Social Work Spotlight - Episode 133: Stacey

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

In this episode I speak with Stacey, a social worker and program manager with extensive experience in youth homelessness, leading crisis refuges and transitional accommodation services. Passionate about trauma-informed care, she also leads initiatives supporting male survivors of domestic violence and is pursuing a PhD focused on suicide bereavement in Australian adult males.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Safe Pathway program (NSW Government) - https://dcj.nsw.gov.au/legal-and-justice/safer-pathway/information-for-victim-survivors/general-information-about-safer-pathway.htmlThe Oasis and Life After the Oasis (documentaries - https://theoasismovie.com.au/Short Term 12 film - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Term_12Social Work Stories podcast - https://socialworkstories.com/Young & Homeless podcast (Y Foundations) - https://www.yfoundations.org.au/young-homeless-podcastPlease Don’t Stab Me! How to Tuck a Gangster Into Bed - https://goodreads.com/book/show/21310569-please-don-t-stab-me-how-to-tuck-a-gangster-into-bedKnightlamp Institute training opportunities - https://knightlamp-institute.teachable.com/p/homeThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tdp46POUmY7_fwZTHDw9xK6Fe8zUxK6l8wzvpJiWEuc/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, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Stacey, a social worker and program manager with extensive experience in youth homelessness, leading crisis refugees and transitional accommodation services. Passionate about trauma-informed care, she also leads initiatives supporting male survivors of domestic violence, and is pursuing a PhD focused on suicide bereavement in Australian and, adult males. Thanks, Dacey, for joining me on the podcast today. I'm looking forward to chatting with you about your social work journey so far. Thank you. I feel really lucky to be here. I want to know firstly what got you into social work. When did you start and what drew you to the profession? I guess for backstory, you know, as a child, I didn't have any dream career or if you

had have asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I would have been stumped. I actually feel thankful now that I was never really asked as a kid. I always just figured that I would wing it. I'd end up somewhere that I was supposed to be. I finished high school. I had no idea what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go. And my dad said to me that there were three things guaranteed in life, death, marriage and taxes. And I thought, great, I'm going to become an accountant. And so I started the motions, did my diploma, started working in accounting and I soon realized that it was far too mundane for me. I realized that I needed something a little more fun so that I switched into marketing and graphic design. From there, it wasn't long before I found or was offered a role in the

disability space. This was almost 15 years ago now. From disability, I made the switch into Firstly, I guess it changed my perception of what social work really looked like. It wasn't as dramatic as I kind of thought that it was based on what you see on TV. And so floating through that disability space, I ended up doing some work with child protection and young people. And I guess you can say that social work found me kind of unoriginal, but I was no longer looking for something new and exciting outside of exploring the the different facets of the helping industry. And yeah. Social work was exciting enough.

Yes, yes, always. That's incredible. And you studied community health and counseling before social work? Or which order did that come in? Yes. Yes. So I did that first and foremost. And then over the years, I thought, you know, maybe I want to go on eventually and do a PhD. And this probably started talking about that a decade ago now.

You know, I just loved the idea of becoming a doctor and doing something else. And then I went on to do my master's. I think I started that in 2021. I did my master's in social work with the idea that either I had my master's or I could use it as a stepping stone later to go into my PhD. So I did my master's. I fell pregnant throughout and had to defer here or there. And then completed my master's before now going into my PhD.

PhD. Definitely want to come back to that. But while you're going through the Masters, I'm assuming that helped solidify all of that experience that you'd had before with the disability work and supporting communities. But was there a point at which maybe as you were going through the placement experience, that that really solidified? Yep, cool. I found myself in the right place. Social workers found me. What were those placement experiences for you? It really did. So I was really, really lucky to be able to do my placement within my workplace and so I was able to explore different areas of what it looked like and it was actually I was facilitating youth homelessness matters day and somebody came and they asked me you know why are you here why do you do what you do and I feel like it was a really defining moment for me because my immediate

response was I want to ensure that young people and everybody know that their past don't define them but also I want to be the person that I needed when I grew up and so it was defining in that I realized why I've stuck in the helping profession and have pursued social work the way that I have because it's just it's just what people need sometimes probably at least once in somebody's life so yeah yeah was that your first placement or your second I only had to do one for my masters actually really luckily because I had a decade of experience beforehand so on that note I did find that doing my masters I was putting theory

to practice that I already had done and so I was almost learning backwards in a way and so all of a sudden I was able to apply terms and theoretical frameworks to practice that I already had and it was probably around the time as well that I really started to recognize how trauma-informed practice had been embedded in my work from the day that I started a significantly long time ago now. Yeah. Which is exciting. Yeah. And was there a great area? I'm always curious when people end up doing their placements in their place of work, whether there was maybe pressure to work rather than learn. How did you grapple with that? I think there wasn't a lot of of pressure, but I think that that was because there were a lot of projects to be done that

would really benefit the workplace. And so that meant that all of the other teams and areas of the workforce continued to operate as a well-oiled machine. And I was off doing things that had probably been on the back burner because of being time-limited beforehand. So it was a really good experience for me. And I know that it can be tricky for others, so I felt really lucky. And were you then able to continue doing something with the projects that you were working with, or once you graduated, did you kind of go off in a different direction?

The projects for the most part just continued as is. So they were programs or they were change in policy or process or introducing training, whatever that looked like. And so some of them were just projects that just kind of stopped and then others were implemented over the course. It's nice to have that legacy to look back on and say that's still running, right? Yeah, absolutely it is. And what has led then to this point? You're doing quite a few things. I'm interested to hear about the crisis accommodation as well in terms of shift work on call. How did you manage all that?

That would have been really challenging. Yeah, so I was managing crisis refuges for homeless young people aged 14 to 19. for a long time. Shift work was a lot, especially while I was studying. It wasn't long before I found myself being able to go into kind of a nine to five management period. From there, over time, crisis refuges, when operated really effectively with competent, skilled staff who feel supported, who feel like they have all of the information that they need for decision making and empowered to make decisions, there's no longer a need for on-call. So while I was there, we were able to remove that entirely outside of a few key instances, so a death or a fire or something that they just weren't

at all equipped to navigate. And I think we only received two of those calls in a 12-year period. Since working in the crisis refuge for young people, I now manage a service that provides accommodation in a more semi-supported semi-independent framework. So they are what's called the transitional program. We accommodate young people aged 16 to 25 for a period of 18 months. The service that I run has 45 properties and within those properties our young people, they have a tenanted lease and we support them through case management to be able to then go off into the private rental market in whatever capacity that looks like. And so I've got a team of case managers that I supervise who oversee all of that work. My role really is to ensure that they are

supported, have all of the skills, tools and resources they need to make decisions. And I support them mostly in response to crisis, whether it's mental health, drug or alcohol, suicide attempts, overdoses, things like that. And since then, I've also began managing the local support services safer pathway program in which we respond in crisis to male victim survivors of domestic violence. That's a lot of heavy work and especially in a management position where you're responsible for so many things. I'm also curious within management and social work, what is it about social work do you think that lends itself well to management in that area? I think it's the way in which we view the world. You know, it's the way that we're advocates,

we encourage self-determination, we're empowering. We like to see the gray area in things, but we're also quite holistic. And so I think that particularly when I am supervising my staff or I'm supervising students, I'm aware of the full picture for them as individuals and how that plays into their work. I think it's really important. that the same care and energy and effort that I give to clients when they're in crisis, I give to my staff every day so they can respond in crisis. And I think that the social work lends and everything that we stand for facilitates that beautifully.

Because so much of it is about formulating a group of people around someone networking. It's about working with systems because you'd work with health and with justice and with housing and so many other different referral pathways. So it's really important to be aware of firstly what they are, but secondly maintaining those relationships, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And there's a lot of systemic gaps that we need to find our way through or work towards change or manipulate, for lack of a better word, to the benefit of the clients that we have. but we do so safely and ethically. And I'm not always convinced that other professions could do that as well as we do,

although I do have a bias for social workers. Do you get to do some of the hands-on face-to-face with the clients now that you're in management? I do. Not as much as I used to, but I do do some work with the young people. When my team are away, I step in and I fill in for their case management. case load. There are some young people particularly that frequent the office more often than others. So I get to know them and have great relationships with them. You know, they text me here or there with their good news stories to celebrate their wins. And I do get a lot of the good stuff, but I do also respond to them in crisis in person. So I still kind of get, you know, that problem solving,

critical thinking, how do we work through this relationship as well? And where does your funding? come from? I'm curious as to how that all builds together. We are all government funded, 100%. We do rely on some donations. We apply for grants here or there, but generally they are for extracurricular activities. So we do have quite a restriction around our spend. As always, we are sometimes overworked and understaffed, and that's the nature of the budget. But there is view for that to change over time, I think. Yeah. Do you have to outsource any support work? I'm guessing there might be people that need prompting or assistance with their personal care or with getting to appointments, that sort of thing. Is that something that the internal case managers help with,

or do you have to outsource that support? The caseworkers would do all of that. That is based on the living skills side of case management, ensuring that they have capacity to maintain an independent life. Living skills programs are constantly evolving. Actually, recently I asked the case managers. I said, you know, what is case management? When we say to a young person who refers in, okay, well, how can we help you with case management? They say, well, what can you offer? And we say, oh, well, you know, whatever you need, what does that look like? We need to have a foundation. So our foundational skills for living skills and prompting support needs are, you know, budgeting, money, finance, financial in terms of

income, employment over time, environment. So their home, they're cleaning, their hygiene, their capacity to feel safe and communicate in the home if they're in sharehouses. We focus as well on social connectedness, so ensuring they are linked in with community groups or peer support groups or helping them to navigate a difficult friendship. And then we also have health, so mental health and physical health, whatever that needs to look like for them. And we, as much as possible, try to build relationships with other services. So then we can link in and have better referral pathways.

Case managers are beautiful in that they are so holistic in the supports that they provide. We kind of have to be masters of everything at some point in time. but we are also a referral hub because we can't be perfect at everything and not everybody has the same skills. So we do refer out as much as possible. Given the difficulty of so many houses, so many people within those houses, so many staff, how do you define success? Like how do you know that you're on the right track? How do you help navigate through that and I guess figure out that things are working or maybe you need to change

direction or models. So we have introduced a quarterly, it's called a periodic review. So basically we sit down with the young people and we ask them really targeted purposeful questions aimed at extracting information but tracking their progress or their lack of and it asks around, you know, tell me something that you learnt recently that you were surprised by but in relation to tenancy, for example, or putting the bins out on the street, did you know your council did this? And then we will also ask them around their experiences in sharehouses and what have you. And so we track it on an index and then each quarter, once it's completed, we can

then compare what it's looking like. And if they have moved forward or if they've come back a little bit and then it also gives us a tool in being able to identify their strengths and being able to visualize with them, hey, when you first came to us, you couldn't do this. And now six months later, not only have you achieved this, but you can tell me what a regulation and a tendency law looks like, for example. Or they might come to us and say that they don't need mental health support, But then nine months later, they're struggling. They've got, you know, suicidal thoughts or behaviors or they're feeling depressed or what have you. And we're saying, hey, well, we've noticed this over the course of your reviews.

And it's a great tool to start conversations, to start planting seeds. And so for us, outcome is for them to feel safe and confident to leave our supports, for them to be able to go and live in a sharehouse without. case management we also try and taper off case management support over the 18 months so in the first half of their stay it might be weekly or fortnightly check-ins and then it would go to monthly six-weekly and it probably you know once or twice in the last three months periods so then they slowly wean off our supports but we're still there if anything were to go wrong services for young people who have exited transitional, that outreach work is a gap in service delivery.

So we try and fill that as an early intervention technique, I suppose. Yeah. Is there much of a waiting period then? Because if people are in there for 18 months, I imagine it's a good resource to have, but if there's only a limited supply, you're struggling there? Surprisingly, we will generally have two vacancies or so a month. at the very least. Currently the program has, as of this week, we have six vacancies. We're assessing for three, leaving another three. We don't hold a wait list because things can change so

rapidly for people. We encourage everyone to just call back next week. Anything can change. I was always surprised to know that there's often vacancies. And it's like, well, if it's an 18-month program, how does this continue to roll around? But not everybody needs to Everybody needs to be there for 18 months. Some of them are there for six and they're ready to live independently. Some of them are there for three months and they've thought, okay, I can't live on my own. I need to go back home or a different support, whatever that looks like. So it's a constant revolving door of young people.

And is there ever bounce back? Is that within your model? Like let's say someone has successfully exited the program or the lease, the tenancy and they've moved into their own accommodation. privately and for some reason something's happened in their circumstance that's made them really struggle. Can they come back? They can. We often want to know what an additional transitional stay will provide because we are facing within specialist homelessness services at the moment where being used as a means to bridge the affordable housing gap and that's not what our program is. We aren't

affordable housing, we provide subsidized accommodation with case management. So there are sometimes young people who go into private rental and it isn't successful for a lot of reasons and it's not just affordability. They can absolutely come back. Actually today we signed up a young person for his second stay with us after transitioning out. I think it was around six months ago and he's come back in, however, this time will only accommodate for up to six months to get him just up on his feet again, this connected to the supports that he needs because we know he can live independently, but there's a need for him there, I suppose. It's not just affordability. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That then has quite clearly led into knowing what your PhD is about. It's obvious

that the experience that you've had to date with your various roles has led you to want to study, what is your focus and what are you hoping the PhD will achieve? My PhD, I actually, throughout supervision in the last semester of my Masters, I had a supervisor who was just so phenomenal and I've been actually so lucky to connect with her since through work. I talked to her about doing my PhD and she really encouraged me to do so and it's just my absolute luck that my favorite lecturer from my masters who was with me from day one was a PhD supervisor through UW and I just happened to reach out to her and she said absolutely let's do this and so I said to myself from day one that I would not do my PhD if MIM could not supervise me.

Anyway so here I am really lucky to be supervised by MIM and personal experience throughout my Masters with Suicide Bereavement led me towards a focus on suicide for my PhD. My research now is going to target Australian adult males bereaved by suicide. Currently through my initial scoping review that I'm hoping will publish this year, I have found that there is, so far, no Australian research that targets Australian Adults Australian adult males for suicide bereavement, despite the fact that they are more likely to die by suicide by at least 70%. And postvention is argued as being as important as early intervention, because ultimately it becomes early intervention. And so I'm hoping that through understanding the experience of adult males bereaved by suicide, I can use that to influence in some way post-vention service.

or how we target adult males in Australia. There will hopefully as well be a focus on stigma, anti-stigma campaigns, masculinity, the toxicity of it. But also I want to be able to recognize what does work, because there has to be some things that work. And I don't just want to focus on the negative. So I'm hoping that research will start, like my surveys and whatnot will start next year. That's so exciting and slightly terrifying at the same time, but it's great that you're passionate about it because it's something that you have to be sustained in doing over a long period of time, right? Yeah, absolutely.

I still can't believe that someone has just let me do this thing. Yeah. Do you enjoy research or is that sort of a daunting thing for you? Surprisingly for somebody who just hates statistics, I love statistics in that I love what they can teach us. And so being able to research and really get into statistics in terms of experience and being able to analyze them and find themes and how that influences what we do, I have always loved evidence. I love everything being evidenced informed because it's coming from somewhere, right? We've learnt this from somebody and that's important. And so that part of my research is what I find so exciting as well is because all of a sudden,

my research can make a difference and the way that other research has made a difference to me. Have you been able to network already or at least read about people doing something similar in other countries? Yes. So there is quite a lot in other countries. Some in European countries, a lot in the States and the UK. They do include the Australian population in their research, but there hasn't been anything just for Australian males or males who live in Australia. They don't have to be born here. It's just those who are demographically here. Most of what I've found so far is inclusive of a number of population groups. And how do you manage all of this?

you know, you're supporting the people within the houses, you're managing all of those services, plus the PhD, which are you doing it part-time? Like, walk me through how that actually works. I've been full-time, so I'm very efficient. I work very quickly. I always have. I go to work. I do everything that I need to at work. I have everything scheduled. I meet everything that I need to. I find time to run my personal errands here and there as I need to. I respond to all of my emails as soon as they come in. Usually nothing is left over. And then I come home and I do evening routine with my son.

And then once he goes to bed, I usually study or research until midnight-ish. And then I clock off and I do it all again the next day. I have really recently found that I need to, as much as I need a schedule, I do need to schedule in breaks as well. So I've reduced the nights that I will research to maybe three or four nights. And I've learned to be very kind with myself. And if I just don't feel like it, I just don't. And instead I lay on the couch and I rot with all of the other screens. Yeah, because you're not going to be all that productive anyway, right? No, I pretty much just sit there and look at my computer and click around for a while.

Yeah. Yeah. How do you switch off then? Because especially if you're doing your research at home, it sounds like, how do you make sure that you've allocated enough brain space for everything? Good question. Actually, if you have any tips, I'd love to know them. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 30. And that moment for me was honestly groundbreaking in the life that I had lived. up until that moment. And so since then being medicated, I find myself just being able to do the things that I want to do productively, where previously my brain space was filled with just nonsense, right? And I wasn't doing anything productive. And then I'd beat myself up about not being productive, where now I'm able to be productive for the hours that I've set. And then afterwards, I wind down in, whatever need that is, whether it's a shower or I rot with different screens for a little bit. And then, yeah, just giving myself the freedom to just be free from using any of my brain

when I just really can't do it. Yeah. So listening to myself a little bit here and there. Yeah, that's good. What support do you need? Because sometimes it's not just about what you can do for yourself. What other influences are in your life? How do you make sure it's sustainable?

supervision has been wildly important for me. I, again, I'm really lucky to have found a supervisor that I can't fault her in any way. She is really helpful in helping me debrief, but challenging me in the way that I think or in the way that I have everything scheduled and encouraging me to think about the bigger picture and, you know, this is what you're doing right now and that's great. I love that for you. But what about in the next six months? And, you know, you can't plan being spontaneous, Stacey. So what does that look like? So that supervision resource is so helpful for me in not just doing all of the things that I would usually do and being able to pull back. And over the last couple of years, especially, you know, since having a child,

I'm recognising more so life outside of work and life outside of the bigger picture. And, you know, I work as a social worker. I don't embody a social worker all of the time. I can just be Stacey. And so that's really, actually, that's a hard thing sometimes, I guess, for us. Yeah, to disconnect completely from. Yeah. I mean, I've had people in my professional life say, just take your social work hat off for a second and I've doubled down because I thought, no, no, no, you don't get to ask me that. But there are times I completely get it where you just need to not be working or not be thinking about something or tying something back or saying, no, I must remember that for later. There's always stuff in our personal lives that reminds us of stuff in our work

lives. So it's impossible to switch off completely. And I think like you've said, it's really, at least for me, it's about scheduling that downtime because it's not going to happen otherwise. And you don't want to miss out on your boy growing up and those important moments in his life. Yeah, absolutely. I don't have to solve all of the problems in the world. I can solve some and that's the boundary I have to set for myself sometimes. Mm-hmm. How do you know you've had a good day or a good week following on from not having to solve everyone's problems? How can you sort of finish up at the end of the week and go, I did good. What are your sort of metrics there? You know, I think we are always hardest on ourselves,

but if I finish up the week with no outstanding tasks, I can celebrate that because then I can go into the weekend thinking about work and everything else a little less. It's not in the back of my mind and I can truly just be at home and I've found that that is almost my measure of what's been a good week, but also it's become really important to me over the years to celebrate even the small wins for the clients or for my staff because it shifts the mindset really from, oh, you know, I work in crisis. All of this was really, rough this week. But, you know, we had a young person who's been homeless for the last 10 years transition into independent living. That's huge. That's a great week. Look at us go, right? Like they did

that and we were there to see that happen. So it's a combination of my personal, I've got everything done that I need to. I can switch off now. But then I also try and tie in the winds relative to the work that we do. Yeah. There's obviously a lot that's going to come out of your research in terms of hopefully change for the better or at least some sort of recommendation for how things could be done in the Australian context. But in the years that you've had, because you've had quite a number of years and some great experience in youth homelessness, what changes have you seen already in that time for better or worse? There's been a lot more conversation over the years, a lot more, awareness, we are in talking about it more, we're reducing stigma more. We are better at being

preventative. I have over the years, I've facilitated mental health first aid for the Australian Red Cross and always the feedback that I receive when I'm doing that from society is that, hey, I didn't know we could talk about that. And I didn't realize that talking about it was actually better than not talking about it. And so I think as a population, we're understanding more the importance of talking about it to be able to reduce. And then as people who are delivering the service around that, we are better able than to intervene because it's been talked about in other ways as well. There are obviously still gaps in systems and services and the lack of supports and resources

available, but there are far more free online resources now that has been the world of benefits, especially for young people who don't always want to go and see somebody. It's helpful to be anonymous for them a lot of the time too. So there's absolutely improvements in that space too. It's great that mental health first aid training has expanded as well into youth mental health First Aid and First Nations, it's such a necessary resource, but I'm assuming you'll have to be able to say no at some point to, no, I can only do a couple a year, for instance, you have to limit how much additional stuff you're doing. Yes, so because I have also onboarded as Associate Lecturer with UOW recently, I will probably only deliver mental health first aid internally for the organisation

that I work with. Outside of that, I just don't have capacity to do so anymore, at least for the near future. And then I can just keep that kind of resource under my belt as well. I like knowing that I can do different things here and there. So in your spare time, tell me about this associate lecture job. What are you up to? I only started literally this week. I had my first tutorials on Monday. So I am teaching the introduction to social work for bachelor students with the view that hopefully I will go on to teach more around mental health, going to second year, third year. I have no idea what it will look like just yet. I honestly never imagined that I could teach. And so to be here, it just kind of feels like how did this happen? But in saying that over my career,

I think this is where I'm headed. The teaching, you know, I've been doing crisis and service delivery for so long. I think I'm ready to solve other problems now. That sounds like fun. Do you get the opportunity to host students at your current workplace as well? Yep. So I've been supervising students in my current workplace for three semesters now. Last semester, I had a bachelor student and a master's student.

This semester, I currently have a bachelor student. So it's been, I love supervising students. I just love telling them the good stuff and the not so good stuff and the, you know, this is what you might face as a social worker and, you know, the gaps and service delivery and resources and helping to influence the work that they do. And so I feel really excited to be able to do that at a higher level, I suppose. And I think they always teach you something else as well. But I think it's Sydney Uni that has their handbook for student placements is called,

or it might have changed how to grow a social worker. And I always kind of picture that a plant or a tree growing and you're just fostering that development and guiding and not watering, but, you know, fertilizing the ground, giving it a foundation and helping it figure out what kind of tree it wants to be or which direction it wants to grow and what fruit it wants. wants to bear and how are we helping to foster the next generation without imposing either our values or necessarily our views, just saying this is how I do social work and this is an opportunity for you to figure out how you want to do social work in this setting and then you can

kind of take that off to different settings because I'll wear a very different hat now to when I worked in the hospital, when I worked in the community. So we're all different social workers at different times in our careers. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a constant journey of growth and development. Constant. Yeah, but that's exciting. That's something that you can look forward to and move into and figure out how it's all going to work in the grand scheme of things because very easily it can pile up to not manageable, but I'm sure you've got a system and a process and good people around you that can help guide. Yeah, absolutely. I'll transition slowly, I think. I'll start to close some doors, open new doors, figure it out as I go, which I feel like I always have.

Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other projects or programs that you get to work on at the moment or that your staff are helping with? Yes. So we've got the local support services, Safer Pathway program where we support male victim survivors of DV following a police incident in the inner west, eastern Sydney and central Sydney areas. What happens is a police will attend an incident and where the police will they consider it domestic violence, it triggers an automatic alert to our program. And so we respond afterwards.

We support men aged 16 and over in this space. It has been incredibly eye-opening to oversee a program that supports male victim survivors. You know, as a woman and somebody who follows Femicide Watch, I'm constantly having a look at women and our experience and women and children as well. And then to sit in the space of men, it's a huge gap in service delivery in that there is not really anything available to them as outside of us as the initial touch point. And finding referral pathways for men is also incredibly difficult to the point where we're developing case studies to try and find ways to fill this gap internally. And we're also finding with male victim survivors of DV, they often don't know that

what they're experiencing is domestic violence. So there's so much education that's coming out of this program that's beautiful to be able to see the staff go through these motions and start early intervention in a way as well around, you know, information sharing. So it's something a little new for me, you know, only in the last year or so around DV, but it's been a beautiful focus area. Because I know that there are a lot of programs around supporting men who offend, the offending partner in that situation. But yeah, you're right. There's that huge gap. But part of that, I have to assume, would be a lot of training for police, which is only going to be a good thing around recognising and being able to distinguish is this criminal, is this civil. What does this come under

and challenging those old values and roles and expectations. So that's really powerful itself in terms of the effect that that will have on the different systems. Absolutely, absolutely. There are a lot of social norms that need to be changed in order to do so. You know, we're seeing it in all of the interactions that we have with police and different government agencies around men being harmed, not being possible. And so we are trying to find ways to have them viewed as needing supports because they did experience this abuse or this violence and what that needs to look like over time as well. We are trying to develop workshops and learning opportunities and safely challenge unhelpful thoughts or views in recognizing that these people do need.

support and this is their experience regardless of what you think. And we're having to do that at a level that I never imagined we'd have to. And maybe it's, you know, it's quite naive of me, maybe, to just assume that everybody in helping professions is on board with where things are at today and we're inclusive and we're accepting, but it's not the case. And sometimes it depends on the individual you get on the day. Yeah. And you also don't know how it's going to affect someone. And I remember working in hospital emergency departments and you'd get paramedics or people coming through.

And you can see that they're really affected by what they're seeing, what they're exposed to. And you feel like, oh, this isn't my jurisdiction here. But I need to acknowledge that there's something going on here. And if I just let you walk out the door without saying something, this could potentially have really horrible effects of flow on. It's going to continue to build in your head. And you're not, I don't know what support you're going. getting. So yeah, it's a multifaceted approach, really. It is. It is, absolutely. I wonder whether there's a degree of when someone is wanting to get into this very specific area of supporting youth or social work,

the work in itself might bring up some really challenging concepts for them or memories, even if they've been through something similar. How do you support people through that? I think that it is It's very individual, but it's also very much based on the day and the interaction. You know, majority of people that I've met were here because we have some form of lived experience. And so when I'm supervising my team, I will always ask them around, you know, has anything come up? Is there anything going on for you? I always talk to them about self-care, their boundaries being able to switch off. I'm a huge advocate for taking leave.

It is an entitlement. So take it. Please have your time off. Don't feel obliged to stay because we're short stuff. Like I'll cover you. This is fine. We'll figure it out. Businesses always do. So I always ensure that stuff on surface level. But when things come up that might be particularly distressing, there's always that conversation of how are you feeling about this or that was a really challenging situation. How are you feeling about that now? kind of comes into job satisfaction, I suppose, but throughout the initial phases for the rollout of this program, myself included, we had a sense of helplessness because being in youth for so long, we knew how to navigate the systems and we could work around everything, but then you come into this space where it's men who have experienced domestic violence, and all of a sudden we can't manipulate a policy or a system or navigate the system or service delivery in a way to see positive out. And so it's like, well, we don't know what to do. How do we expect anybody else to know what to do? And so being able to recognize that and continue to have check-ins with the team in their experience, how can we manage this together?

Are there any areas of development or training resources, tools? Can we link in with other services? What do we need on the ground to be able to roll this out? I never force, for lack of a better word, my team to take on something they aren't comfortable with. Generally, when the referrals come through, we can read through here or there. I actually encourage them to pass that on to somebody else if they don't feel comfortable in any way. And we can come back to that discomfort later on and if we need to problem solve that in any way that we can. We respond to a lot of referrals or crisis incidents around suicide attempts, overdoses,

significant experiences of violence or abuse. And again, it comes back to check-ins, but not once-off check-ins. They're repetitive. They're ongoing. They are formal, informal. I gather resources and tools as much as possible. I share them. But I do also leave it up.

to the team in some regard for them to be able to address things that maybe I haven't picked up on or I haven't been present for. It can be hard. It can be really challenging to ensure that everybody is doing okay or tracking okay with the difficulty in the work that we do. Sure. Because A, you genuinely care about them as colleagues, right? But B, it's also your job not just as a leader, but a manager to make sure that they can continue to do the work and you don't end up with gaps because people have to take unexpected leave. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a, I am a true believer in being a leader that puts the staff at the front and centre, because if I can give them everything that they need and for them to feel supported, they can deliver the service and the supports

and respond to anything because they have everything they need. They don't have to worry about anything else and there's no other noise outside of what they're responding to. Yeah. If people wanted to know more about this kind of work, things that pop up in terms of resources or reading or viewing for me is, have you seen The Oasis and Life After the Oasis, the documentaries? I think I have, actually. They were pretty incredible. So this is the Oasis Youth Accommodation in Cities. Yes. Yeah, I've seen it. And then there was a sequel to it, which was equally fascinating. I think that's a real eye-opener if people are wanting to know

even just what it might be like to work in one of those areas or the difficulties that you face. It also reminds me of short-term 12, which is a film that another guest actually, Catherine, I never heard of it before. Yeah, it was a film about a woman who I don't think necessarily was a social worker, but she was a youth worker who was managing this hostel of sorts, supported accommodation for kids who required some support, either they didn't have the family support,

or they had families that they needed a break from. And she herself had that lived experience. So there was a really interesting exploration there about how she dealt with being in that environment and what that brought up for her personally, just having to support those kids. So just thought of that when you're talking about your sort of work. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to look into it. I might also link to MIMS podcast, which is incredible, and I've been listening to it pretty much from the start of social activities.

And that's so wonderful. I always picture it kind of like fly on the wall supervision. So Mim and Liz Murphy present a case. So they give the person who's talking about the case an opportunity to tell it in their own words. And then they come back after the case is told and they extrapolate, they interrogate it, they look at the different. things that have come out for not necessarily for social workers but for anyone who's working in a helping profession and what you might take out of that and how you might reflect on it and use it in your own work so I love their

podcast as well but are there any other resources that you'd shout out if or even anything that you've come up in your PhD if you want to get completely nerdy that people might want to read there is a podcast around youth and youth homelessness on Spotify and I believe that run through Y Foundations. So Y Foundations are the representative voice for youth homelessness and they represent us at state and national levels and they have their youth advisory group with a collection of young people with lived experience. Some are currently homeless and they talk to what youth homelessness is, why it matters, why we should be focusing on it. And it just gives more

insight into the actual experience of the young people. Outside of that, it's totally unrelated to probably anything, but there is a book that I found years ago, and it's by Stefan Friedrich from memory, and I could be pronouncing that wrong, but it was called, Please Don't Stab Me, How to Tuck a Gangster in Tibet. And it was just a collection of real-life stories over the years where he applied trauma-informed principles to his interactions with young people in juvenile, for facilities, all in Australia too. And so I love the way it brings in the Australian experience and how to respond to that in such a meaningful, purposeful way. And these short stories, and some of them are so funny to read, hence the title, it just helped the way that I view different situations and not thinking about just what I'm seeing all of the time. It's, hey, there's stuff here that I don't know about. And that helps me respond in a helpful way instead of reaction. sometimes and I think in saying that it's also been really beneficial in not only my practice but my reflection and my self-care and hey this isn't about me this is

something entirely different so it's yeah I don't know how to access it anymore but I do believe Nightlamp their consultancy service in Victoria from memory you can still email them to order copies I do encourage that one yeah yeah Thank you. I'll find resources and links and things and I'll pop them in the show notes so people can go off and do their own reading, viewing, listening. Yeah. Thanks for that. Beautiful. Before we finish up, Stacey, I'm mindful of your time. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about or mention in relation to your work or about social work in general? I think that all of our journeys are so different and whatever it looks like, that's okay as long as you are happy and you look after yourself along the way. Really. Very wise words. Yes. I'm so appreciative of your time and I loved hearing about your journey from that what you kind of were hinting at being an unconventional introduction to the profession,

but really needing to find something that captured your interest, which the other things just weren't doing it for you. Yeah. But you had that placement experience in your existing workplace. So that's a really good shout out to budding or interested. social workers just to get experience in the industry, volunteer even, but get your foot in the door because it gives you that much more of a step up before you've even finished your degree to be able to say, hey, I do understand how this stuff works and I do have this experience and I've got people that can back me up on that. Through your work, you work through so many different systems. You've got really interesting connections that you've had to develop and you've

foster and maintained those. And you said you weren't a person who thought you'd like to use stats, but you've used them in a way that's examining and interrogating the work that you're already doing. And you're finding, even not if it's official statistics, you're finding robust ways of measuring the success within the work. And it shows that the model is working. And if it's not, then it gives you an opportunity to adjust things. It's not just assuming that that's the way we've always done things and that's the way we're going to continue because it's been working.

You need to know what impact that's having, not just for your funding bodies, but so that you can finish up at the end of the week and know that you've done what you can. I love that you're embracing vulnerability and saying I don't have to be on all the time. I don't have to be working professional all the time. I can be mum. I can be dogminderer and clayer and feeder and, you know, a family person, a person that has friends and interests and activities. And I think the diversity that you've brought to your employment is something that has made it possible for you in terms of you're not just getting stuck on something. You're able to work around and segment your life, compartmentalize, I guess in a sense, to say, hey, I've got my research, I've got my project,

I've got my teaching and it's keeping the fire alive. It's keeping the passion there for social work. So, yeah, I can just hear that you're such an asset to your team with your approach, your patience, your understanding of what they're experiencing because you've done it yourself. And now you're just leading the cohort and then venturing out into other fun experiences and programs. So really look forward to seeing where that takes you.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. we'll see how I go. Yeah. Thank you again for your time. This has been so energizing for me and I'm sure other people will enjoy hearing about it as well. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Stacey, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky,

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 Heath, a recently graduated social worker currently working in the child protection space in the NGO sector. He has also completed a five-year internship in counseling while studying and now also works in private practice as a social worker.

I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you are notified when this next episode is available. See you next time.