Lim Teik Wah (Jimmy or Jim)

 Years in WPS: 1960 to 1965

Classes during those years: Std 1A (1960) , Std 2B (1961), Std 3B (1962), Std 4C (1963), Std 5E (1964), Std 6 Red (1965) 

House: Cannot remember, either red [Raleigh] or yellow [Hudson]

School activities and positions held: Cub and Scout 

Road resided in during the WPS years: Immigration Road

Current residence: Lucca, Italy

Current status: Retired

Journey through time since WPS

•  Jim Teik Wah went to Penang Free School and left after Form 5. He went to the UK soon after and enrolled as a student nurse in a psychiatric hospital. After qualifying as Registered Mental Nurse, he went on to study social work in East Anglia and subsequently qualified for practice in 1977.  
• Jim worked in the East End of London’s local authorities for the next 20 years. The professional social work scene in the UK afforded huge opportunities for multi-disciplines, and he worked in areas that involved residential care, high risk care for adolescents, juvenile justice and community mental health.
• He rose to become Director of Social Services in the Borough of Tower Hamlets. During this tenure, he was also an accredited external examiner for social work courses in universities and a Tribunal Lay Expert Member.
• In the late 1990s, he left Social Services, and later became CEO of a Supported Housing and Mental Health Charity in London, the Quo Vadis Trust, for 8 years until 2010. 
• Jim also set up his own social work company, Forest Care Services offering housing and critical support services to vulnerable children in care, unaccompanied refugee children and young people with challenging, offending behaviour. The company has been sold to a former colleague.
• In 2009, Jim received the Chartered Director award from the UK’s ”Institute of Directors” (Royal Charter 1906). It was a professional qualification he had to study for and qualify.
• Jim returned to Penang in March 2011 under Talent Corp’s incentive, the “Returning Expertise Programme”. Privately, Jim and his wife (a British/Scot) ran a high-end boutique bed and breakfast accommodation in Clove Hall Road. Soon after George Town’s UNESCO award for heritage in 2008, Clove Hall became a popular homestay for the discerning independent traveller. They sold it in 2018.
• Besides Clove Hall, Jim was involved with the local social work activities, campaigning, for example, to get the profession recognised and to bring it under statutory regulation. He has written letters and many articles on child protection, bullying, mental health and have provided briefings to MPs. 
• Jim was speaker in “social services planning” at a UNICEF/ASEAN conference on child protection held in KL in 2012. Since then he has presented a number of papers at seminars and conferences.