Hi! I am Charles Pace, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, now turned part-time. I happened to be the first psychiatric social worker in the Maltese services and, besides launching that service, I also did my bit in the Mental Health Reform Commission. Meanwhile, I wrote my PhD on a needs and service assessment of people with long-term, severe mental health issues living at home, recommending ways in which British models could be adaptively transferred to the Maltese context.

At the University of Malta, I have helped in the development and provision of the social policy course. I helped in EU-funded projects attempting to facilitate access to higher and tertiary education to disadvantaged groups like disabled, immigrants and single mothers. I had the satisfaction of participating in the organization of an international conference on Transcultural Psychiatry in Malta, and in COST groups about adaptation of health and social care to immigrants and about the social impacts of recent restructuring on European welfare recipients.

I have been lucky in being teamed with very good colleagues, both at Mt Carmel and at the University. Getting to know and helping students learn and grow has been and is one of my greatest privileges.

My main study, research and publication interests lie in the Maltese welfare system in the context of others, community care of its various target groups, migration, housing and adaptive policy transfer. I sometimes write newspaper articles, using them as an occasion among others to share reflections and recommendations on social and life, epistemological and faith, liberation and human rights issues. I do my little bit for local volunteering to help the more vulnerable, am married with two adult children and am supremely grateful for the blessings of family and community life.