Social Work Spotlight - Episode 109: Stef

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

In this episode I speak with Stef, an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker who works in private practice at Clarity Therapy in Gymea, Sydney. He has a background in child protection and Out of Home Care, and utilises an integrated therapeutic approach, drawing on evidence based modalities as well as social work theory, aiming for a holistic approach to improving mental health.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:The Ankali Project - https://thealbioncentre.org.au/ankali-project/Barnardos Australia - https://www.barnardos.org.au/Clarity Therapy - https://claritytherapy.com.au/Building Your Ideal Private Practice by Lynn Grodzki - https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Building+Your+Ideal+Private+Practice+A+Guide+for+Therapists+and+Other+Healing+Professionals-p-9780393709483PESI continuing education - www.pesi.com.auAshton Hayes’ podcast Becoming an AMHSW - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/becoming-an-amhsw-the-podcast/id1642275191Interview with Brené Brown and Esther Perel on New AI (Artificial Intimacy) - https://brenebrown.com/podcast/new-ai-artificial-intimacy/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S3KYUnQrF4r4wr7DOw1CnCPY7njgtEbdBSKoSxvm5z4/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

I begin today by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eura Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I record this podcast, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have an intrinsic connection to this land and have cared for country for over 60,000 years, with their way of life having been devastated by colonisation. Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession

in each episode. I'm your host, Yasamine Lupus, and today's guest is Steph, an accredited mental health social worker who works in private practice at Clarity Therapy in Guymere, Sydney. He has a background in child protection and out-of-home care and utilises an integrated therapeutic approach, drawing on evidence-based modalities as well as social work theory, aiming for a holistic approach to improving mental health. Thanks, Steph, for joining me on the podcast this morning. I'm really excited to have a chat with you about your experience in social work. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

I appreciate it. I'd love to know firstly when you began as a social worker and what brought you to the profession. So I came to social work in an interesting way. I started out all my childhood with a really, like, determined passion of what I was going to be when I grew up, and it was not social work. I was going to be a lawyer. And I think that was because I was told all my life you should be a lawyer because I did like debating at school and all these things. I was like, yeah, may I like law and order?

That looks like fun. I should be a lawyer. And so I grew up and I actually ended up starting in law. I studied law. And I just found like I had a lot of like creative hobbies outside of law. And I really enjoyed those. And law was just a very specific way of thinking, which was quite analytical and almost a bit black and white, which, you know, very suitable for that profession. But yes, it just was different than how my brain wanted to work

in kind of that creative sense. And I just wasn't, it wasn't passionate about it. And so I took some time off. I finished a degree in communications, which was what I had doubled law with. And then I was like, I don't really know what I want to do because I also didn't love the being behind a desk part of communications policy, social policy kind of role. And then I took a year and I went to America. I went to New York and I worked at a performing arts camp, summer camp, where I taught songwriting in the rock and roll department, which was very fun. Anyway, I came back and I had loved it. It was like the best thing I'd ever done. And I was having lunch with my godmother. And I was saying, you know, if I could do that year round, I would. That's what I would do. And she was the first person

to say to me, why don't you think about doing like youth work or social work or something like that? And it was a real moment for me because I had never considered that. It had not been something that I had ever been talked about to me and I didn't really know much about it. But then I, yeah, I did some research and looked into it. And I was like, yep, this looks like it's for me. And I think by that afternoon I was enrolling. And yeah, so I enrolled in a bachelor social work. And yeah, that's how I and I loved it.

I loved studying. I wanted to read the readings because it was fascinating. And I loved the placements. And yeah. So I graduated in 2013 after about, it ended up being total about five years of study, a full-time equivalent over a bit longer because I took some time off and I did some part-time. But yeah, that's how I came to it. Wow. And what were your placements and how did they shape the direction that you wanted to take

after you had finished studying? Yes, they definitely did do a lot of shaping. As I understand, is quite common for people in social work. So my first placement was in the Ancali project, which is a social support program for people living with HIV and other chronic illness. And yeah, that was a really brilliant placement. I had a phenomenal supervisor named John Jones, who was a really brilliant social worker that I kind of looked up to a lot and learned a lot from. And so I think, yeah, I learned a lot about kind of professional identity in that placement and a lot of skills and a lot of assessment skills, a lot of rapport building. skills. And then my fourth year placement was with Bonados. So I was in an out-of-home care team, a short-term foster care program. And again, very fortunate to have a really brilliant,

brilliant supervisor, Suzanne. And yeah, it was a really wonderful team that felt very connected and a brilliant culture. I think that was what I really, really stood out from that program, was a really wonderful team culture. I learnt a lot in that team. And I really really loved the work. We were doing kind of case management of kids in inter-remortar foster care placements. And that turned into work. I was very fortunate that there was a position that I was able to fill when I finished placement. And I kind of just went straight on from fourth year placement to one week I was a student. The next week I was an employee. And yeah, I worked there for a number of years. And that really kind of launched a career that for the first part of it really focused in on

that out-of-home care child protection space. I think both just by circumstance that the work had been available, but also that I had loved it and had such a good experience at the start. And I was able to have a lot of really diverse, wonderful experiences in that field from there. And did you find it difficult that transition from student to employee, given that the responsibilities would have been very different in the expectations of you? In some ways, yes. In a lot of ways, no, I think both because I was really keen. like I was, you know, I was rearing to go. So I think it might have been hard, but I was like, I don't care, I want to do this. So I think my kind of enthusiasm made it a bit easier. But I also

just would say that I was incredibly well supported. So that placement, I felt was really well structured in terms of a real transition from the beginning of placement with a lot of shadowing towards the end of placement with actually doing the work. So by the end of that fourth year placement, you really were essentially doing the practice of case management, and you know, very supervised and obviously with a lot of oversight from the qualified practitioners. But yeah, I felt like I had been given the opportunity to do pretty much everything I would need to do as a case manager by the time I finished placement. I think the big transition that was difficult was managing a caseload. I think that's the real in particularly in case management roles,

but I think in any social work role, really. The thing to figure out is, in a lot of ways, I think in terms of logistically and organizationally, like, you know, how am I going to administratively plan and structure my work and my notes and all these tasks that I need to do? But then alongside that, just the prioritization and leaving things, I think, was the... I ended up developing this mantra that when I went into management later on, I really tried to use with practitioners, which was it can almost always wait until tomorrow.

Because I think that's the problem in social work is that it very often feels like now, like this has to be done now. I need this now. You've got people saying I need this now. And I remember I'd be finishing up as a manager at the end of the day and I'd go out and my staff would be at their desk and I'd be like, what are you working on? And they'd say X, Y is kind of like, can I wait till tomorrow? And then they look at me because they know that I'd be sitting there going, you can almost always wait until tomorrow. So yeah, just that skill. That was a real steep learning curve at the beginning

because, you know, you're passionate and people come into social work because they want to do good and they want to help people, which is brilliant. But yeah, just finding that balance of helping, but knowing, and I think it's not just about self-care and boundaries to support yourself, but I think it's about knowing

that sometimes it's actually unhelpful to do everything right away for families, for people that we're supporting. I think we can, can create precedents and levels of support that aren't replicable, you know, sustainable, I guess is a better word. So yeah, I think learning how to be helpful is the most critical learning curve for me in social life.

And I think so often that comes down to culture because as you said, you saw your colleagues staying back late. It's kind of like the norm or expected of you and being able to break that or feel confident saying no, would have been a really tough skill to learn early on. Absolutely. And I think that as we've generally speaking, I would argue most cultural patterns, it comes down from leadership, right? It's what gets measured, gets done and what gets tones get set by the shadow of leadership. You know, that that's what gets replicated in, in all the work that's fed up to leadership. But, and it's something kind of, a really fascinating thing that I noticed. I moved eventually. I did a few different roles at Bonados in out of home care over about four years. And then I moved to DCJ. as a caseworker, child protection caseworker, and noticing a real different culture there, my particular manager was really good at trying to shift a cultural tone around boundaries and self-care and things like that. But the team, there was this almost, it reminds me a lot of

Brunei Brown's kind of concepts around how she talks about exhaustion as a status symbol. Right. You know, and that it almost was like people would almost boast about how late they had stayed and it became like a badge of oh well you know I was here till 10 p.m. last night as though that was demonstrative of how good you were or how hard you were working and and I just remember having had such a different experience kind of coming into that going no thank you I don't I don't think what we think it means and you know I didn't I didn't blame those people I think they had been put in positions that were really untenable and been yeah so

supported to engage culturally in that way. So yeah, it's a really complicated thing. But yeah, it was fascinating to see those different culture. Yeah, I'm reflecting on an experience I had recently. I met up with some old colleagues from a hospital that I worked at. And we all had this realization that it took us after leaving the hospital a good six months. For that, we called it trauma, for that to leave us and that sense of feeling as though we have to keep doing things or at least be seen to be performing in a certain way before we could,

I guess, really mold into the new culture of the new workplace. But even in the hospital, you keep statistics, you swipe your thing whenever you do a thing. And you can see your hours adding up over time, but management does nothing about it. So it's definitely that culture from up high that they might encourage you to keep your stats, but they're not actually looking at it. and using that as a reflection of maybe we're expecting too much. Yeah, absolutely. And similarly at DCJ, they had a workload planner, which was developed by in conjunction with the union,

and it would say, you know, this task takes two hours of a worker's time. And I remember I kind of approached it with, well, I'm going to manage my time. And I know that task doesn't take me two hours. So I was very, I will take on what I think I can. And I'll be clear with my manager about when I don't think I can. And I think that was the benefit of having. worked elsewhere first. I had that backing and the ability to back myself. But I remember this one point in time, and I was, I will own that I was maybe a bit reactive in this moment, that we were

kind of given this mandatory training to do. And it was really important training. And it wasn't that any of us didn't value it. But there was no, it was like four days in a flex period, for full days of training in a flex period. And I remember kind of there was just no discussion about what would give what would be the thing that kind of and I remember filling out that workload planner and taking it to my manager with like an obscene amount of hours that I didn't exist that I needed to do and I took it to my manager and I said I'm not going to do anything with this because it's not like I don't want to cause grief for you and you know I can manage myself like I said I can I can manage this but you need to understand like this is what is being asked of us right now and yeah because it was just like

you know, you can only really just go with it for so long until something comes up, you know, and you're just like, this is too much. And did that mandatory training have to be completed by everyone all at the same time, so you couldn't even stagger the workload or have some cover during that period? Yeah, they did. They came to the person and did that. Funnily enough, I actually ended up transitioning to be a facilitator of that training. Okay.

It was just a pretty part of my journey. it was super useful training in terms of staggering the workload that would be helpful for in a child protection sense for like response the team going out on responses but i mean at the end of the day really in that kind of case management space you've got your own case management and you can't like other people couldn't really take it off your hands anyway like even if we did stagger it you know the stuff about kind of going out on responses sure that can be done by whoever's on response that day but yeah like when you've got your own cases, like even having different opportunities, other people can't really cover your work in that way. It's all, and not easily. It'd kind of create more work

of doing handovers and all that kind of thing that would just make it not worth the help. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Were the team structured differently between Bonados and DCJ in terms of like, were there different allied health professionals? I'm assuming that Bonados had a larger mix of different allied health professionals and DCJ was mostly social workers. Am I completely wrong there? And if not, do you think that affected the expectations of doing that extra work and really kind of working you into the ground? Interestingly, it was a little bit the opposite in terms of the balance of social workers and people from other professions.

Okay. But Barnardo's particularly my team was all social workers. So my team was entirely made up of social workers. In terms of the foster care program within the building that we worked in, I was at Auburn, Bonados for that time. There were other programs with other people like youth workers and a domestic violence counselor and sexual assault counselor. So there were other, but our program was entirely social workers.

Whereas DCJ, I found that yes, there were a couple of social workers in the team, but it was a lot of varying professions. There was a lot of people that had studied like psychology or criminology, people who'd studied social science, people who were ex-teachers, some ex-police. So yeah, really, really varied. And I actually think, yeah, that influenced definitely the lens that was brought. There was a lot of benefit to that because there was a lot of really different perspectives, but I think there was also maybe not as much discussion around self-care and a welfare work context for those people prior to coming into the role,

hopefully more now in those professions, but we're talking about almost 10 years ago. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm curious then what your thoughts are in terms of, especially having the social justice lens, the justice interest that you started off with before coming to social work. How do you see social work being a good fit for that kind of work, given that there are different professions that are in those roles? The way I've come to see it, and this I conceptualise more when I moved into mental health, social work and like psychotherapy, the way I've kind of kind of

conceptualised it is that I think that with these roles, there's a certain set of skills that make a person really, really skilled at the work. And I think that they are often a blend of the focus of different professions. So using kind of psychotherapy and mental health as an example, people often ask like, what's the difference between a counselor or a psychologist and a social worker? And I kind of talk about what the training focuses on, right? Where social work focuses on, holistic assessment, looking at kind of the systemic influences on individual health and, you know, the societal determinants of health and mental health and things like that, and looking at a whole person and a whole picture and kind of bringing that into mental health treatment. Psychology kind of obviously looks a lot at the presentation of psychology in terms of like how mental illness manifests, what kind of the neurobiological background of

different presentations are and treatment of those specific. mental health presentations. And I think counselling really focuses on that therapy relationships. Like it really focuses on the micro skills needed to do therapy, to kind of be in that room, in that space with people. And for me, all three of those things you need if you want to do psychotherapy, right? And so how I look at it is that you train focused in the one and they will include elements of the other. But I look at it as you, it's then our responsibility to, to acquire the other focuses and the other skills and to bring that balance in. So I had to do a lot of training in psychology and psychotherapy. I did specific training in counselling and counselling schools because

I got a little bit of that from my social work training, but not the level I wanted to be a quality clinician. And so I think it's the same in DCJ and casework in that I think all those professions bring an element of the role. Like if you were a teacher, you'd have a really phenomenal understanding of child development of, you know, milestones, of learning. potentially of the impact that, you know, school can have and all these other things, you know, if you're coming from a criminology background or a police background, like you've got that real understanding of abuse potentially and the nature of psychology around perpetration of abuse and things like that.

And, you know, so there's all these, and investigation, I guess you might have more understanding of and that kind of thing. And so I think you bring that, but then you've got to learn the other side. So I think social works are really good fit generally because I think we're taught often people ask me like what is social work. That's like the kind of golden question that all social workers get out. And I remember thinking during studying and people ask me a lot and I was like, I don't really know. And it hit me. I don't really remember when, but it hit me as I was going through.

I realized what a social worker is. And I think for me, this kind of captures all different kinds of social workers. I said a social worker is trained to meet a situation and they're trained to figure out what is the need, you know, what's going really well, what is not the need, you know, what are the strengths and resources we can use and then where are the areas of need? And then the social worker is trained to go and how can we access that need, starting with yourself and your own, that person's community, that person's availability of resources, then looking at what can that social worker themselves provide and then looking at what do we need to get externally.

So it's kind of about identifying strength and need and then figuring out, you know, collaboratively, how do we achieve that? And I think that lends itself really well to DCJ because I think if you don't have that approach, you can end up coming in quite authoritatively. Like you can come in quite punitively and come in quite like my job is to keep the kids safe and to protect the children. Yes, absolutely. It's called child protection. But the way to do that is generally to strengthen families. It's not to think that we can do the protecting. So yeah, I think that fits well. Yeah. So you then moved into more of a mental health role. How did that all come about? So I transitioned from casework at DCJ into the casework specialist space, which is essentially like the practice quality kind of arm of, so there's the office of the senior practice.

at DCJ, whose role is really to just strengthen the practice of the casework. And I was doing, like I said, I ended up facilitating that training. And so I spent two years in a facilitating kind of role, but that ended up transforming because of COVID, transformed into like almost like program development, like training development team and went to shift to online training and all different kinds of things. And we were doing a lot of work on leadership and on supporting leaders. and kind of cultural leadership culture and things like that, which I found really fascinating. And yeah, it was in that time.

I'd spent two years in that role and I was enjoying it around two years. It might not have been quite two years. I was really enjoying it. And then I did a bit of a life reflection. I was actually up the coast and a colleague of mine lived up the coast. And so I was hanging out with a colleague from the team. And he kind of asked me some questions that were very deep and reflective about life and career. and I'm very thankful to him because he prompted a really valuable reflection for me.

And yeah, I kind of sat down and I looked at like what my goals had been. And, you know, it was kind of a, I did lots of like, if I could do anything and no, I would succeed and I have unlimited time, what would I do? And that kind of thing, like asking lots of those kinds of questions. And I realized that there had been a part of me that had always liked the idea of psychotherapy. I didn't have the language for it at that time, but now I would, that's what I was thinking about is that kind of therapist role. And again, it really makes me think about the power of the influence that adults have over children in terms of it just was, I just didn't really think

of it as an option. Like it wasn't, I didn't know any psychotherapists and I didn't, you know, it was just something you saw on TV and, you know, I got it in my head weirdly that like, everyone would want to do that job. So it'd be super competitive and not possible. And so just all these, these self-limiting kind of ideas that you get. And yeah, I had kind of thought, no, yeah, if that's not a thing for me. And then I, yeah, I kind of, I had thought about the idea of trying to move into mental health social work at some point. And I kind of always said, when I'm not a baby social worker anymore, like when I'm not a new social worker, I'll do that. And I realized when I was doing this reflection that I had been a social worker for eight years. And I was like, I'm not really a baby anymore.

I can't really say that anymore. And yeah, so I properly thought about it and I did heaps of research and I kind of looked into like, do I need to study more? How do I go about this? Yeah. And I figured out that there were channels and ways to do it. And so I made a plan. I made a one, three and five year plan for what, you know, goals and things like that. And that was three years ago and I am on track which is really not with that planning more not not necessarily that it's turned out more that like my assessment was accurate about how long things take which is you know who knew that that would like I have no idea I'm just missing here but yeah no things are on track so I ended up looking for positions and and it was hard because I really didn't know I was I was eight

years into social work and I had had lots of different opportunities and roles and some really fantastic opportunities and I really didn't know I was like like, I don't know if I am a skilled person or an entry level person in mental health social work, like, because I'm a really experienced social worker, but I have not at all an experienced clinician. And so I was applying for roles and some, you know, I didn't get some and that their feedback was like, look, you just, you know, you've got lots of skills, but just we need someone with clinical experience. You can hit the ground running. I'm like, yep, that's fair.

And so I ended up getting a position at Wesley Mission. And it was honestly, like I will say, the absolute. perfect position for me to make that transition because it was within a foster care program as an in-house therapist, like an in-house clinician. And I was like, yep, I know foster care back to front and I can just focus on learning the therapy. And kind of since then with that team, we spoke about the fact that usually people have one or the other. Usually people are either really immersed and experienced in foster care or they're really immersed in the clinical work and they've got to learn the other. And I had it again, honestly, I just,

I feel very lucky that I've had really brilliant managers all through my career. Really, really phenomenal manager at Wesley Lynette. She really supported me well to get the training I needed and the confidence really, and really supported me to transition the transferable skills that I had. And I remember saying in my interview, I said, look, I feel like I've got the skills for CBT. Like I've done a bit of training in CBT. I utilize them in a couple, it's been quite a therapeutic case manager. but I wouldn't know how to deliver like a course of CBT from where to go because I've never had to do that.

So that's where I'd need the support. And she was yeah, incredibly supportive of that. And Gabe got me some more training and things like that. Yeah. So that's how I transitioned and I was there for two years. And then I loved that role and I actually probably would have stayed longer, but it was just really far. I was driving to Penro from like South Sydney. Yeah.

And it was great being out there, but it was just not really lifestyle wise. it was just a big much. And the other thing was I really wanted some experience working with adults, doing therapy with adults, I should say. I was done a lot of therapy with kids and I loved it. But yeah, I wanted some experience doing work with adults directly. And my goal had been, like when I set out to transition into mental health, my goal had been to get that mental health accreditation with ASW and to potentially move into private practice. So yeah, so from there, I got a position within Wesley again at a place called Frank Vickory. village which is an independent living village much closer to home and that's actually where I am right now

and I am the in-house clinician here doing therapy with older adults and that's been really really brilliant and then a few months ago that's a part-time position with the aim that in that other part-time that I wasn't working here I'd be working towards accreditation and private practice and yeah that all kind of came to fruition in the last six months so I did my accreditation and I got brought on as a contractor clinician within clarity therapy with a wonderful wonderful practitioner Mark Maselli who's the practice manager there who I know you've interviewed yeah small world yeah I remember mentioning to him and kind of saying you know you you're right if I'd do this you know and he was like yeah yeah I've done it I was like oh that's great

so yes I've been there for a few months and really really loving it there and I I'm now kind of at the point of transitioning to that as my primary work. I've resigned from Wesley with a longer period. I'll finish up here in about six weeks and go more fuller time at clarity. And I guess having another wonderful mentor within the business to assist with that transition, given that he's done that as well and being able to balance your time and figure out, you know, how many people can I take on a day? How much time do I need to leave for admin reporting?

all of that sort of stuff, that's really wonderful that you'd have his expertise to draw on. A hundred percent. Yeah, like I cannot express enough how valuable it was having. I mean, even before I came on to clarity, I asked and Mark was very, very willing to have a phone call just to help me kind of just pick his brain about the process of accreditation. He was very generous in giving me his insights about how that had been and that was really helpful. And then, yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Not only having a private practicing psychotherapist mentor, but a social worker was really, really valuable because I think, you know, any psychotherapist that works in private practice is perfectly fine for a mental health social worker. But there's just those very tiny elements that are very slightly different for a mental health social worker in terms of reimbursements and terms of like code numbers for Medicare and just very small things. and the practice that I've come into, again,

I've been very fortunate that it's incredibly well set up. There's lots of really wonderful systems that just make it easy and I can just focus on the shift to private practice without kind of having to at the same time navigate the incredibly different world of being a sole trader and managing your own bass statements and all that kind of things. Yeah. That's fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I wonder whether there might be scope, given Mark's background as well and his interest in lots of outdoor-based therapy things, whether that might be within the scope of the private practice, and that might be fun for you. And given your background with the arts and all sorts of interesting cultural things, I'm sure you could bring some of that in. I think I saw you had some experience with art and play therapy as well.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's very much that expressive therapy space. very, very alluring to me. I quite like the idea of an integrated approach, integrated without losing the integrity of the models that you're drawing from. But yeah, absolutely. I think for me, what I quite like, I have done particularly play therapy more so than art therapy with play as the therapy. So like kind of doing that like non-directive child-centred play therapy work. I've done a lot of that at Wesley. And that was really wonderful. But beyond that, it's more, I quite like the idea of utilizing those, you know, the CBTs and the acts and the DBTs,

like those kinds of therapies that are talk-based, but utilizing art and play to deliver that therapy. I think not only is it really valuable, but it's actually a real specific passion of mine. I remember being in an old team with a colleague who was absolutely brilliant practitioner, and I'd go to her any time I needed support around report writing and analysis, and she just had this really keen mind, but she just really didn't like coming up with ideas, like for creative, like ways to deliver something. It's just, you know, I think it was just not a comfort zone for her. But I was like, oh, this is my, like, I love this.

This is great. So, you know, we all bring out thing. But yeah, that's one of mine. Tell me what this kid likes and we'll come up with an activity that's structured around Fortnite or, you know, Roblox or whatever it is that they're into. And we'll like, let's use that as an analogy or let's make something fun for them that's tailored to them. So yeah, and very much I think I'm hoping and I've gotten the sense that clarity will be a space where that can unfold a bit more and, yeah, watch that evolve. Yeah, and bring it in through that kind of individual space, but potentially also that group space.

And yeah, the ecotherapy is a new frontier for me that I've not really looked at, but I'm very, very excited about being exposed to. Yeah. Yeah. Given your background in group facilitation, do you think that there's scope for you to do some of that group work or groups? supervision instead of just the individual one-on-one psychotherapy? Yeah, absolutely. And that's Mark and I've been talking about that as a space forward. I've been very kind of clear. Like, I really, really enjoy it.

Like, I really, really love groups. And it's a really comfortable space for me. Yeah, I think because those two years of facilitation, I kind of go, if you can facilitate what we were facilitating, you can facilitate anything because we were, I have utmost respect for the people who were, anticipating in our training because I had been them. I'd been a caseworker being made to be at that training, but they were overworked,

under-resourced and made to sit in a mandatory training that they not didn't want to be at. It wasn't that they didn't want to learn, but they just didn't feel they could. You know, they were there. They knew in other things they needed to be doing and, you know, facilitating in that environment. You kind of develop a lot of skills and skin, really, for just managing, tension and pain, ethical pain for people, because that's really what it is through the room. It's just people in pain and just mad sitting with people's pain while you're trying to facilitate learning and conversation. Yeah, so, no, I think that has prepared me well and then

given me a passion for it. And I think that has been, I remember one of your kind of the questions you mentioned to think about beforehand made me think was, you know, what do you like about the work that you're doing now? And interestingly, one of the things is, you know, that's been very different and it's not that one is better than the other, it's just very different and it's it's enjoyable to see how I am in this context is that this is the first role I've ever really been in where people really proactively sort out the service I was providing. Every other role I've been in has been either entirely involuntary or you know very like when kids in foster care go to therapy well yes it's technically voluntary, but is it? You know, like, you know, they've got a carer and a case manager kind of saying, you need to go do this.

And so, you know, even then and sometimes carers weren't necessarily wanting the kids to be there or so, yeah, that when there's that hesitation, from hesitation through to just flat out, I don't want to be here, it's just a very different space than, yeah, when people are in a space where they've come to it themselves, have actually, I'd like to talk to someone that might be able to help me here. And so you're no longer having to operate in this dual role of trying to help people, it's almost motivational interviewing really, like help people kind of explore their own reasons for maybe wanting or benefiting

from the service that you're able to offer. So kind of, yeah, really that space of exploring and almost promoting your service and what you can offer and how you can help alongside actually doing the helping. whereas here you don't know you don't have to develop buy-in like people are bought in they literally they're paying you know to be there so it's different and i'm really yeah enjoying seeing how that's presenting and how i am in work with people in the relationship and how do you look after yourself in that space how do you say something can wait in the work you're doing now i think it's having had a lot of time in the work i think that really

does come with having seen how things unfold and seeing just seeing that it will be all right if things wait you know that I think you kind of a seeing is believing type situation of like you just start to understand you know in a grander sense how it is but I think it's also a real understanding that it boundaries are actually helpful and seeing the way when you've put in a boundary and people manage something themselves can be very really powerful. And so how do I do it? I mean, I think one of the things I find hard and I've always found hard about this work, I imagine if I am not alone, I think a lot of social workers can relate to this, is that social work is human relationship work, right? Like it's like step one, build a

relationship that's generally speaking with all social work, no matter how quick your interaction, you know, 30 minutes at someone's side in a hospital, it's still build a relationship. Because if you don't, the work won't be as effective, right? And so whether it's just five minutes of, but, you know, it's always step one is build the relationship. And so when that is your job, when that is your, the literal job requirement, it automatically results in a really, a complicating factor for professionalism, right? Because if your job is to be a person and build a relationship with this person,

then the next thing you have to do is say, okay, but keep it professionalism. professional. And that is an automatic tension. And it's not an unmanageable tension. It's absolutely manageable. But it sets up an automatic situation where you're going to have to navigate authenticity with boundaries and professionalism. Right. And so I think the thing I have I have struggled with is I want to help and I want to do the things that I think will help. And yeah, really accepting and understanding that sometimes you can't. You know, sometimes, you know, you don't live in the house. You're not there all the time and you don't, that that isn't your job, that is hard. And so I think that's the element that's hard for me around having that boundary and it can wait till tomorrow is I think it's about constantly reminding yourself of that. And within that comes the systems and structures set up to help us remember, you know, supervision. Really big one. I'm really clear with all my supervisors, this is something I struggle.

with and I will need you to remind me that I need to not, you know, over-extend and that kind of thing. That shows a lot of really good insight, though, that you can recognize it in yourself, but then you're also requesting of the people that are supporting you. This is my trigger or this is what you might recognize in me, even if I can't see it at the time because I'm so stuck in it. Please help pull me out of that if you do see it. But what you're saying resonates so strongly with me in terms of, you can't solve everyone's problems.

I think if you go in with an expectation that you're going to, it's not a savior complex. I don't think social workers ever feel that. But I think it's very much, if you put that pressure and that expectation on yourself, you're putting yourself up for failure and feeling as though you're not doing what you need to do. And a lot of people will ask,

you know, how can you do the work that you do? It's really hard. My response is always stuff happens to people, regardless of whether we're there or not. And if you feel as though the impact or the interactions that you're having are in any way beneficial to that person or the people around them, then you've done your job, right? You've made an impact in a way that you might not even be able to recognize,

but to that person, it might have been exactly what they needed at that point. So, yeah, I think that's really important what you're saying around just setting your expectations that so much is happening for this person, you are just one person in that team of support. So recognizing that, yes, you do need to just be satisfied and know that the work that you're doing is beneficial at the time for that person. And that's okay. That's enough.

You are enough. Sometimes you're more than enough. And that's good too. Yeah, absolutely. Are there any other areas, given that you've very early on started with some HIV support work, Is there any other area of social work that maybe in the future you'd like to explore? I think for me, the big other area was the mental health space. And I think that was kind of my, the thing that had always intrigued me.

And so at the moment, I feel very passionate about learning and about my growth. So I think, yeah, I'm really enjoying that. I think the other parts of social work that intrigue me is less, about the type of work but more about the profession and I quite like the idea of over time being able to nurture the next kind of cohort of social work so there's a lot of things that really interest me in terms of delivering training and so developing and delivering training for social workers particularly mental health social workers like supervision is a real space that I quite enjoy I've always always had students, like supervised students as soon as I could love doing that. I've just joined

the ASW mentoring program as a mentor and I'm very keen to get that started. And I think it potentially like the academic space interests me as well for later on to look at, yeah, teaching, I guess, social work is another space that interests me. Yeah. I wonder if even other training might include research and potentially like a master's or something. similar, looking at a particular problem that might be coming up for you and your therapy. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, definitely, definitely an interest area. If there are any specific resources that you use in your work or that you'd recommend,

even things like Brunay Brown that you mentioned, what should people be checking out to understand more about what you do? Yeah. Well, look, I feel like it's, you know, Bray Brown is very rightly and in a way, that makes me very happy, very prolific now and very well read, which is really phenomenal because, yeah, I mean, I've been a huge fan of hers for a really long time, and she represents the social work profession beautifully. So, yeah, I mean, anything by Brunay Brown is going to help you in some way. I thought about this kind of in advance, and I think

for anyone who's kind of interested in mental health social work, I think something I found really tough about mental health social work and making that trend. was it was hard to find guidance. You know, the ASW has a lot of resources in terms of the process, but you know, at the same time, obviously they're there to assess so they're not kind of really kind of creating an assessment and telling you what the assessment is. But it was hard to find. So, I mean, I found having someone to talk to about it was really, really helpful. But yeah, there were a few, there was a book that I read which if anyone, I guess, is interested in private practice. that I found really valuable.

It was an audio book I listened to called Building Your Ideal Private Practice by Lynn Grudski. It was really a valuable book. And I think something that I didn't engage myself, but I was, I had it there and I was potentially going to, I did the process and I was like, look, if it doesn't kind of work out, I'll engage this service to see if it's helpful. But Ashton Hayes, I don't know if you've come across. She's been on the podcast as well, before her podcast came out.

Yeah. So it's going back quite a while now actually. Right. I don't know her kind of personally, but I remember finding her resources and thinking, yeah, this is amazing. So if people were wanting that mental health social worker journey, that was the thing I found the most difficult. Beyond that resource-wise, I mean, it really depends on if you're interested in mental health social work, really anything designed for psychologists who are psychotherapists is going to be helpful. So, you know, there's lots of online resources. I found a lot of training, which was really good as an introductory training on Pezzi, which is an online on-demand training service.

I mean, they also do live training, but most of it's that on-demand self-paced stuff. And what I found really, really valuable there was if I wanted to like dip my toe and be like, is this actually a type of therapy that I will like? And I did a few that I really valued. And so then I did more comprehensive trainings. And then I did a few and I was like, actually, that was really helpful because it showed me that's not the kind of therapy I want practice. So yeah, Henzy was my other suggestion. Yeah, great.

And I will put Ashton's podcast link in the show notes. It's becoming an AMHSW. Yeah. It's a bit of a mouthful, but she interviews other social workers who have gained their accreditation and talks about that whole process and what parts they found really difficult. parts that perhaps they slid a bit more easily through and also what resources were really important for them at that time so that people who are considering it can start to think ahead, but also create a bit of a support network around, you know, you're not alone. This is hard. It's supposed to be difficult, but you'll get through it kind of thing.

Renee Brown actually very recently recorded an interview with Esther Perel and Esther has her own podcast as well. I just thought, oh my God, my two favorite people, two of my favorite people coming together in one episode was just an hour of fun. So I'll put that in the show notes as well. I don't know if you check that out. No, I haven't listened to that one yet, but I do know both of them and I have a fan. Yeah.

So there are so many great resources out there, not just social work, but some psychotherapists who are doing fantastic work. And yeah, I think definitely I'll put those out the links in the show notes so people can go off and do their own reading and thinking and just considering around what direction they'd like to go in. But is there anything else, Steph, before we finish up, that you wanted to chat about about your experience or social work in general? No, I mean, my understanding is that kind of the audience for your podcast is social workers and kind of, I guess it's to share wisdom across social work and not that I necessarily always think I have a bunch of wisdom, but I think a thing

that I've really understood the value of over time for me. And I've been very lucky to have this support and nurtured along my career. But I think is just the value of having joy outside of work. I know, we all talk about this, but the example I give is that I do theatre, as you know, I perform in musicals outside of work. And it's one of the biggest joys of my life. My colleagues would always ask me, you know, Steph, how can you work eight hours here and then go to a three-hour rehearsal after work? You know, that's just exhausting. And I say, you know what? When I go to that three-hour rehearsal, I'm not thinking about work, you know? It's a real, if I'm singing and dancing with my friends. And so having that whilst it's time-consuming and it's tiring and

it's heavy and it can be hard, it really, if I remember particularly doing a specific show called Dogfight right now was a DCJ caseworker and I remember a couple of times going to a dogfight rehearsal after a particularly for long day at DCJ where I'd had to do some really emotionally intense had to be a part of some emotionally intense interactions and I remember kind of going to the director and saying hey like this was my day and so just keep in mind like I might be a bit and you know for about the first five 10 minutes I would still feel a bit woozy and shaky but then it would just kind of the boy and I'd be into into the show and into doing things and yeah it was just really so valuable having something that helped me let go of the full onness of social work sometime yeah yeah just so

important to have those interests and good people around you that can help distract absolutely yeah stuff thank you again so much for doing this and for sharing your insights and your journey right from you had the mentor experience very early on in the US that kind of led to you discovering social work and thinking, I love working with people and with kids and you've been able to develop your social work identity through those placement experiences and really figuring out how to organize your time through the case management and being able to balance your energy through that because that would have been incredibly draining, especially early on, a new social worker and figuring out where you fit with everything.

But the out-of-home care work as well and supporting young people and strengthening families and being able to apply that justice lens to social work practice and determining the need based on what someone is bringing to you. So on any given day, what someone presents to you, then finding or accessing the resources or supports that they need at the time. and you then moved on to developing and managing projects and programs and using that sort of policy and quality on within DCJ to use the experience of the case management casework to then support other people in those roles. I think it's really good for people to hear that as long as

we have the foundational knowledge in social work and the training, that the skills are very much developed in the role. So for a lot of people, they might think, I don't have experience in that, I won't go for that job. As long as you have that, you can probably do anything. Those foundation and knowledge will get you the job and then the skills come on the job. But I really look forward to watching that therapy space evolve as you've become a little bit more comfortable and figure out what kind of psychotherapist, social worker you want to be and your drive to find things outside of the work that give you energy with or without other beautiful people involved, but it sounds like you've really developed a great network of people around you

that can help you find that joy in other things and help separate from your professional life. Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you. I mean, that was quite an experience hearing my career kind of summarized in that way. It's incredible. No, I mean, I really appreciate what you're doing here. I think it's such a phenomenal resource for our community. just to hear the different journeys that people have. And I think particularly the different places social work can take you because that, I think, can be one of the overwhelming and almost confusing things about studying social work and becoming a social worker is you can just do anything.

I mean, obviously not anything, but it's just so much. And I remember, yeah, listening to a number of your podcast episodes and just hearing the breadth of experiences people have with a social work degree and that training. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, people are incredible and social workers are everywhere. I think this is, yeah, this is really just a testament to the scope and the breadth of the profession and what we can do and where we find ourselves. And, yeah, I think it's wonderful because there are people, I guess, like myself,

who don't really want to work in child protection or that sort of area. And there are people that really do. And I think, great, you can do that because I'm not going to do it. I'd rather be in this space. So, yeah, I think we've all got something to contribute. and we just need the confidence to know where that is. Absolutely. Thank you again so much.

I'd love meeting with you and getting to know you and yeah, I look forward to seeing how the practice base develops for you. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Steph, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.

Slashorek Spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Sue, a care manager at the care side, assisting clients in accessing support through their home care packages.

Originally from Shanghai, Sue spent three years as a corporate banker before moving to Adelaide to complete her master's degree, at Flinders University in 2019, chasing her desire to make a meaningful difference in people's lives through social work. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this next episode is available. See you next time.