Social Work Spotlight - Episode 127: Kimberly

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

In this episode I speak with Kimberly, who has 25 years of practice experience working alongside individuals, families and communities, responding to interpersonal, institutional, and colonial violence. She teaches in various universities nationally and internationally and provides supervision to social workers and therapists. Kimberly lives and works on Yuin country and identifies as a non-Aboriginal settler migrant with white privileges and indigenous ancestry from Mexico.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:AbSec - https://absec.org.au/Kimberly’s article: Restoring children from out-of-home care: insights from an Aboriginal-led community forum - https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/restoring-children-from-out-of-home-care-insights-from-an-aborigiUNSW’s Bring Them Home, Keep Them Home - https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2022/10/bring-them-home--keep-them-home--reunifying-aboriginal-familiesThe Moogai film - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-30/the-moogai-aboriginal-horror-movie-jon-bell-shari-sebbens/100178202The Last Daughter film - https://thelastdaughter.com.au/After the Apology film - https://aftertheapology.com/Power series on Netflix - https://www.netflix.com/title/81416254The upEND podcast - https://upendmovement.org/podcast/Centre for Response-Based Practice - https://www.responsebasedpractice.com/Cathy Richardson’s substack - https://catherinerichardson.substack.com/Vikki Reynolds - https://vikkireynolds.ca/Discourse Analysis and Psychotherapy article - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256437848_Discourse_analysis_and_psychotherapy_A_critical_reviewInsight Exchange - https://www.insightexchange.net/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LHVWdaPKN3I9K0uU25gTJRgW60rCAVUSRd9rUhR7whw/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, Jasmine Lopez, and today's guest is Kimberly, who has 25 years of practice experience working alongside individuals, families and communities, responding to interpersonal, institutional, and colonial violence. She teaches in various universities nationally and internationally, and provides supervision to social workers and therapists. Kimberly lives and works on Yuen Country, and identifies as a non-aboriginal settler migrant with white privileges and indigenous ancestry from Mexico. Thank you so much for Kimberly for joining me on the podcast today. Looking forward to having a chat with you about your experience. Thank you for having me.

I always ask firstly when you got started in social work and what brought you to the profession. Well, what brought me to the profession was when I was about eight years old, a friend of mine at school couldn't go to a sleepover. and I thought, well, that's not fair that she's not allowed to go to sleepovers. And she was really sad. Anyway, so I think that was my first, not my first, one of my first, you know, like recognitions of like things are not all equal and not everyone gets the same opportunities kind of thing.

And then I kind of thought that I needed to, like, advocate or do something to make it fair for her. And that was, I guess, presumptuous of me at the time, thinking that sleepovers are, that everyone should go to one. And anyway, fast forward, I've realized, you know, later on down the track that that was probably one of my first times that I wanted to help someone and from a sense of injustice. And then I wanted to become a counsellor because I like listening to people's stories. But then I realized that counselling profession was predominantly a psychologist kind of role. And then I looked into psychology and realized that psychology didn't pay much attention to the context and to the sociopolitical environment and to class.

And so I changed my idea from being a psychologist counselor to a social worker. And what's led to this point in your career? What was your early learnings and even, I guess, placement opportunities while you're at uni? One of my early learnings, we have to do an assignment on whether or not a family was dysfunctional or society was dysfunctional. That was a moment in my learning where I realized that not many and my peers believed had more of a socio-political analysis and were quite happy to locate the problem in the family. And my placements, my first one was at the equivalent of DCJ. And again, I saw, I was lucky enough to have a social worker pull me under his wing. And he was very much a social worker

who understood that people were doing the best they could with what they had. You know, I remember going to a home of a single mum who the report was that she'd hit a kid and he just said you could tell she's doing everything she can and he closed the case but that not everyone in the office would have agreed with him and then i did another placement at the ethnic communities council of new south wales where it was you know a policy and community development kind of role and i realized then that i really liked the idea of working in policy but i didn't want to start in policy because I thought he or my to say, you know, what things should be happening for community. So I made a promise to myself that I would, if I went into policy, I'd do it after many years

of understanding where families are at and what they experience. That takes quite a bit of maturity rather than just jumping straight into it, recognising that you wanted to have the experience under your belt and understand the context of the things that you were potentially influencing. Yeah, I think I met in that placement. and I got an opportunity to meet a politician. And I realized how disconnected he was from reality. And I think that was when I realized I didn't want to be one.

I didn't want to be one of him, you know. Yeah. So what did you do when you first left, Jenny? So I worked in a youth refuge. And then I worked with young people on the streets in what was then called a drug and alcohol role. And then we moved into child and family counselling role. And then was acting. manager of us the centre for a while and then moved into a child sexual assault role and then did

child and family counselling with CAMS, child and adolescent mental health service. And then I moved into a sexual assault and generalist counselling two different roles but within the same health service. And then I became the manager of the sexual assault domestic violence service for about nine years. and then I move, yeah, I know, I keep going. Yeah, there's a little bit to unpack there. I'm just thinking early on in your career that positionality of supporting people, youth on the streets, being such a young person yourself, was that difficult? No, it wasn't difficult.

I think what was difficult was hearing about how the young people had been let down by the system. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And what was the process like for you moving into more of a managerial role, stepping away from the caseload. I think one of your previous guests spoke about it. Yeah, the reason why I went into a managerial role was because I was in a counselling role and no one else had applied for the manager's role for six months and we needed a manager. One of the senior workers said, I'll support you. I don't want to do the role, but I'll support you. And she'd been there for a

number of years. So that's how I did it. Yeah. It is really interesting because so many of the people I've spoken with have jumped into management or leadership because of necessity and they feel unprepared, I guess, in some ways. And in other cases, it's absolutely ruined their relationship with the team that they were working within because all of a sudden the dynamics changed and the hierarchy shifted. And did you find that that was really challenging? Did you have the support you needed within that role? Early on, I had a lot of autonomy and I had the support I needed from the team. had a great team, were committed to the service and the way we worked. I took the approach that I'm not here to lead, as in tell people what to do,

but I was whenever there was a policy or process issue, I asked them the history of the practice and what had been happening in that sector or the service and why before I thought I had the right to go in and change whatever it is that needed to be changed, and I think that was really respected. And I brought everyone on board with me, and I just, felt like I was in service to them to make sure that they were doing the best that they could do. It wasn't an issue of, you know, power over. And I had been in leadership roles before.

I managed, I was the president of the Mexican Australian Welfare Association for a number of years. And so I'd been in leadership roles before. What did that entail in that organisation? Not for profit. We were fundraising. We ran events to promote culture and community connection. And I guess I now look back on it, it was a community development role. And yeah, we had to, we had meetings and budgets and reports.

Yeah, it's a community development role because I'd grown up with that organization and organizing the events. And so it was really important to me that I carry on those traditions to do the children that were coming through. Yeah, nice. Yeah. When you say you grew up doing that, is that because perhaps your family were quite community-minded?

Did that kind of start your desire to get into that? Yeah, my, my mum was involved in the Mexican Association from its inception. And my dad was a teacher, but very much valued. He was not Mexican. He was a white guy from the country. But he had a strong sense of social justice. And he had also a strong sense of importance of community and valued the culture. So, yeah, he was always very much involved in community activities and fundraise.

and yeah. And were you born in Mexico or you were born here? Yeah, I was born in Mexico, yeah. Okay, how old were you when you came out? Only a couple of months old. Okay, so not long enough to have made connections, yeah. No. But it sounds like you still have a really strong tie,

both with the Mexican community here and you travel back quite a bit. Yeah, I live outside of Sydney now, so the tie with the community is not as strong as it used to be, but yeah, I do have, they are my family, like the connections I made early on, you know, with my mum made early on they are my family and my Mexican family here now even though they're not blood-related and yeah I still go I've been back to Mexico four times in the last two years so still you know quite connected and involved yeah yeah and what do you do when you go back

what are the sort of projects or programs you're part of I'm part of a master's program master's narrative therapy and in that program I teach around violence and not just interpersonal violence but also institutional violence. I also teach in a diploma a different course there and these courses involve people from all over Latin America and then I also do some work with another non-profit which is around violence improving the responses to violence yeah social responses to violence so yeah that's what I do. That's pretty amazing and you also are you still teaching at universities here? Oh yeah so I've been involved

with several universities and I just get called in when when I'm needed. I've just been asked to be involved in writing another course for another university. So I do it when they call me. Yeah, but it sounds like you've kind of developed that specialty and niche and they understand the value that you can bring. Yeah, and the feedback from the students is really strong as well. I, you know, it shocked me to hear from several universities, students that they are really lacking in teachers who have lived in current experience and not just career academics, because, you know, when I teach and when I write what I'm teaching, I write it with the people who I'm working alongside in mind. Yeah. I take that really seriously. I don't, I'm really

concerned about our profession. I think we've got a lot to answer for. And there's a lot of denial in our sector and under the name of benevolence, we get away with so much harm and violence. And I take the opportunity to teach in whatever capacity as a real responsibility to undo a lot of the stuff that students are learning. Okay. So in context of that harm and the students learning, where did that learning come from for you yourself? How did you kind of get your head around what that looks like in the sector locally and what experience? have you gained through that? Yeah, thank you for that question.

I think where I learned the most about the harm that our systems and social workers can do was when I worked at WAMinder, and it's a South Coast Aboriginal Women's Health and Wellbeing Service, and it's a holistic service. But I had the privilege of learning from Aboriginal community members about their experiences of multiple systems,

but in particular the child protection system. And I think that's where I got a really good picture, about the way that systemic harm plays out. Before that, I kind of had a bit of an idea, but in particular, what I learned at Wominda was about the way that white privilege and white fragility and white niceness and how I can enact those harms as well and how taking a position of professional or expert is often a way that we do harm. Though I think that's where my biggest learning was. Which rubs up against a lot of what we are taught as social work students, as professionals about, we don't assume that we have all the knowledge or all the power, but we

often come from this perspective of we've got a way of doing things that is knowing and being and doing that doesn't necessarily fit with less understood norms or practices. Did you come across a lot of resistance or barriers in how you think? then communicated that to a wider social work or health or even community services perspective or staff members? I think first I had to do a lot of learning for myself about what it was to be able to then name it when I saw it. So I think that's the learning about what it was, articulating it, researching it, and then seeing how it applied in the practice that I worked with helped me to then communicate how I may have

have enacted those harms or how I may have seen those harms being enacted in real life so that it was, I'm not coming from a position of I know better than now and I'm worked now, I don't enact any racism anymore, but I actually have a lot to learn and I continue to learn and here are some examples of when I have done harm and what I've learnt from it and what I'm committed to now. I think that coming from that perspective of I'm learning too makes it easier to have the conversations with people about times when they have witnessed it or done it themselves. Yeah. I love that integrity and real ownership over those concepts. I think that's so important in what we do. Are you still part of those sectors or are you still in touch with those

services and programs through the work that you're doing now? Yeah, so now with the peak body, I'm in touch with so many more organisations, Aboriginal organisations across the state. And that's, it's been lovely to get to know different organisations and the great work they're doing and how it just reinforced my belief. I already knew at Wominda that Aboriginal organisations were best placed to work with Aboriginal communities in ways that when I was working in the health department, I could never have imagined achieving. And now getting to know all these other organisations doing this amazing work across the state, I'm even more championing of the importance of Aboriginal. community-controlled sector, working with Aboriginal people, because what we find in our sector is that a lot of major NGOs have at least 40% of their children and young people are Aboriginal. And yeah, so I'm all for the transition for Aboriginal children to go into Aboriginal organisations

to get the best support they can get. That's a really good shout out, especially for people who perhaps think that they just want to work in health without having that context of this. This is all the stuff that can be done and is being done on the ground in the community and it helps those referral pathways so much. So yeah, really good for people to consider, I guess, if they do want a career in health to perhaps look at the options available in community either in conjunction or even before they start in health.

There's a really good pathway there. I'm so glad you said that because what happened when I was in health was that we had two Aboriginal positions with the aim of trying to increase the Aboriginal community access to to the health service. And we worked tirelessly for three years or so or more probably, no, probably about five or six years to try and increase the access to the health service. And we did so, but not to the extent. So what happened was when I left Aminda, that funding came over to Aminda and those positions

were always full. We always had a wait list for counselling at Wiminda, whereas we didn't necessarily have a wait list when we were in health. And so just the referral pathways were so much easier, we were so much more accessible with Aboriginal councillors, it was culturally safe, it was holistic. The community members just got so much of a better service when they were in the Aboriginal community organisation rather than in health. And I'm not saying that for everything or everyone.

It's not a universal statement, but yeah, it really made it so much more accessible. Yeah, which I think if you wanted to look at it from a bureaucratic numbers crunched, perspective, someone could see that and go, well, there's not as much of a need in health if the books aren't filled, whereas what you're saying is the complete opposite is that there's still a need, but the services are not responsive, they're not accessible and therefore they're not utilised to the best advantage. Particularly when you have a centralised referral number where you get triaged by someone who's not a specialist in your area to pass on the referral. It's so disconnected, yeah.

You wear so many hats. What would you say your current role is you've got a lot of things happening, but there's never a typical day in social work, but walk me through all the things that you're doing, because it sounds like that's just the tip of the iceberg, the things that you've already mentioned. Yeah, I'm currently working for a peak body looking at developing a framework for restoration for Aboriginal families,

and that's based on a critical analysis and understanding of the way the system works. So that's a lot of my work and it's actually a dream come true to be able to do that and to be able to write some of the many of the wrongs that our profession have contributed to in the family policing system. Yeah, I'm in a role working alongside leaders in the Aboriginal community who are keen to, who recognise the harms, the harm of the out-of-home care, child abduction industry and wanting to make a change in that space. So it's an incredible opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. So you have come back around to that policy work that you were interested in doing earlier

with the experience that you've now developed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess developing various tools to unpack the ways in which child protection systems manipulate outcomes in order to remove and to justify removal. And how that translates into the real lives of families, truth telling, healing, reunification, reconnection is something that I guess you could call it policy, but for me, it's justice doing. Yeah.

Yeah, but I imagine you're coming across so many barriers, so much resistance to the status quo. So how do you push past that? Look, there's a lot of rhetoric in the sector talking about understanding that the systems are broken and that we have to do something differently. So you kind of like take the opportunity to hold people to account when they say those things. there is a strong recognition of the racist system that we, you can't deny it, you know, you can't deny that our profession is involved in racist practices. And when, you know, you expose those practices for what they are and how they're written

and how they're designed, the architecture of them, it's pretty hard to deny. And then on top of that, you know, you've got the cost of out of home care. We put more money into out of home care than we do into early preservation and restoration. and support. So it's not really contentious. Yeah. It's actually a lot of goodwill. I've found surprisingly a lot of goodwill on the part of out-of-home care agencies to be involved in this restoration program, you know. Okay. And that accountability then is what is your ideal outcome? Is it governments

taking accountability, taking responsibility, providing funds? What are you hoping? short-term and long-term to achieve with that. When you ask that question, it's interesting. Part of this restoration that comes out of some research that's been done by the University of New South Wales, bring them home, keep them home research. And when we asked one of the mums the other day, mum's involved in the research, you know, what does accountability look like to you? She goes just don't do it in the first place.

So I think her comments, and on the back of a recent conference where there's just so much frustration and talk about accountability. I'm not sure if I'm really answering your question, but we've just got to stop doing business as usual. Yeah. And we have to interrupt practice that is harmful, and practice that follows the colonial code. Have you heard of the colonial code? Yeah. Yeah. So I think any practice that we engage in that follows that colonial code is harm doing. And that's what I measure my practice against, you know, am I perpetuating that discourse, that code? And if so, what else could we do? Yeah.

What support do you require then? I imagine part of it is just building your army of supporters and making sure you've got the most up-to-date information. How do you navigate that maze without burning out, I guess? I subscribe to Vicki Reynolds' idea of resisting burnout through justice doing. So I haven't experienced burnout. I've experienced in previous roles, bullying and attempts to. undermine any sense of advocacy or that I might engage in. But in terms of supports, just keeping abreast of, you know, abolitionist and anti-oppressive practices across the world and doing lots of

reading. I have an app that uploads journal articles and reads them to me on really fast. So I that's pretty cool. That's how I get through a lot of the trying to keep involved in learning about new ways or critical analysis to the family policing system and dominant discourses in that space. And yeah, I'm working in an incredible organisation with beautifully strong and graceful and strategic leadership. And there's a working group involved. You know, I'm surrounded by people who you support. But my biggest support when you ask me that question, what keeps me going is just staying in touch with the families who have been victimised by the system. And so I'm in a position of privilege where I could choose to walk away, right, from this fight.

But it's almost like a calling that, you know, there's this, I feel like life is short and that if there's one thing we can do in this. To attend to a lot of the harms by my profession, then this is one of them, you know, turning children back to their families, telling them the truth about how they were stolen, why they were stolen. And I think one of the biggest sense of injustice is, like I've worked in the violence, interpersonal violence field for a long time. And that I think the reason why I was interested in that space

was just the sense of injustice that came from the way victims are treated. When I found out that the child protection system in this country and most westernised countries uses the discourse of failure to protect to remove children from mothers, blaming mothers for not being able to stop the violence that their fathers perpetrate against them, I just cannot believe that in this day and age, you know, it's almost a bit hamilton.

maid's taralish that we are we continue to and it's progressive women social workers in this space who are the perpetrators of this institutional violence and for me it's the fight that i want to get that changed and i want the kids to know that it wasn't that their mom didn't love them or didn't try but the system gave her no way out and so i think that's my biggest driver is the truth telling and the healing that comes from the children knowing that they were loved and cared for, but the system didn't value that. Yeah, that's such a motivating, powerful factor. And you talk about critically unpacking these systems

and that systematic mistreatment and blaming language and that real need to improve service options for people and expose those systems that concealed the abuse. Looking back then, I guess I always always, always have in the back of my mind. I'm going to say it's a negative legacy. I don't even know if legacy can be used in a negative term, but social work histories and the professions mistreatment and rehoming through those systemic failures, that's something that I'm always mindful of in my work. And whenever I introduce myself to someone as a social worker, I always

read the room first and just test whether that's going to be a helpful disclosure, I guess, of my profession working in an area where, you know, you're not necessarily labeled. Like your role is not social work. So when is it appropriate to bring that out? How do you work then as a social worker with that negative legacy of the profession? How do you represent and how do you feel as social workers, we can bring those things forward in a positive light to try to not undo because that's pushing it under the rug. but how do we move forward and improve, I guess, the legacy or improve the perception of our profession given that history? I often introduce myself as a social worker in recovery because our profession

is based on a lot of discourses that are really harmful. And so, yeah, so I call myself a social worker in recovery because there are a lot of the discourses that I'm still trying to unlearn. And I know the term legacy kind of implies that that's a hangover from the past and we are doing harm in our profession every single day and they're not systemic failures they're systemic designs so the architecture of our family policing systems whether we sit in hospitals in a counselling room in a child protection space we are in a family support service we are part of that family policing system and that's that family surveillance and that judgment. And we don't think critically enough about the ideas that underpin our justifications for making mandatory reports

or supporting removals. And I think that that's intentional that we don't know that. It's not really taught to our social work students. And it's not openly spoken about, I think, what our sector needs is a reckoning. And we need to demonstrate. straight that we recognise that we do harm and until we do that we will continue to gaslight families into thinking that social workers are there to help and I'm not saying that we don't do help in some settings you know we do some beautiful work in some settings but we don't go far enough and I think that I'm more ashamed now about being a social worker than I ever have been and when I go to even I was just recently writing on my customs card that

I'm a social worker and just thinking, you know, how once upon a time I would have thought that that was, you know, I'm a professional, I'm a good person. But I know that for so many people across the world now, social workers are seen as a threat. That's something that I think that, like you said, you know, you read the room. And so that's why I introduced myself as a social working in recovery because I am trying to verge myself from a lot of the harmful ideas that we continue to perpetuate in our profession. Yeah. What's then the Mexican context given you've had some exposure to it around family violence, child protection and social work in general. What's the feel? They don't have necessarily like a foster care system like we do. They do have more NGOs and

residential kind of schools and things like that. But the same discourses around failure to protect in the family law court are really harmful and victim blaming, shaming practices in refuges and, you know, people subscribing to like the ideas around the cycle of violence or those kinds of ideas are really harmful and still perpetuated. It shocks me when I teach across the Latin American countries how so much of the way that social workers in Australia think is replicated in the way that therapists and community development workers think across Latin America. And on the one hand, that's super scary. And on the other hand, it just shows me that, well, if we can do that, if we can translate these ideas and embed them so well in dominant discourses, not just in our

profession, but also in society, then, we can undo that and we can relearn. And so that's why I think improving social responses to violence and being more accurate in our understandings around the way that violence is perpetrated and victims respond and resist, I think is going to go a long way to undermining the way that our systems justify victim blaming

and let perpetrators off the hook. And I'm not saying let perpetrators off the hook as in all perpetrators need to be incarcerated. I'm not saying that at all because that's the carceral logic is what is the major driver and the prison industrial complex is one of the major drivers for not just our carceral system and our just so-called justice system but also the way that the punishment approach to child protection is also there so I'm really conscious of not thinking their justice system actually is a just system yeah and so important what you're doing from an

intervention prevention perspective of the flow-on effect that that would have in Australian, Mexico, all over the world. If you give people the positive, the right opportunities from day one, then they're less likely to be part of other systems, right, that are potentially just as bad or even worse in terms of incarceration and oppression and that sort of thing. So trying to get it right from the beginning. I don't even know if there is such a thing as early intervention. I really don't. Like, I've been part of so-called early intervention programs

and, you know, managing them, supporting families. They're the same families that have been targeted by the system time and time again. And they're constantly aware of how the system works and are fearful of that system. And the fear of mandatory reports is what makes our early intervention system so unsafe and make people not want to go and seek help. And so people suffer in silence. And then as soon as they do reach out for help, a report goes in, those early intervention

services close because it's high risk and they lose the support of the person who they trusted. And then they go into that carceral logic. I think there is a myth around sometimes we can help some people out earlier on in the struggle. but I think we need to be vigilant about the linear thinking that goes alongside early intervention, particularly for Aboriginal families, where the early intervention would have been, you know, the invaders not coming in the first place.

Yeah. Like that's early intervention. So, yeah, when a system is set up with the carceral logic as its framework, there is no such thing as early intervention. It's more about entrapment and, you know, targeting an entrapment. And that's what our structured decision. The structured decision making tool is done to assess child protection risks. It targets Aboriginal families and culturally and linguistically diverse families.

And white families are less likely to get picked up in that system due to class and privilege and racism. Yeah. And given what you were talking about very early on around the differences in learning with psychology and social work, what are the other backgrounds of the people that are finding? this fight with you. Who do you work with and what's their background? Yeah, there are social workers, psychologists, lawyers, social policy, social science, background people, researchers, statisticians. Yeah, got a pretty good bunch of people committed to this, yeah. That's so important in building your tribe and kind of

creating that diversity of interests and knowledge and understanding of those systems. That's really good. Yeah, well, I was lucky I was invited into the tribe. The tribe was already there. And so, yeah, they're people who I've admired for many years, you know, speaking truth to power and doing it in a way that is, you know, respected across the sector. Are there any specific programs or projects coming up for you that you're able to talk to? Well, the project that we're currently working on is the Aboriginal Authority for Restoring Children. And that's with Abszek.

And so we're in the processes of... hopefully by the time this is released, we'll have some idea about whether or not the next stage is going to be funded. I also saw there's a journal article you were involved with on restoring children, so I can find that. I put a link in the show notes if you'd like. Yeah, and there's another one due to come out too on speaking about parents' resistance to institutional violence. So, yeah, can share that one as well. Excellent. While you were talking, I was also thinking about specific media. There was a movie I watched this week actually called the Mugai. So it was John Bell production, but indigenous cast. And the Mugai in Aboriginal law is kind of like a boogeyman.

And it was a really interesting. The story was the parallels all over the place, but the idea was this boogeyman who would come and take Aboriginal First Nation children. It's a little bit on the knows, but it's also you can delve deeper into the context of the protagonist, was removed herself from her family as a child. And then having had her own baby, the Mugai is coming for her baby. And just super interesting. But one of the through lines there was that she had kind of dismissed everything to do with her indigenous family saying, you know, you're not my mother. You just gave birth to me. and she needed to reconnect with that part of herself in order to address what was going on

and address the boogeyman. So that was really interesting. While you're talking also, I'm thinking of things like after the apology and the last daughter, which are both incredibly powerful documentaries. Is there anything else that you'd maybe recommend that people listen to or watch or learn about

if they want to know more about the things that you're discussing? Yeah, there's a recent Netflix program called Power, and that goes through and looks at the policing system and the carceral logic. I think that's super important. And upend is a podcast that speaks to abolition. And I think, you know, I'm just a really big fan of the Centre for Response Best Practice. Kathy Richardson's got a substack. And there's so much about what she speaks about, which is gold. I can also put some information about Vicki Reynolds and Justice Deweing, you mentioned earlier.

Yeah, and, you know, the Colonial Code, like I think, I don't know if we can mention it here, but it's something that there's an article called Discourse, Domination and Psychotherapy. That's a brilliant article that goes through the Colonial Code and how we formulate the people that we call clients. And I think that's a really brilliant paper as well. Yeah. Yeah. I also, I really like seeing how you've come from those early days of seeing

disadvantaged, that early experience, seeing that there's a difference in opportunities that people have had. And you had an opportunity and you saw a fork in the road and you went off on the social work part because you wanted to see that context of people and you had an interest in policy early on and then, you know, decided that you wanted to have the more personal context and the experience under your belt before you dove into it. And you had the opportunity and you've come back and you've also got those community connections both in Sydney and Mexico, which gives you a really well-rounded approach and means that you can be supporting multiple communities. And you're wanting to, in your work, expose those oppressive systems and push for meaningful change.

So thinking about how do we design programs and systems that are supportive and maintaining connections to the people that you work with. So you said that one of the things that you enjoy most or the things that motivates you to keep going is seeing the people that your work is impacting. So I think that's really important, especially if you're in a policy role, is it can be very easy to get disconnected from that and to lose sight of what you're doing it for. Yeah, my biggest teachers have been the victims of the system and in particular Aboriginal families. My understanding of the way the system works is born from listening to people talk about what's been done to them and then figuring out what policies, procedures, assessment tools, discourses, workplace cultures, laws,

reform agendas, influence those practices because otherwise I just, as social, because we just gloss over it and go, well, that's above my pay grade. I'm not going to deal with that. Yeah. And I think one of the biggest learnings of late is, as someone who worked in the interpersonal violence space for so long, I was working with people who were victimized by the system. And although I think we talked about it back then as systems abuse, but I don't think I gave it as much weight. I think it was just like, oh, the system's just abusing. But I think that we need to get really good at identifying institutional state sanctioned. violence and harm, so that we don't perpetuate that ourselves.

And I think the other thing, sorry to go back, but also one of my biggest influences in my sense of social justice growing up is learning about how when the Spanish invaded Mexico, they placed their cathedrals and their churches on top of pyramids. And they were such a clear symbolism of the subjugation of Indigenous knowledges. So I learnt about the subjugation of Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being as a child, but hadn't applied it to the Australian context until later on in life. And for that, I'm ashamed. But also that's one of the reasons why I'm committed to trying to be alert to what are the

Westernised ideas. How are we trying to, in our sector, make Western ideas more palatism? to Aboriginal communities and what does that emit or what does that gloss over or what does that silence in the doing so? You know, we've got a lot of assessment tools that are Aboriginal friendly or Aboriginal evaluated Aboriginal tools. But a lot of them are just Westernised tools just with Aboriginal language and still subscribing to those internalised individualising, pathologising discourses. Sorry, I've got another tangent, but yeah. No, I love this because any professional say, well, I'm doing my job by the book. I can walk away and I've done a really good job.

But if the book is this oppressive, horrible system, we're just interpreting and implementing the guidelines that don't have the people in mind and haven't been developed and implemented with the people. So it's, again, that very top-down approach and, you know, fingers in your ears kind of, yeah, I'm doing a good job. So, yeah, you're kind of flipping that on its head and saying, what does that mean? What is the job that we're here to do? Is it the thing that's on paper or is it the thing that's in front of me that I'm observing and actually talking to the people who are going to benefit or not are going to be affected by these systems and these practices that have been perpetuated? And what are you willing to do and who are you accountable to? And, you know,

I know that not everyone can afford to challenge the status quo because it means that they might lose their job and that has implications for their families. But for those who do have the power and the privilege to challenge the status quo, then I think it's we have to do it. And yeah, we can't hide behind our position description or our policies and our procedures anymore. Yeah. I'm so grateful that you're doing this work. I think it's so important and more people will need to get behind it. But it does sound as though more and more people are becoming aware of the injustice and the difficulties and hopefully coming on board and developing more positive ways forward. Is there anything else? I could easily chat with you and know out about this all day,

but I'm mindful of your time. Is there anything else before we finish up that you wanted to mention about the work you're doing or social work in general? The thing that comes to mind is just being really cautious about the term trauma and the universalising of that term and how the term has gained so much traction in our day-to-day discourse but takes us away from looking at what actually has been done and how we can continue to perpetuate those violences. So I just think, yeah, we just need to be really careful about trauma-informed practice because it decontextualises the problem and locates it in the person. And like Alan Wade quoted, I think her name is Natalie Clark.

You know, trauma is the new colonial frontier. And we have to be really careful about what's done in the name of trauma-informed practice and what's not done in the name of trauma-informed practice. My biggest is to my worry at the moment. Yeah. It's so important. And I'm glad that people are bringing awareness to this. But it takes a collective approach.

It takes people being on the same page to be able to make a difference. And it takes us being willing to not be the experts, right? Because trauma-informed practice, then, you know, I'm trained in trauma-informed practice, therefore I know what to do to you, you know, that's a massive concern. So people are active and always responding, and that's why I love the work at the Centre for Response Best Practice and the work that Inside Exchange does, which shines a light on all the complex ways that people respond to violence.

And when we look at that, then we can be led by those. who actually know what's going on in their lives. And we can actually understand what's going on for them rather than explain over and for them what's going on for them. Yeah. Yeah. Kimberly, thank you so much for your time. I've loved chatting with you. I've got a whole bunch of new resources that I want to go off and check as well and I'd encourage other people to check them in the show notes. But yeah, it does really make you question what is social work and how do we use our knowledge? and our learning for the good rather than continuing to build on issues or just use systems that are in existence regardless of whether they're going to be supportive or not.

Our universities have to be really careful about grooming students into becoming agents of the state. Yeah, because you can, especially when the work is hard and sometimes it is easier to switch off and just become robots or just perpetuate a system that hasn't been supportive. Yeah, I think it's really important to be critical and to think about what we're doing and why we're doing it, which is, I mean, fundamentally, that's social work, but I don't think we do it enough. We don't. It's much easier to take a critical stance than it is to have this cognitive dissonance where, you know, like you've got, you thought you were here to do something good, but you're realizing you're doing something bad, but I can't do anything about it because that's my job. That's where the immoral injury comes in. It's much easier, I think, to be a social justice warrior than it is to live with the knowledge that you're doing harm. Yeah, I think that's probably a good place to leave it.

Thank you again, Kimberly. Thank you so much for shedding a bit of light on this and for fighting the good fight, doing what you do. And yeah, thank you to your tribe as well for working so hard in this space. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Kimberly, 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 MISH, a plural system that is non-biased, queer, disabled and neurodivergent, as well as being awarded the 2024 Australian Social Worker of the Year. As a social worker of colour, their practice is grounded in identity affirming anti-colonial and anti-oppressive practices from which they have built their skill set of supporting people through a range of therapeutic modalities.

Mish is the chair of the Iceberg Foundation, a mental health charity for BIPOC, queer and neurodivergent humans, and is the principal practitioner at Nairam, a Bipok-focused EMDR practice. 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.