Remembering Amy

Professor Amy Rossiter was an inspirational critical social worker. I acknowledge her leadership without the caution that she, no doubt, would have preferred. Professor Rossiter (2001, 2005, 2011, 2014) urged social workers to be critical thinkers and to work collaboratively with the oppressed for structural change. Yet she also pressed us to understand how our historical, social, and cultural positions place most, if not all social workers, as beneficiaries of unequal and oppressive social orders. The people we seek to partner with for change, those with most to lose in the social order, recognise this complexity and so must we. Professor Rossiter (2001) urged us to be “deeply suspicious of the innocence of ‘doing social work’”