Michelle Daly

Michelle Daly strives to live by the motto "To make a difference". She is employed as the Senior Counsellor at Queensland Health Scientific Services Centre for Forensic Sciences. The position is a generic one, open to either a social worker or psychologist. Whilst she is a social worker, her interests once lay in the psychology profession. "I originally intended to pursue psychology ? however, I discovered I hated statistics, hence the decision not to attempt psychology honours," Michelle said. After completing a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Psychology, Michelle enrolled in the Rule 4 Graduate Social Work Program at the University of Queensland. "I felt a career in social work would offer the opportunity to still work with people, would make good use of the knowledge gained from psychology studies but would also broaden my employment options," Michelle said. Michelle completed her degree and found the course both "useful and challenging. I felt the field placements were the best preparation for the 'real world' (and) I was fortunate to have extremely good field educators who were very good role models", she said.

After graduating from the School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences in 1985, Michelle took up a position as a Child Care Officer at the then Department of Children's Services in Woodrige. Eight months later, she began a new job in Community Health in Wynnum where she spent the next 2 years.

For the next six years, Michelle worked in the Princess Alexandra Hospital in a variety of areas within the acute section of the hospital. As the Senior Social Worker in the Acute area she was responsible for supervision of other acute social workers and provision of the social work service to the Intensive Care Unit.

In 1994, she moved to her current position as Senior Counsellor, Qld Health Scientific Services. Michelle was the first appointee to the position, which was created to "co-ordinate support provided to families bereaved by deaths reported to Coroners in Qld".

When asked the question of what motivates or "keeps her going" in the Social Work profession, Michelle said her position has a lot of variety and she gains immense satisfaction from her work.

"My position provides the opportunity to provide assistance to people at an extremely tragic time in their life and also to create change within a system, to make the system more responsive to the needs of bereaved families," Michelle said.

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