Social Work Spotlight - Episode 120: Jean

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

In this episode I speak with Dr Jean Carruthers, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle who received her PhD in 2020 for her work on performance as a critical social work pedagogy. She has built on this to explore a range of creative methods in social work education and practice, with her current work focused on mental health and whether transformative wellbeing practices can be used to address gaps in the sector. Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Critical Conversations for Social Work Podcast - https://linktr.ee/criticalconversations4swJean’s PhD (Critical Performance Pedagogy: An approach for developing critical praxis in social work education) - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02615479.2023.2285848NNN training (NNN Name, Narrate, Navigate) - https://www.namenarratenavigate.com/Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_OppressedStephen Brookfield - https://www.stephenbrookfield.com/Henry Giroux’s ‘On Critical Pedagogy’ - https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/on-critical-pedagogy-9781350144989/Patricia Hill Collins ‘Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory’ - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/intersectionality-as-critical-social-theory-patricia-hill-collins-durham-nc-duke-university-press-2019-isbn-9781478005421/132219F147E569254907767E780ED974Bell Hooks - https://www.britannica.com/biography/bell-hooksThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y-Y11XPu3pf4IFrDzhwcPwfvqrQoZF_mKaZkAyTRPVI/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 each episode.

I'm your host, Yasamine Lupus, and today's guest is Dr. Jean Carruthers, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle. Gene received her PhD from Queensland University of Technology in 2020 for her work on performance as a critical social work pedagogy. She has built on this to explore a range of creative methods in social work education and practice. Jean's current work is focused on mental health and whether transformative well-being practices can be used to address gaps in the sector. Thank you, Jean, for joining me on the podcast today. Lovely to meet with you and have a chat about your experience so far. It's my pleasure, Yasmin.

It's really great to be here. I'll ask firstly what got you started in social work, when and how. First, I might just acknowledge that I'm on the land of the Awobico and Wuramai, people in Newcastle. I'm new to Newcastle as well. And also just to say that my pronouns are she, her, they're things that are part of my practice. And I like to kind of do that when I'm speaking to my practice. So I just wanted to add that. Interesting. I to really think about what, what was the thing or the influence or the motivation for me to go to social work? And there's actually probably a few things that led me here. And one of those things is my own lived and life

experience of sort of having a challenging background and childhood and sort of being a victim survivor of child abuse and child sexual abuse is part of my story and also inter-partner violence later in my sort of early adulthood and things like that. So that's certainly, did have an influence on shaping my direction, certainly. I also have family members who have struggled with mental health and have been diagnosed quite significant, like my mum when I was a child, when I was five years old, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had to be hospitalized. And that's been part of her journey and part of my journey for all of our lives. And I also have another family member who I'm really close to, who has struggled significantly with drug use.

And that's been something that's been really significant in shaping the ways that I would, I was drawn to social work to understand more, you know, to understand more about my own experience, to understand how to navigate and support family members, but also to recognise that I know that that's not just my experience and that there are a lot of people that have challenging experiences. And I guess it was a way that I could contribute to the support and some social change to be able to influence that, I guess you could say. One of the other influences, which I think is really a little bit quirky and funny, is that the earlier jobs that I had were jobs that had nothing to do with social work, but seemed to have an influence on my interpersonal skills and my ability to sort

of sit in a space, spaces of uncertainty and discomfort, and also spaces where people might be feeling stressed or have sort of high emotions. And it's weird and quirky because they are places like working in a call center for Qantas when September 11 happened. And so people who are traveling and are being disrupted because that was such a significant world-shattering experience, I guess you could say, and being able to hold that space and recognizing in me the ability to be able to do that, I suppose, was really interesting. I also worked at Suncorp, when Suncorp had met with. merged and people are very sensitive about their money and so I got to work with a lot of people

that were angry and frustrated and worried, I guess you could say, about what was going to happen with their money, with that merger happening and things like that. So those transitional times, I guess, when there's a lot of uncertainty and that definitely helped me to recognise some of the capabilities I might have had to sit in that space. The other thing was that I guess my own values, so growing up in a family where there was experiences of inequity and poverty and things like that, I was very drawn to sort of social justice values and recognition of dignity and worth of people and recognising diversity. I've got two Aboriginal sons of Gubby Gubby Gubby Gubby Country and I got to learn.

a lot about culture through my experiences of their lives, you know. Me being a non-Indigenous mother is really important for me to understand Aboriginal culture. And so that's something that those values, I guess, really have a lot of synergy to social work. And the other thing I think is that I started a Diplomero Counseling and alongside that I was a Reiki practitioner, Reiki is like energy healing and very interested in meditation and yoga and things like that. And wanted to sort of legitimize those ideas into social work practice, you know. Having a diploma of counselling, I recognise the gaps in my practice. And I sort of knew and recognized the value of doing my undergrad in social work because of that.

So yeah, so that was really interesting, that motivation to do that. And it actually took me in a totally different space, but what it seems to be coming around now, because a lot of my research is around transformative wellbeing practices being used in the mental health sector. So it's been an interesting journey along that. Yeah, so that's kind of shaped why I decided to become a social worker and why I decided to do a social work to do a social work to. degree pretty much. Okay, there is so much there, Jean, to unpack. I think the first thing that I'd love to start with is when you were doing your diploma of counselling, was it at that point that you discovered that social work was a profession and something worth exploring? Or did you, through your

own lived experience, have exposure to social work, or was it kind of a bit of both? Oh, look, I actually didn't have a lot of exposure to the systems of social work. I tended to use other means for my own coping and personal growth. And so it wasn't, I mean, certainly talking therapies and things like that. So I would see a counsellor. I think I did see a domestic and family violence counsellor at one stage and that was really, really helpful. But most of it was that I wasn't part of the system and I wasn't aware of a lot of the resources that I would have been able to access as well, I suppose, at that time. So I didn't have the knowledge to look at that. And I guess the influence of doing the diploma of counselling was probably because I had seen counsellors. And I guess,

I didn't have a broader knowledge of that at that time. So that's really interesting. And it was when I had completed my diploma of counselling and I had done the Lifeline Interpersonal Skills course alongside my practice. And that's when I noticed the gap was that I was having conversations with people in the field. I also started going to things like community festival. and things like that, doing the Reiki work for my practice, for my business that I was running privately. And that's when I kind of went, I feel like I have missed out on a lot of knowledge.

And I mean, I didn't know that at the time, but it was through those interactions that I had with other people and through those conversations that I went, you know, I feel like I'm seeing the same people and I'm normalising their experiences, but I'm not doing anything. more than that. I'm being compassionate. I'm sharing empathy and I am doing all the things that you do using skills, but I didn't have that broader social, historical, cultural, political analysis that really has supported my practice as a critical social worker. And when I went to university, I felt like that was where I went, oh my God, they're speaking the language I wanted. And yeah.

And so that was where I went. I'm home. I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be. These are my people. These are my people. Absolutely. Whereas before it was quite isolating, felt like I was doing it a lot on my own. And obviously the people that I worked with felt that what I was doing was helpful.

But I felt like there was a gap there. And I imagine that some of them didn't feel like it was as helpful as what it could be, you know. Yeah. And so what were your placements and how did those help shape the social worker that you wanted to be? They were really influential, actually. My first placement was in community development. And that was on the hinterland, on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. And so I worked across five different community centres and all.

also brought a community within my placement. I actually collaborated with another student from a different university. And we organized a community center crawl, which was like a bus trip to go to all the different community centers to see what they offered, and they had presentations, and we had meals at some places, and looked at some really creative stuff

really historical stuff. So that was a really valuable experience as well as like really having a foundation in that really grassroots community development practice, which I think has been a really strong foundation for the ways that I do collaborate and support people coming from that leadership from behind rather than sitting in an expert position. I think that really supported my broader practice from having that foundation. Yeah. That's got to be just the most wholesome thing I've heard in a long time as a community development crawl. I just love that idea so much. Yeah, yeah. It was pretty fun. As a new social worker, community development as your first placement can be a bit abstract without having sort of a practical application. Did you find it hard

to grasp the concepts or was it just like, no, I've got this. I understand where we're going. It wasn't that like I am somebody that is more inclined to go, I'm just going to see what this looks like and be open and sit with that uncertainty. That's just been my way, I guess you could say. So that wasn't a problem because I had the awareness to be able to learn from other people. and community development is all about learning from the community, you know. And so I feel like I was positioned as a student who doesn't need a lot of structure. It kind of fit me really nicely. But the other thing I would say about that is that it gave me a lot of autonomy as well.

And I was somebody that because I started my degree later in my life, like I was in my 30s, I had some life experience and I had kids. So I was actually a single parent when I started and it was really great to have that as a platform for empowerment actually because being a single parent gave me a pathway to be able to have a bit of an income and study and a struggle being a parent and studying and then eventually working as well. but it was a pathway that I think a lot of people might not realize as a pathway to that because you are supported enough to be able to meet your basic needs and also for me to be able to care for my children as well as doing something that helped me to realize my own capacity beyond what I thought I was capable of, I suppose. And so community development was sort of the soft introduction to placement, I guess you could say.

And the people that I met and the ways that I kind of invested in it meant that it didn't need to have a lot of structure, I suppose. Yeah, I know that some students being an educator in social work now and hearing people talk about their field education, a lot of people do feel like community development is too unstructured for them for their placement. and they would like more structure. But I would actually say it's a really great way to learn to find your own way of practicing

rather than relying on other people to model to practice. And so you're really drawing on that theory to apply to practice when you're doing that. And the beauty of it was that I actually did the community development unit or course, whatever you want to call it, at the same time as I was doing my placement. And that was intentional. So I facilitated that and the university supported it. So that was really good. Amazing. Yeah, I do remember doing my second placement in community development. And it was

partially because I had just the most wonderful supportive supervisor who was the manager of the center and happened to be a social worker. But the autonomy that I was given and the guidance around here is this project that we've been wanting to do for years, but we haven't had the man slash woman power to do it, go off and have fun with it and just give it a try and run focus groups and all this amazing learning that made me come out at the degree going, I want to do community development, I'm so passionate about it, I really want to do this, into my first role, which was where there'd been this huge restructure of the organisation, the NGO, they'd lost all the funding, and it was just suddenly me.

in a program all by myself without any handover, that was the best possible transition I could have possibly have because I had that foundation of, you know what, things work and you can help that process along just by having a good understanding of what's capable within a funding structure and then being a social worker and thinking about how that actually works on the ground and supports people. Yeah.

Yeah. If anyone's worried about a community development placement, and just think it's the best thing that ever happens to be as a student. It helps you think creatively about the ways that things could be done and also sort of really valuing the knowledge that the community brings and being guided and informed by that as well. It's kind of like the opposite of what we think we have to do in relation to having all the answers and feeling like we have to be an expert.

I think it's really valuable. to be able to have that experience. Yeah. But I also was in a community development role in family law, which was really interesting. So bringing people together to sit, have a meal together and have conversations about keeping children safe and separated families. And so you've got a totally different diverse group of people in that who are not used to sitting and having informal conversation because you're working with lawyers and mediators and practitioners

in social work psychology, in private practice, child consultants, all in the one room and having different kinds of creative conversations, which is really interesting. And I had some really good mentors in that space that helped to facilitate that creativity in that space. And I think we had some really amazing outcomes from that. Yeah. What a resource for what seems like a very forward-thinking legal practice to say we've recognized some gaps. Let's get someone in to try to pull that together.

Yeah. Yeah. It made me also change some of the assumptions I had about lawyers. Because when you get to know them and particularly working in family law, those assumptions that we have about lawyers and I'm sure that there are lawyers that fit the stereotype but most of the people that I met didn't fit the stereotype of what a lawyer seems to be and we're actually really compassionate, empathetic and socially just framed people so they would have been really good social workers. Yeah, I actually know a few people who either started

as social workers and then became lawyers or vice versa. And when you stop in the think about it, it makes a lot of sense because we're all coming from a social justice framework. It's just about that application and the training, but yeah, the sort of mind and the harder in the right place. Yeah, for sure. When I was working, because I worked in sexual assault as a counsellor and sort of community educator, and in that sort of context of practice, there was a lot of crossover where a lot of my colleagues and I would say, gosh, we need a a law degree to get around and navigate some of the complexities of that practice as well. So absolutely, totally here.

Yeah. You have done quite a bit of work around placement poverty and just coming back to your earlier comment around you as a single mom trying to get through your course, plus looking after the family, plus trying to do your placements unpaid. That positionality that you mentioned as a student is really important because you would have to remind yourself that, you know, these are the limitations on what I can do within my scope. I am a student. I'm not the expert or I'm not the experienced person here. And it sounds as though you had some good guidance at that point. Oh, look, yes. And I think

I noticed it wasn't so much placement poverty because I did have the family payment and the family benefit. I think I was well supported and I mean I was very frugal anyway. I was a single parent for 10 years so you get to know how to be frugal and make sure that your children get all the things that other kids might get but they might be different because they might be secondhand, you know, and stuff like that. And so I guess I was able to adapt and adjust to that. I think the time that I noticed it most was when after that there was legislation changes and because I was understanding more about the subordination of single parents and the ways that sort of capitalism does have an impact and the reducing of the welfare system and all of those sorts of things I noticed it because my

family payment was reduced significantly when I was working and that's when I started becoming an educator. So I had a role in, I think I was working in sexual assault at the time, and then I started tutoring at the same time. And I didn't, at the time, it was somebody had approached me. One of my mentors had approached me and said, look, I'd really like you to tutor in the trauma course that we're teaching. And because I was working in practice in that area, It was really sort of relevant because it was a practice-based course. And at first I said no because I didn't feel like I had the capacity and things like that. And also being a single parent, being somebody who's experienced trauma myself,

I didn't have a lot of value in what I bring and things like that. So there was some conditioning there in relation to the way women are subordinated in society. you know, I had internalized some of that stuff. And then when that happened, and I was going to lose, it was a significant amount, it was about $120 a week out of my family payment. And so I actually had to take on that role. And I'm really glad I did because it really opened up a whole new world of opportunities and possibilities for the things that I did and the things that I do now. like it led to me doing my PhD, you know, and it led to me creating sort of a creative pedagogy that can be used through my PhD to help students to think critically about the

ways that they apply theory to practice, you know? I'm a bit of a theory nerd Yasmin, and I really, I do value the ways that theory supports our practice. and our sustainability, critical reflection as well, is such a powerful sort of practice that we have that is sometimes minimised or undermined in our practice, you know. And I do think that the heaviness of the work that we do, the ability to critically reflect on our practice and the ways that that supports us to be emancipatory in our practice. So freeing people from oppression rather than sitting in that position where we could be sort of agents of social control. I think it's really important and really valuable. And I think they're the things that I got from being able to

work in the education space and to be able to think creatively about how we can bring that to students because that information is not easily accessible. And we use lots of big words, you know, and to bring it in a way that's creative and using theatre and arts-based practices and stuff like that can really support people who might not have gone to university or might not be as academic to be able to play with these ideas, you know? Yeah. Were you already in the academia space when you decided to take on the PhD, or did that kind of happen all simultaneously?

Yeah, I was. I was already tutoring and I also had met like a couple of colleagues from the drama department or the drama school and they were doing this thing called Theodore of the Oppressed and applied theatre and processed drama and I was like I want to do that because I was a drama kid. Yeah. Drama and dance was like my jam. A crossover there with sociology and those sorts of like Free Air and, yeah, and the Foucault and a lot of those sorts of things. Yeah.

So Free Air's critical pedagogy sits really nicely with Augusta Bowel's Theatre of the oppressed practice and they know each other. They're from the same country. Yeah, both from Brazil. And so it was really wonderful to be able to sit in that space. So I did two subjects of an arts degree. just so that I could do those two units. And then I actually, in my PhD,

I was able to go to Chicago and work with Julian Boel, who is Augusta Boel's son, not work with him, but do some training with him and go to sort of a pedagogy and theater of the oppressed conference over there as part of my PhD. And that really sort of supported a really good foundation. There were a lot of social workers there actually.

and a lot of community organizers in Chicago. So it was a really good training ground for the ways that people are doing this, you know. And it kind of became a bit of a specialisation in my own teaching practice. And so I use Theatre of the Oppressed and I've kind of named it critical performance pedagogy, which kind of comes from Norman Denson's work in performance ethnography. So there's lots of nerdy theory stuff behind. it. That's so creative though in the crossover of disciplines and relating them to the way social work students can learn and be critical at their learning. I'm really seeing, I'm tying the

threads together in my head as we go, but I just think that sounds so incredibly interesting. And I don't know, I'd love to think that as a student, I would have gotten my head around that, but I don't know, there's a lot going on when you're a student and you're just trying to figure it out and float most of the time. I feel like you want to get people back in after they've already graduated just to say, hey, have you thought about this? Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of heaviness and so there's a lot of denseness in learning how to do theory. There's a lot of heaviness in the case studies that students are learning about

and things like that and being able to play with ideas and bring them into sort of an imaginary world and so my students do a play where they look at three different theories and apply them to a case scenario but they might do it as a fairy tale or as a reality TV show or as a like we've had lots of different ones so it might be the Wizard of Oz for example and the theories might be the three like the Tin Man and the scarecrow and the line and then Dorothy is the person is in the case scenario or Dorothy is the social worker that's getting guidance from these different theories, you know, along this journey that the social worker's on. Or they've done things like survivor or they've done game shows like perfect match, you know, matching the perfect theories

to the social worker, but really recognising that all theories have value, but they also have limitations and sort of playing with those ideas of if I'm going to draw on that theory, how do I do that within this context? And is that the most relevant theory if I'm working with gendered violence, for example? And if I haven't got something like a feminist analysis of patriarchy, what does that mean for what's missing if gender is part of that? So it's creative. it makes knowledge accessible and embodied. So they get to embody these ideas and go, what would that theory look like if I was wearing it, you know? So that's something that's obviously blossomed as a result of having done your PhD. But what was the process like for you of

firstly establishing considering finding your supervisor who had a kind of similar vision or at least understood what you were on about? And then following that through because you did it, you there around COVID time, right? That must have been that much extra challenge. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this started when I first started, so it was well before COVID, but I wasn't the person that developed the play idea. So I was the one that analysed it and brought theory to it, but that already existed. So my supervisor, Professor Christine Morley, who had sort of developed, that as like a tutorial exercise thinking this will be a creative way for students to explore things and then when I came along I went oh I really like this and I want to do more with it you know

and so I kind of brought that pedagogical foundation to it and recognised made those links to embodied learning made those links to those ideas that come from the ways that that we can use play as a way to learn and as a way to think from a social justice perspective. And so I'm not somebody that thinks about, oh, let's do something really playful and creative without having the social justice meaning to it. Like that's not my practice. And I know like there's nothing wrong with that, but the combination between that creative and critical understanding is what the pedagogy is about. And so that opportunity to think from that

social justice space is something that was really important to me. And even in my other practices, like when I was practicing in family law, I practiced with a collective group of people who were raising awareness around domestic violence. So activism was a big part of my practice. because I was a dancer, someone had mentioned flash mob. And that's when I went, oh, I like that. I'm going to be involved in that. And so I became part of the coordination of this flash mob. We ended up doing it three years in a row at a candlelighting ceremony for domestic

and family violence awareness. And I think they might still be doing that. You know, I've moved to other places, but I think the end. essence of that has continued, you know? What a legacy. Oh, it's, look, you've got to make it fun because we've got enough heavy and it's not about undermining the significance and the complexity and the suffering that people experience. But if we can bring ways that people can be open to change through creative means, I think

sometimes they can be more open. And I'm not saying that activism that is more radical is not just as valuable. Like I think that's wonderful. And I would consider myself a feminist. And I do participate in lots of marches to do with a range of different social issues. And so I'm not saying that we should do this instead of that. I'm saying this is just another way to bring people in, you know? Yep, and create awareness because if someone is attending and someone else asks them what they did on the weekend, they'll say, well, you'll never believe what happened. I went to this thing and then it's a discussion point and people remember it. So I think that's so incredibly wonderful. And I think when we bring our positionality in ourselves to our practice, it can be really meaningful for us as well.

And that helps us to be able to sit in hard spaces because we've got that sort of foundation. of this is me. I'm bringing me to my practice. So other than the teaching that you're doing post PhD, which looks slightly different now, where has that led you? So what's your current role and what does that look like? It's my first week at my new job at the University of Newcastle. And it's wonderful to be here. And I'm working with some pretty amazing colleagues that are doing some really amazing work. I was in some training today for a program called Triple N or Name, Narrate, Navigate. It's kind of a practitioner program that supports practitioners to work and facilitate processes for young people who use violence. And yeah, today was the first day of training. It's a three-day

training thing over a few weeks and and it's really valuable to see the amazing work that people are doing in the field, connecting with different people in the field and also recognising the incredible work that people are doing in spaces that are often not recognised. We know that there's a lack of sort of resources and education around working with people that use violence and I think it's a real credit to the University of Newcastle and the people that are involved. Tamara Blackmore, Louise Rack and their team at the Triple N program, I think are doing amazing work. For me, there's a lot of onboarding, I have to say, and that's something that it's really important for me to get to know the space because coming from where I've been, I can have a lot of assumptions, but I'm coming to a totally different area.

so I need to really embed myself in the local context. I'm doing my own research as well. So my research direction at the moment is around reinvigorating the mental health sector and using transformative wellbeing practices to do that. And so that's where I'm kind of coming back around in relation to those mind-body spirit practices that I think are being used but are often not recognised or not seen or not legitimised, but also alongside sort of Indigenous knowges and perspectives that we know are really valuable, but often we don't recognise those in practice and restorative and critical

practices that can be used. A colleague in Canada, Katrina Brown, talks about critical clinical practice. And so that's a way to depathologise the ways that we do critical practice, you know. And it's a way to do clinical practice that's depathologised and not so entrenched in the biomedical model and recognizing that there are other ways that come from sort of feminist and narrative and critical approaches that can be used in those spaces. But they're often not recognized as legitimate because of that dominance, you know. And it's not to say that those practices aren't important. It's to say that the dominance of them means that other practices that are really valuable are not funded and not recognised and are subordinated, including arts-based practices, you know. So my research is about sort of documenting where those practices are existing already,

and then how can we facilitate the support for those practices to be recognised, to be funded and to be legitimised because we know that there's an oversaturation of need in the mental health sector and we know that there's a lot of biomedical influence. There's also psychosocial practices, but we need to have funding for those to work really well. We need to have sort of ways to support people into community and have those sort of transitional spaces, I think. And a recognition with some of these more mainstream services that this can work alongside and sometimes that is actually needed it's not about working alongside necessarily it's about this is fundamental to some people's support and recovery that's right because not everyone's

the same and we need to recognize that people's positionalities and the need for intersectionality to be recognized in practice we know that there's an over-representation of Aboriginal and and Torres Strait Islander peoples within who are suffering because of intergenerational trauma and many different things that are an impact from our society, from colonisation, from child removal and all of those things. And if we are expecting a system that has been

a colonial influence to be the only way or the dominant way, we need to think a little bit more about that. And I know that people are doing this practice and they're doing amazing things in these practices. And this is about being able to show that and that being able to equally have standing alongside those practices that are dominant. And I think it's a big deal, you know, it's a big undertaking.

But, you know, if that's my life's work, I'm okay with that. Yeah. I was talking with actually two of the very recent people, wonderful guests that I was speaking with for the podcast. one is indigenous to an area of Canada. Another one is First Nations Australian. And they were both talking quite a lot about that flexibility that's needed in approaches and just ways of knowing and doing.

And one of them is involved and has a practice around nature-based therapy. And so it's that bringing in of other supports, maybe calling it something different when it's needed, if you kind of need to get buying initially from GPs or from other practices, but also then trying to build the understanding within communities and within individuals and groups and other programs around, no, no, we're going to call it nature-based therapy and this is why and this is how it's beneficial. So I think, yeah, we're seeing a little bit more of that, but obviously it's definitely

a growing thing. And I would be interested in us being able to come to a place where we don't have to change and re-translate language for, you know, liberalism, you know, I would like to see us to be able to not co-opt practices that don't need something else. Like I know that there's a lot of co-opting of yoga practice into trauma-informed practice, which I don't have a problem with trauma-informed practice. However, yoga in and of itself has a rich philosophy and history that doesn't need to be turned into something else, you know. Nature-based approaches, the environmental practices, they don't need to be co-opted with

CBT because in and of themselves, they are therapeutic, you know? I don't know that we're there yet and probably that could ruffle a few feathers that I'm even saying those things. Indigenous knowledge and practices have been around before we were, you know? And so why do we have to put them into something that comes from a white Western dominant construction? Yeah, just to prove legitimacy. Yes, yes. Why can't we see them as what they are? And I don't think we're there yet. And I mean, if we had more understanding of our own assumptions from that white western dominant space, I think maybe things could change, but I'm checking my own conditioning all the time, Yasmeen. So that conditioning is really strong in me even though I know what I know.

Yeah. So it's a journey and it's not about judging the journey. It's about us becoming sort of open to being aware that, you know, these practices, they don't need extra. They don't need an add-on. They have that therapeutic value in and of themselves. That's kind of what I'm trying to achieve. And it might be totally different in my research. I might find that that's not the case, but that's what research is about, isn't it? You've had to look beyond your own difficulties to even think about helping others. And I imagine for you, that's an ongoing. process to not decondition but just acknowledge and understand it and know where things are coming from if you're feeling and thinking a certain way and then responding appropriately but how do you do that

what support do you need to be able to do with this great work that you're doing oh look yeah yeah thank you one of the things that i do is i have a really strong understanding that lived and living and life experience is incredibly valuable to social work. You know, I do feel like there is a subordination of lived experience practitioners in the field, particularly when the assumptions of social workers might see them as a subordinated role. It's a different role to be a lived experience practitioner and I've never worked as a lived experience practitioner. So I'm coming from a view of observing that from the outside. I recognise my lived experience, but I work as a practitioner. And the ways that my lived experience and my life experience, particularly

with the ways that I have observed the systematic harm of my family, particularly and particularly around substance use and mental health and things like that. And I can say that, there's been amazing practitioners that have worked with my family as well. And so I'm not saying that the system is all harmful, but I know that systemically harm does exist, you know, harm does happen. And that's for many, many reasons, you know, that I won't go into at the moment. But what my lived experience and my life experience gives me is a really good sense of that understanding, understanding and empathy and to be able to hold space for discomfort, you know. I see myself as living with the impacts of trauma because I do have times when that does

impact on doing a lecture, for example, and being able to hold that space without having intrusive thoughts come in or having a sense of anxiety, you know. The day before I did my first lecture and I don't want to minimize. panic attacks or anything but the day before I did my first lecture I had a panic attack and I just had to lay down and do what you do and not panic about it and I had the feeling of okay well I'm glad that's over and I'm glad that didn't happen when I was actually doing my lecture but now like now that I am more seasoned and everything I actually acknowledge that in the space you know I acknowledge that the sensitivity. I actually speak about my own experience in a way that I bring theory to

and an analysis to the ways that I can reconstruct it. So I'm actually using that as an educational tool which is empowering for me and it normalises that trauma is more prevalent and you can be in positions of status and still live with trauma. And I imagine there's a lot of people in practice that do. And I think we can see that not as something to stigmatise, but see that as something that is really valuable to the ways that we connect with people. And what I would say to that too is that I am very much aware that my experience is my own experience from my own background, from my own

positionality and my experience is not the same as anybody else's experience and so I never go in thinking that I would have any expert knowledge of somebody else's experience because this is going to be different to mine. Yeah but it's modeling that exploration and curiosity and I feel like it gives your students an opportunity to reflect and think okay well something's affecting me what might that be where is that coming from? Let's talk about it as opposed to shutting it away and assuming it doesn't happen. Yeah.

And to recognise that you can have a lived experience of the impacts of trauma and you can live with the impacts of trauma, but that doesn't mean you're unintelligent. It doesn't mean that you're less than another person. And so when we're thinking about our roles as social workers and power, we can be really mindful of when we're working with a service user to not subordinate them according to the power that we have and to rather recognise that they are and I mean so many practitioners would do that and know this you know to recognise that they are the owner of their lived experience they are the person that has the knowledge about their own experience not us you know And that's really that anti-oppressive approach to be able to sit in that space and really bolster the power of the person. And you can do that in so many really simple ways by just walking through the door and pragmatically giving that person decision-making power in relation to where they want to sit, you know, and instantly they're in charge, not us.

Yeah. And so if I was to think about my practice and the ways that I teach as well, it's very response-based. And so it's filtering what's happening for that person, filtering through my social, political, cultural analysis, and then recognizing the position of power that I have and really being aware of not to use that power in a way that I become the expert. and so I'm responding from that person with those analyses in the back of my mind to make sure that I'm not creating more oppression for that person in that moment. Yeah, you know? Absolutely.

Do you think you might ever go back to a counselling role and maybe even given your background in having a practice? Is that something in the cards for you? Oh, look, I don't think so. Not because I don't value it, but I feel like the direction that I'm heading in in relation to this research and everything is more of becoming an advocate alongside practitioners who are doing really transformative, creative practice and really amplifying their voices. So I see my role now as being somebody who amplifies the voices of supporting. practitioners and practices and knowledge as and perspectives and not to say that that's something that I have the power to do, but using creative methods such as documentary, you know,

such as podcasting, such as using arts-based practice and things like that. So really recognising that we've got amazing practitioners, we've got amazing educators, we've got amazing students, and I would like to hear more. of the ways that they can see us using different possibilities for the ways that we do practice. Yeah. And even I would say that service users and the people that we work with or walk alongside whose lived experience can shape the ways that we could do things differently. I think that's really important. So really fostering that understanding that lived and living experience practitioners have a really important and crucial role in the future of the ways that we do

things, you know. And you've been involved in a podcast as well yourself. Did you want to talk about that? I have. Yeah. It's the critical conversations for social work podcast. I'm not involved in it anymore. It was something that was part of a field placement educational process that started in COVID.

And so I kind of did that as a collaborative. project with students and now it is continuing but it's continuing with somebody else and so it'll be interesting to see the ways that it will change and develop and evolve and I think that's fantastic. I love that we can have legacies that continue on in different forms, you know, it's beautiful. Absolutely. Well, I can definitely link to that in the show notes, but if anyone else was interested in any of the concepts or themes or the things that you're working on. Did you want to shout out any other resources and I can pop them in the show notes? Yeah, probably the Triple N program with Tamara Blackmore.

So that's something that is doing some really valuable work. I also, the thing that I would like to leave a message about is that we often, and this is about recognition of indigenous knowledges and perspectives and queer, knowledges and perspectives. I think it would be really valuable for people who are students that are listening to this and who might be practitioners, that we're reading literature that is coming from Indigenous peoples in relation to how we could learn from the knowledge is and perspectives. Rather than that deficit idea that we're learning about Aboriginal people and the marginalisation and oppression, that's important.

But we're not reading enough about the knowledges that are available to us from those spaces. And also recognising that we need to be mindful of the queer spaces, the queer knowledges and perspectives, that we as practitioners, regardless of if we're queer or not, we need to have our head around because we're going to be faced with people from the LGBTIQA plus community who may need to use the resources and supports that we provide

and we need to be able to not be scared of that kind of practice, you know, and to have a knowledge base and not asking trusive questions of people who are from different diverse sexualities and genders because of our own lack of knowledge or ignorance, you know. Yeah. Have you seen the documentary after the apology that came out a few years ago? Yes, I have. You made me think of that because that was, the point was, you know, people were realising that it was these government departments were trying to reinvent the will and

they were saying, no, no, no, we have existing knowledge, we have existing practices that have been demonstrated to work over time, can we please just incorporate these to try to reduce the amount of kids that are still in care, the over representation that we're still seen after the apology, which is the opposite of what we're supposed to be seen. That's it. Yeah. So there are the things that I would leave with people and just as an invitation, you know. Yeah, I love that.

I'm going to go off and do some more reading about for a year as well, because I sort of touched on a little bit when I was doing my own research. But yeah, I just love that. There's so much around education and that thought and practice and questioning the nature of historical and social situations, which we're trained to do as social workers. So I'm going to take myself down a rabbit hole. And more contemporary critical pedagogy, Henry Giroux,

Stephen Brookfield, are amazing people. And I would even say feminist scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins, and Bell Hooks, I think, are underestimated and that intersectional feminist lens. And, yeah, you know, there's so many, there's so many, as I said, Jasmine, I'm a bit of a nerd. Yes. I love this. It's so good. But what you're doing is you're coming from that position of lived experience, of having

those challenges that you've experienced growing up and as a young adult. And you're using that to support people. I mean, even when you said you work for Qantas, you were holding space for people. and you've throughout your career been supporting other people through change management and those transitions, which you yourself have had to very recently take that on board and try to adjust to a new environment and a new role while still having that very strong social justice focus. So there's a big crossover with law and legal systems that you've mentioned. And the other thing you highlighted, which I think is really important, is that word of mouth referral for

job opportunities. So shout out to everyone who's still training or is still early career or even late career, build your network and hold on to those people because that's where the opportunities are going to come. Those are your tribe and you want to continue to foster those relationships. Yeah. And that comes through collaboration, you know. Yeah. Not just networking, but collaboration. Really working together and getting to know people on a personal level, I think, has been incredibly valuable for the opportunities that I've received. Yeah, who are your stakeholders and how can you work together? Yeah. Yeah. You've shown that uni can be fun, which I really love. You've gotten people excited about theory and thinking creatively about how our skills can translate to whatever

we're looking at at the moment and just the learnings from this conversation and the exciting things that you've been part of and you continue to be part of. Is there anything that we have? And there's so much, I could talk to you forever about this stuff and get really nerdy myself. But is there anything you want to leave people with anything that we haven't talked about? I don't think so. I think we've pretty well covered it. I guess the biggest thing is just to be you and recognize the value of having a good critical analysis so that we can respond to people from where they're at rather than where we think they should be.

Amazing. Thank you again so much for your time, Jane. I've loved this conversation. and loved networking and collaborating with you. Thank you. Take you. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion

or ask anything of either myself or Jean, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm. slash social work 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 Ray, an emerging social worker from a culturally and linguistically diverse background, dedicated to supporting families, children, and young people. She currently specializes in assisting families impacted by the criminal justice system and also serves as a casual university social work supervisor. 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.