the professional association for social workers here would not accept my qualifications. I found I could not work as a social worker with any statutory agency.

Although initially angered by that, my life has generally worked out as it is meant to. I was appointed as a social worker in 2002, in a not-for-profit organisation, JewishCare (Sydney) where I have been ever since (with a period out to complete my dissertation and to do some work in Romania in 2003/4). Since 2005 I have managed a team of social workers and community workers for frail aged, many of whom are Holocaust survivors. I've gained new skills and experiences from these clients, particularly in the area of dementia and built on previous experience of working with past trauma. Amongst a variety of duties, I facilitate a weekly art group for people with moderate dementia. In my private time,work continues with the Ugandan projects highlighted in this blog. I hope to revisit Uganda within two years and in the meantime am writing a training manual for The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO) to use in developing small economically sustainable projects for those living with HIV/AIDS.