Social Work Spotlight - Episode 139: Charlotte

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

In this episode I speak with Charlotte, the Program Manager of a youth crisis refuge and outreach program in Sydney. She has been in the housing and homelessness sector for the past five years and has also worked in men’s domestic and family violence and community outreach roles. Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Y Foundations - https://www.yfoundations.org.au/Inner Sydney Voice training - https://innersydneyvoice.org.au/news-events/training/See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill - https://www.jesshill.net/home/see-what-you-made-me-do/The Oasis and Life After the Oasis documentary films - https://www.jesshill.net/home/see-what-you-made-me-do/Safe Home TV series - https://www.sbs.com.au/whats-on/article/sbs-thriller-safe-home-coming-may-11/kajyykajzApplied Suicide Intervention Skills Training - https://asisttraining.com.au/Brené Brown - https://brenebrown.com/about/Vikki Reynolds - https://vikkireynolds.ca/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15AteoPDMJGW6IrwXT15GCJ2hS5zkSy54-156bexnrlY/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 Charlotte, the program manager of a youth crisis refuge and outreach program in Sydney. She has been in the housing and homelessness sector for the past five years and has also worked in men's domestic and family violence and community outreach roles. Charlotte is passionate about providing trauma-informed, strength-based care, and building relationships. Charlotte began studying social work almost 10 years ago, but life got in the way. So in 2025, she is back at uni, finishing off her Masters of Social Work.

Hi, Charlotte. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. Looking forward to having a chat with you about your experience in social work so far. Thank you for having me on. I'm excited. Yeah, I'd love to know, firstly, what got you into the profession

and what drew you to social work in the first place? I can't pinpoint exactly, but I knew from when I was mid-teens that I wanted to do something in the community space. So it was always something that was kind of on my radar. And by the end of year 12, I had made the decision I was going to study social work in criminology. And the goal was to eventually end up working in juvenile justice. I think for me, I just wanted to be the person that I needed growing up. And I also wanted a career that was different every day. I knew I was never going to be someone who sat at a desk nine to five.

And I always just wanted to make a difference. Like I can't imagine devoting my time and energy to something day after day and it not be something that brings out some good somewhere along the way. I just need to care about what I'm doing. Yeah. And what got you interested in criminology? because people that I've spoken with who've done that degree specifically have, you know, watched CSI and those sorts of things and thought, oh, I'd really be interested in forensics. Was there an element of that that interested you particularly?

No, for me, not really. I wanted to work in juvenile justice. That's what I had kind of the direction I was headed. And so when I was looking at social work degrees, the one that I really resonated with me at the time could be done as a double with criminology. And I was like, that's quite interesting. I've done legal studies. I find law and psychology, which is a big part of criminology, really interesting. And I think that that would be a really good combination.

So that's where I started. I didn't quite finish my social work degree, but I've still meanded down that path for quite some time. And we'll get back to the social work side of it, I guess. But once you finished studying criminology, what were the next steps for you? And did you have sort of an easy transition into working life? Not an easy transition. I had been doing a lot of casual and part-time jobs kind of in the community services space. But when I finished uni, I took a bit of a break from work, from study.

I went overseas. It was meant to be a couple of weeks and it became a year and a half. But I came back and I meended through a few casual jobs and then I was like, no, I really, the thing that made me feel good was doing community work. So I very quickly kind of started getting jobs in the industry and haven't stopped since. Yeah. And what was that path like for you? How did you kind of choose a direction or did things just kind of land in your lap and you thought, oh, that sounds interesting and I can find my way through this? So some of the jobs that I'd done during uni, I worked for an organisation called

Kids Giving Back that organised volunteering opportunities for young people and schools. And I kind of facilitated that and a lot of the work we did was then supporting like young people from relatively privileged backgrounds to be involved in community efforts. Then one of their main programs was bringing young people into a community kitchen to cook meals for the homeless, learn about what homeless looks like in Sydney. And then the young people would take the meals to rough edges in Darlinghurst, which is like a homeless living room. And I got exposed to some amazing people throughout that process running the community kitchen in the homelessness space. And we used to do over walks through Kings Cross.

And that was someone with lived experience of homelessness, who is now working and providing like education and community engagement around what homelessness actually is. And that's where I was like, that space is very interesting and might be for me. Yeah. So when I came back to community work later on, I started an out of home care because I was like,

I want to work with young people. I need to kind of get my hook in the door. I need to learn as much as possible. And I very quickly went from out-of-home care to working in youth homelessness crisis refuges because I realized I wanted to be in a bit of a different space. Out-of-home care just wasn't quite the right fit for me. Crisis definitely was. And I went quickly from casual crisis work and assertive outreach for young people into an early intervention casework role, then full-time. crisis casework which was an experience of baptism of fire shift work managing a house of teenagers on your own and then I've stayed in the homeless space for the last five years so I went

from crisis casework to traditional housing for young people 16 to 24 so essentially co-signing leases and getting them into sharehouses or individual properties and then hopefully transitioning them to the private rental market then I did a little bit of work in setting up a Men's Domestic Violence Program, setting up the program I loved. The day-to-day, the structure of it at the time was very admin-based, and that just doesn't fit well with me. It's now being restructured, which is fantastic. It's a lot more case-work-based, but it saw me transition across to my current role.

And I am the program manager of a crisis refuge for young people 12 to 17 experiencing homelessness. Sway house up to 10 young people with my wonderful team and support them and their family. families. It's such a huge transition going from out of home care to that crisis space where I get the impression that out of home care, yes, there's a lot to be unexpected and things can happen all the time, but I feel like there was a lot more wraparound support and a lot more structure, whereas crisis can be anything, right? Crisis is from day to day, you don't know what you're stepping into, you don't know if there's someone to hand stuff over to, you just feel like you are it for that

shift and potentially having to stay on longer. How did you manage that in that early stage and kind of feel like, okay, I understand the role and my limitations? Like you have to kind of put some barriers up, surely. Yes. I think hit the nail on the head in the differences between out-of-home care and crisis. And I will say, I kind of knew what I was getting into because the early intervention role that I was working in had a crisis refuge like attached. So I'd had a bit of exposure to it and doing it casually. Okay. But I learnt the hard way and for the time I left my first crisis role, I was very burnt out.

For all the reasons that you just listed, I very much felt that it was on me and the position I was in at the time, there wasn't on reflection enough support around me. You know, my colleagues were all newer than me or had no previous experience. so I was being expected to train them. There was no clinical supervision offered in that role. And when one or two of the senior social workers left, there really wasn't any support left me. So I learned the hard way and now I'm much, much better at that and something I am wildly conscious of in my role now,

supporting my teams that they never get to that point and I never put in the position that they have to stay beyond their hours without support or feel alone in what they're doing. doing so it's been a journey yeah and also as a young person supporting young people i feel like it could go either way do you feel as though that's a benefit to relating and understanding and having people feel that trust and a sense of rapport with you or do you think it's made it difficult being potentially so close to the experiences of these people yeah i'm 28 now but when i was first starting there was definitely a bit of an overlap when we went up to 24 and i was 22 23

and I looked a lot younger, but I kind of just always took that in my stride. I don't mind being underestimated because I like showing what I can do and I let my work speak for myself and I like almost showing up and being able to do more than someone expects of me because that also for me builds that relationship as well. It's like, oh, she did what she said she was going to do and actually she's done a whole lot more. So maybe she knows a little bit about something. Yeah.

And that's been my experience a lot and that happens with services with new. colleagues, all that kind of stuff, I take it as compliment that they think I look young and kind to go with it. I even had someone come to the door of my service this week and asked to see one of the staff, please. Yes, you're speaking to them. Yeah, a senior member of staff in fact. Yes. Yeah. A lot of also people that I've spoken with that have found themselves in leadership roles, it's not necessarily been something they've sought out. It's been exactly, as you've said, people have left the role or the organization and it's pretty much a case of, well, who's next or who's available or who's interested. Did you feel as though you had enough support around that

transition? Yes, I did. I have always kind of naturally fallen into roles like this and I think it was partly that, but this role in particular I felt very ready for. I am someone who can't just sit and watch things be okay. I really like to push and challenge myself to be the best I can be and to, I don't know, develop things the best I can. And having had an experience of really intense burnout, I had the opportunity to start managing program probably year and a half for this current role. And I acted up in that role and I could do that role well. And I knew I could do that role well and I was getting out kinds of clients and I was supporting staff. But what I know was that at that time in my organization there was no support for me and previous me

would have powered on through to my own detriment but I took a step back and said this is actually not the time for me to step up because it will be to the detriment of myself and then I can't show up for anyone else I can't shop for my clients I can't shop my staff it would be a short sharp career burn so I stepped back and then when this opportunity came up 18 months later the situation within the organization had changed significantly and I felt that I could step up and have the support I need to do this job well and long term. Yeah. How did you recognize in the first place, if it's something you're comfortable discussing, how did you recognize that you were burning

out or had burnt out? And how do you know that you can recognize that again in future? I guess it's only really happened once, but when it happened, it was maybe not the same experience as a lot of people have where they are disillusioned by the work or they feel compassion and fatigue towards clients. I was still very much invested in my clients and could emotionally engage. But what I found was that I had very little patience or I struggled to hold a space for colleagues who weren't showing up and doing their job or what I saw is not doing their job. And I was really taking things home with me. And at first I didn't really bring them recognize that, but it was starting to impact other parts of my life. And it just made me,

yeah, like I had, I was just irritable and tired and things frustrated me so much more than they normally would. And for me, there was an incident at work unrelated to a client in the way that a situation with staff when I was on, I had to take leave because I got COVID quite, quite badly which took me out and the place was in best when I came back a week later and I it realized I couldn't I just couldn't I was done there was nothing left in the tank and I realized I couldn't do it alone yeah yeah and I guess no case of burnout is going to be consistent with someone else's experience but hopefully you've done a bit of reflection you can recognize it and you've put, I guess, some good habits in place and you've developed good resources around you

to be able to safeguard yourself against that in future. Yeah, for sure. For me, I think it's realizing that burnout is just related to your, how you feel about clients or service users. It's how you feel in a whole lot of different spaces. And it was a moment of going, oh, actually, I've grown in that I'm choosing to not take this opportunity because I don't have the support around me to do this well. I think that's something that I personally am still developing as a person, as a social worker, is figuring out where that support is, what's appropriate to reach out for and recognize and then accepting support.

So what have you learned about that and what support do you require to make this work sustainable? That is a lesson I think I still need to keep relearned. and remind myself, but in getting into a really challenging place, I know that I don't want to get it back there. For me, I don't, I think what I need to do my job well is flexibility. I really value the chance to be creative and think critically and to try new things and have, know that my supervisor and my manager is going to have my back or end challenge me when they think I'm doing the wrong thing. I need to have trust in that relationship. They're going to go, why are you doing that?

Talk me through it. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Or have you considered this from this angle or this lens or through this framework? So I need to really trust my direct supervisor. I think as well, I'm now in a place where I have a lot of friends in the industry and they are very solid relationships. So even if I'm not talking directly about work, I know that those people understand the nature of my day to day. And if I need quiet time or whatever, if not necessarily relationship-based, it may be that I'm decompressing from a really challenging day at work.

I also have some really excellent mentors now, which I didn't have in my first few jobs, social workers who are absolutely wonderful and have taught me wonderful things just by being who they are and working the way they work and getting to see that up close. I also really value quality clinical supervision, and my current clinical supervisor is really excellent. and we have a really good relationship and she is not afraid to call me out on things, which I really like because it really pushes me to think differently. Yeah. Walk me through the day to day then.

What does there is never a typical day in social work? What does it look like though for you? You've mentioned the current role, but what does it entail? And how do you use your time to support your people? Yeah. So this is the first crisis where I've had that isn't shift work. So that's been really nice. Yay.

Because I am still studying, I do a compressed week, so I do a four-day work week. I work seven or seven-thirty to four most days, sometimes a bit later. And then I usually do an hour or two on my Fridays or in the evenings to make up my full 30-hour week. So I'm usually in there early. The staff on shipwork at seven, so someone's usually up. I usually kind of set myself up for the day, catch up on what's happened overnight. any critical incident, anything like that.

Help whoever's on wake the household up because getting 10 young people out of bed is a difficult task. We then do when everyone else is in, which is usually between 8 and 9, we do a handover from night shift to day stuff. So that's anything major that's happened overnight, who's in the house, who's out, what the day might look like. My day-to-day then can be quite admin-based. In my current role, there had been no program manager for most a year.

there was a lot of backhand stuff that I spend time cleaning up and streamlining. Yeah. My goal in that is to reduce admin and paperwork as much as possible to free up my caseworkers to be able to spend more time with their own people instead of filling out forms repetitively. So I do bits and bobs of that. There will be supervision with my staff at least once a month. I sit with each of them and we do supervision. In addition to like ad hoc conversations, coaching, there will be.

be some like incidental stuff with clients and helping out just around the house because I'm the person that they walk up to. And then I am usually involved in the higher level concerns. So that might be having some difficult conversations with young people facilitating family meetings. I'm heavily involved in intake process, less so for our older young people, but for those that are quite young because there are child protection concerns and all this kind of stuff, they tend to come through me and I that involves a lot of negotiation with DCJ which can take some time the other day-to-day thing for me is a lot I'm really working on building our service relationships and our partnerships so it might be speaking to other services and building kind of referral pathways

finding out about what they do at the moment we're having one to two services come to our service a week so they can see what we do and we can learn about each other's programs and put faces synates. I am very big on relationships and building big support networks around my young people, so it's not just us. Yeah, we do a handover in the afternoon. On a Wednesday, we have a weekly team meeting. And then I do a lot, because we're a small, I do a lot of random stuff around the house. So the other day I spent three hours cleaning out the garage so we can get a car in there. And that's not necessarily a program manager's job, but I am a big believer in if I'm going to ask someone else to do it. I need to get stuck in and do it myself.

Yeah. So sometimes you'll find me assembling beds and whatever jack-of-all trades when it comes to crisis. But kind of as you were saying, that frees the casework as the managers up to be able to do the support with the young people, whereas otherwise you'd take them away from that. And yes, you've got other things that take priority, but you're so good from the sounds of things at managing your own workload and finding that balance that you can do that and then catch up on stuff later. So that probably means a world of good for your people that you support. Yeah. I want my team to be as free as possible to spend time with young people, not only doing casework, but actually developing those relationships.

So that every interaction isn't casework based because this is young people's home. So I want them to be able to hang out for a little bit and, you know, bake brownies, that that's what the young person wants to do. Because I really believe there's some really powerful conversations in those informal tasks that then can do just as much as formal casework can. and after a few hours it's sitting in a computer, I am ready to get up and move. So if there's a job that needs to be done, I've got it. Yeah.

That initial coming in of a morning must be an interesting time when you've got a staff member needing to debrief and you're the only person there. And so I feel like that's a really good opportunity for you to develop good relationships with your caseworkers as well. Yeah, 100%. We're very lucky that we generally, really have fairly settled nights but it is a great opportunity to get to know my staff, particularly those that more do nights or weekends one-on-one without the chaos of 10 young people

coming to the door and really yeah, connecting that way because I really think relationships to the core of everything we do. And you mentioned DCJ is that where the majority of the funding comes from all of the funding. Are there other sources that you can access? No, so all of our funding comes from DCJ under specialist homelessness services. So we're So we are funded to house up to 10 young people. It's a bit of a complicated area with funding because no homeless or service is technically funded to house under 16s. So we're kind of filling a bit of a bit of a gap there. But yeah, we don't have any kind of other ongoing sources of funding.

We do occasionally get donations and stuff from different services, which we really appreciate. And that material aid helps the budget go just a little bit further. Yeah. Do any of your people have recognised disabilities to the? they get any funding through NDIS, for example? Quite often we have young people who are on the NDIS, but if they have reached us in crisis, usually they're not accessing it or funding has wrong out or they don't know how to access it because they're only with us up to three months.

Often by the time we have got that all sorted, they're actually moving on to somewhere else. But we do spend a lot of time negotiating with NDIS, chasing up plans, working out, actually you are entitled to funding or we get young people who should be on NDIS and no one has taken the time to go through that process with them so we kick that process off and do a lot of the heavy lifting because we see them all day every day so that they can go on to access that support we do occasionally having the US workers come into the house if someone has a package is accessing it but that would be kind of more social supports and things like that if a

young person isn't able to maintain like very basic hygiene and stuff. It's probably not the right service because we have like shared bedrooms and things like that. So we can't have support work is in the bedrooms and stuff from NDIS. Yeah. Walk me through then your decision, given that you had this wonderful career and trajectory and we're already doing really well with the first degree, walk me through that decision of going back to social work and what new knowledge do you think you bring to because obviously theory and practice are interchangeable. So in my undergraduate I actually did almost all of the theory unit except for one or two for social work but just wasn't in the position to do placement which was really disheartening.

I was trying to be black circumstances meant I wasn't. So it's been one of those things that I wanted to come back to you for a long time. I was scared to come back to study and I finally bit bullet this year and that was for a few different reasons it was partly because I look up to so many wonderful social workers it was partly from a practical lens I want to be able to supervise students in my workplace who are doing social work I want to open as many doors as possible for myself in terms of upskilling and a lot of that requires a social work degree as a prerequisite if I want to change careers a lot of the time now they are requesting that you are aASW registered so there was a lot going in there and I I also felt like it's eight years since I've been at uni.

I need to keep my knowledge current. And while I've done 101 short courses and three-day courses, whatever, thought the best way to do that would be to go back and really immerse myself back in social work theory, which has been great. It's been a really good refresher on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And how long do you have left? Is it just the practical that you have to complete now? A couple more subjects.

I'm waiting for RPL to be approved. hopefully that was a process and a half it's almost a subject in itself yes so I should have to do one placement and a couple more units I am trying to get done completely by the end of next year so taking a full-time load while I'm doing full-time work is a little ambitious we're amazing at multitasking but yeah how you're going to balance that I'm doing okay I am very good getting things done. I like to be busy. I have ADHD and I don't know how to kind of relax. So relaxing for me is kind of switching to different tasks and you know the study is very different to the work I do. So to me it's using a different part of my brain, engaging different part of

myself. So I just have to kind of be really judicious with my time, plan around things. And I decided if I wasn't enjoying it, I would pull it out before, census and I to my great surprise I'm actually managing it a lot better than my undergraduate and I think that's because I understand myself a lot better. I have learned a lot in how I manage myself and my time. So yeah, we're getting there. Do you get much of a say as to what that placement will be? Is it even an option to do it at your current workplace or is that muddy in the waters a little bit too much? I'm not 100% sure particularly if I get RPL or not. I would love to do it at my current workplace and go into a different role because there are a few different roles. So if that was an

option, I would love to do that and go and learn a whole new school set and a different kind of team. If that's not the case, then what I've kind of said to uni is I really just want to learn something new. So my only request is that I don't do a placement somewhere like DCJ, partly because I work with them every day and I don't want to money professional relationships. And partly because I don't think I would learn as much as I would if I was thrown in the deep end. In a, sector that I haven't spent a lot of time. Okay. So something in between, but keeping the doors open.

Yeah, I like to challenge myself. So whatever kind of comes my way. I was very much the same in that I actually didn't know what I wanted to do. Everything sounded interesting. I just thought, yes, can I do one of everything? And what I found was I've actually worked in both areas where I had placements. So that just happened accidentally. But I'm really lovely in the sense that I could show in.

job interviews. Yes, I haven't worked in this area, but I do already have experience. I've worked in the field. I understand how hospitals work. I understand multidisciplinary teams, all of that stuff. You've got a language for it already. So it means that when it does come time to looking for any sort of career change or moving sideways at least, that you can say, hang on a second, I do have those transferable skills, even if I haven't officially worked in the area. So I think keeping your options open is really clever. I think that's something I love about homelessness too, because we become a catch-all for everything. And so I feel like I know a little bit of that a lot. I'm a master of nothing, but I know a little bit about a lot of different things and know how to navigate

a whole range of services. And I've spent time in hospitals with young people in all sorts of scenarios. And so I can usually figure my way out through it. Yeah. And given that you've had quite a bit of experience now in this area in crisis in supporting young people with homelessness but also supported accommodation. Have you seen many changes over that time in terms of the support available or what changes would you like to see? There are lots of changes I would like to see. The space hasn't changed hugely in the terms of what services are doing or offering. Funding has not been recommissioned for quite some time. So services are doing what they're always, have but the real value of the money has gone down so we're having to be even more creative than we were

four or five years ago. Relationships with DCJ and child protection and that overlap there, that has always been a challenge and so I would really, really love for there to be some change there. And I am advocating very strongly in conjunction with other members of my organisation and other services to kind of bring DCJ to the table and have some conversations about how can we do this better and work collaboratively so that is something I would love to see changed. I think the biggest change has been in the young people presenting to us, why they are presenting to us and what their primary concerns are for them. I think in terms of like substance use compared to five years ago has gone down significantly the young people I work with. That used to be a really big thing,

particularly on weekends and now maybe every second or third weekend we have a young person under the inputs. So that has really changed. That scape has really changed. That scape has really changed and there's been a lot more young people presenting for family violence reasons because I think the rise of domestic and family violence in the public consciousness has given people language for what they're experiencing and now they're realizing oh that's not okay and are reaching out for support in more bigger numbers than ever before that's been a real trend over the last couple of years and when I spoke with the lovely Stacey who introduced me to you who you work with what she was focusing on in terms of how she continues to work and builds energy for that is

finding those small wins. So something that might not seem like a big deal on the outside, but given that you know the person and their context and the challenges that they're facing, being able to really see those wins, even if you can't see them for themselves, do you have any examples of where you felt you've been able to make a real difference in someone's life? And I just put you on the spot there. Yeah, but I'm sure you can think of me. I am very much support that philosophy.

That's something I bring to our team. We do, you know, little wins every single day for each bag, young people, and for the team at team meetings. For me, there's been a few clients that I have been a real turning point for me. There was a young person early in my crisis career who came to us in really challenging circumstances in her life. I couldn't kind of comprehend the kind of trauma she had been through and she was standing in front of me at 15 and her substitute was hugely impacting her day to day and had been for a number of years and she was only 15 and I really was concerned about where this young person was going to end up and we had very little support from anyone else and we had to find some really creative ways to support her and I definitely became kind of the main. lynch pin of advocating for where we go from here and she ended up leaving our

crisis service to go on to one of the few medium-term services in Sydney and returned to high school she reached a year sober she had made all these strides and it was just one of the first where I was like okay this is why I did this this is a huge win but in that process there were lots of little wins of every day that we ticked a new box and that we kept her safe and that she learnt what a safe relationship with an adult looks like they were the little wins that kept us going even when we had big back sides we could go but actually we're still made progress here because she's told us about this and she would six months

ago would never have told us about that so yeah is there much work with families with guardians caregivers I imagine that it'd be it depends how connected someone is I guess or disconnected but I imagine that would be a huge part of the role as well as getting other people on board and making sure that that person has the wraparound supports for when they do leave your service. Absolutely. Family involvement of family restoration is always our first consideration with a young person at any age up to 17, although even more so when they're younger. And what that looks like is different for each family. So we try and meet each family where they're at and put supports in place for the caregiver,

So whether it's mom, dad, nan, whoever it is, as well as the young person. And then we try to kind of work out where to from here. If it's determined by us or DCJ or together that home is not safe and returning home is not an option, then for me it's okay, that's cool. They can't live with them. If they want a relationship with that person, how do we facilitate a safe relationship and continue family connections? Are there other connections that maybe they can't live?

with their older sibling but can we support that relationship to build and break the patterns that have permeated that house across their childhood so we do a lot of that um we sometimes provide kind of a circuit breaker or respite for a family where there's been a lot of conflict with a young person just to give them both a couple of nights breathing space so that we can then come back together and go okay how do we deal with this now that everyone's tempers have simmered down a little bit everyone's had some time to themselves so yeah we do a lot of that work we We draw on other services. We did work collaborative really with family counsellors with all sorts of family services,

but often we are the ones that first identify the issues in the family and there's often weight lists and criteria. So we're kind of trying to find that middle ground until they can be referred on to more specialist services. And are there conferences? I'm just wondering if people similar to yourself in different organisations, different houses, different settings get to come in contact with each other. Yes, and that's something that I have really focused on in this role over the last six months,

because the way contracting was done 10 years ago was competitive, and it soured a lot of relationships. I wasn't in the industry for that, so I have come into it with fresh eyes, and so I have really worked on rebuilding relationships, and what I've found is that a lot of people are in the same position as me. They weren't around for that. They don't have that. Everyone I speak to who was around for that describes it as traumatic. So there was a real hesitancy because services were made to compete.

So I am very proactive. So I've had most of the other youth services in the Sydney Metro come to our service or I've gone to theirs to learn about each other's programs, what's working, what's not. And I plan to kind of keep doing that. My goal, and this is a little ambitious by the end of the year, would be to have all services according under 16s actually have like some kind of meeting together. That's not established. So it would be me kind of, kind of, trying to make that happen. However, we do have Y Foundation for the peak body for

youth services and they do a great job of advocacy and they have meetings for SHS services, but they're more kind of formal meetings and less kind of grassroots problem solving. And I really love that the work they do. So this would be almost in addition to that. I don't know. It's something that I'm still percolating on. Yeah, fun. And it could just be that so many other people out there looking for something similar or starting to develop something similar. So there's no point 10 people doing the same thing when you can all come together and you don't have a lot of extra time in your day. You're already very busy. So putting your heads together is going to make things happen a lot faster. Yeah. I think for me as well, for some of our young people,

they end up in the home space for an extended period. And while that is far from ideal, what the opportunity I think we're missing is consistency or understanding between services to ease that journey for young people. So I think that is also a way that we could be really impactful and support young people across their experience of homelessness and help them exit the homeless space a little bit sooner. Do you have anyone who comes through the service or perhaps needs the service but maybe isn't eligible because, for instance, they're not an Australian permanent race. are there issues around eligibility to do with that? No. If you are homeless or at risk of homelessness and you are age between 12 and 17, we will house you.

If you're under 16, we generally require DCJ involvement just because we don't want someone 13 or 14 floating through homelessness for two years because there's no other exit point other than family. So we have had people from refugee and asylum seekers backgrounds. We have had people from all sorts of backgrounds and circumstances. The tricky thing is they are not eligible for income, which isn't an issue for us, but it can be issues for long-term options. So they may linger in the homeless space longer, but we're usually pretty good at being like, right, well, we've got to figure this stuff out. The only other thing that I say to the service users is that we are here for people who home is unsafe and it is untenable to live there. there and that doesn't mean unhappy necessarily or not ideal. It has to be that it actually isn't okay to be living there because we do get contact from parents and young people who are like,

can you straighten my kid out? Mom and dad's given me a 10 p.m. curfew. I don't want to live there anymore and I'm like, I get that, but we are not for you. Here are some other services I have put in place to help work out things with mom and dad will help straighten out your child. as a lot of parents say to me, I have to burst that bubble for them. Yeah, we are not replacing parenting. No. Do you get any training or support around supervising other staff members? I'm wondering whether you have any resources that you could recommend for people.

Or I don't know if I have resources off the top of my head, but I did, I have done a few like courses and training. A course I would really recommend anyone going into a leadership role in community services look into is there is an organisation called Ina City Voice and they run a program called The Leaders Room. It's not supervision specific but it is fantastic in considering who you want to be as a leader, how you want to show up as your staff, the difference between leadership in community service spaces and predominant leadership knowledge is often more business based. So that has been incredibly helpful for me in developing who I want to be for my staff and my service. And that's taken a lot of the supervision focus learning I've done through the CCWA and all that

and really helped me conceptualise it in a way that fits me and my team. A lot of the supervision courses I've done, I found a very generic and geared towards kind of more early intervention teams and things like that when you get to go home at the end of the day. And crisis just isn't quite the same. Yeah. Maybe putting this out there, you could develop some support. some training, some courses for specifically this area, because it sounds like it is super niche in terms of being able to support your staff. Yeah, that's definitely a possibility. I would love

to do further learning and development postmasters. So maybe that is the direction I headed. Yeah. Yeah, I love learning. So we'll see where we go. Absolutely. Are there any other resources that you'd recommend people check out if they're interested in knowing a bit more about this area of work? In terms of crisis, I think that if you're working community services and you're curious, the best thing to do is find your local youth service and be like, hey, can we come to a service visit, see the house, learn about your program because they are all slightly different. And I think seeing the property often really changes people's minds about what homeless and services is. And they're better able to describe it to

clients who may be wanting to access that service because they can say, actually, this is what it is. In terms of my work, I have a lot of different things I refer to, but one book that I read a couple of years ago and is kind of really stuck with me was, it's called See What You Maybe Do. I think the author is, I want to say Jessica Hill, but basically she's an Australian journalist who looked into family and domestic violence. And reading that book, completely changed my understanding of that and made me really interested in a whole bunch of different things around family violence, around family systems. So that's one of my recommended reads, I guess, for anyone who might be coming into contact with those kind of experiences.

Yeah, nice. And as you were talking, I was thinking of media and things that I've watched. And I'm reminded of the Oasis and Life After the Oasis, which were filmed all in that area where you were initially situated in Surrey Hills and Darlinghurst. And those are incredible and following the stories of youth who are homeless and struggling and just needing some additional support and boundaries and, you know, sometimes rules, but mostly just an acknowledgement that things are pretty rough and you're still young and you still have a developing brain and, you know, this isn't your fault. So that was an incredible two-parter. And the other thing I was thinking of was safe home.

I think it was on the ABC or SBS maybe, but when you were talking about the project with supporting men who have experienced domestic violence, that just reminded me of it was really well done in terms of you never quite can tell who the perpetrator might be or who the victim might be in any situation. I don't know if you've seen either of those, but are there any other sort of media or things that you've seen

that you think are kind of telling about your work or can give people a bit of an insight into. Or maybe you just don't watch or read or have much to do with that because you need a bit more of an escape. I think I tend to read in terms of things around my area that will then inform it. So that's where like reading about TV and stuff like that very much informs my work. But I don't have a whole bunch of resources specifically partly because I don't think there's a lot of resources that fully articulate the experience of being in a crisis

refuge and just being thrown in there. Some of the courses that I have found extremely helpful in doing my work, one is anything focused on accidental counselling because you tend to do a lot of that. And also, courses like suicide assists that really get to the heart of mental health crises and responding to that. So by living works, that course is fantastic. It is very confronting, but is one of the best courses that I have done. Yeah, in terms of media and stuff like that, I tend to try and switch off when I. I'm not at work because otherwise I live and breathe it. Although I am a big Bray Brown fan to listen to her podcast and stuff and Bickey Reynolds and a few other excellent social workers

and take bits and pieces from each of them as I go. Yeah. And I love also various other people that she's friends with who have their own podcasts and just kind of being a fly on the wall of all these incredible people with amazing minds who I just constantly learned from just by listening to their ideas and their concepts and how they make sense of the world. So yeah, I mean, we're on a podcast, but I feel like I just absorb a lot of stuff while I'm walking or driving or cooking dinner. I think it's just such an accessible format. Yeah, 100%.

I think particularly for me, vulnerability resonates so strongly in the work that I do because we are seeing people at their most vulnerable, asking them to be vulnerable. And it really, for me, I think about what, does vulnerability is a worker me and what does that's a whole space and a whole other conversation. But I find that area of thought fascinating. Yeah. And even vulnerability, because she talks about leadership quite a lot, so vulnerability in leadership and just being able to be humble enough to communicate that to your team and say, look, I don't know everything. I'm working it out along with you, but I have my own opinion

and I can support you as best I can. And let's figure this out together. Absolutely. And I really try to bring that to my team. But also to my relationship with my young people. I have no qualms whatsoever saying to a young person. I don't know, but we can figure it out together. Or acknowledging that, yeah, this system is really challenging. Like you are not alone in thinking that, that there are issues with services Australia or there are issues with this.

However, this is what we're working with. This is what we can do to challenge it. Like acknowledging the flaws. And I'm a big believer in acknowledging outwardly to my team, to my young people, when I am wrong, when I make a mistake. Because how can I ever expect them to do the same if I don't leave with that example? Yeah, it's an integrity thing.

And I think kids can read through the nonsense very quickly. So they're going to see that you're not being genuine, that you don't know. I think the best medicine is transparency. Yeah, they know. They know straight away. Yeah. I love also just that sense that you have of,

you're not happy enough with OK, I think you said. So you're really feeling like you need to be challenged and constantly developing and reading things despite the fact that you've got enough to read for uni. You're always wanting to try to develop yourself further and also building those service relationships and those partnerships and making sure that everyone's on the same page and try not to be competitive with one another, even though you're effectively fighting for the same funding, just being able to demonstrate that this work is hard enough without fighting against each other. So how do we work together? Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly it. And I really believe I have something to learn from everyone that comes across my path. So I want to learn from everyone in me. Yeah, yeah. And I know that when I was early in my work life, I would come across other social workers because my first role, actually, most of my work has been in non-designated social work roles. We just happen to be everywhere and we make our roles, social work roles. But you meet another social worker in the wild and you just think, oh, how did you get where you? are and what do you do and why is that a social work role and tell me more so yeah i think just clinging

on to those good people around you and being able to say i've got so much to learn from you let me just observe and let me be part of that world yeah absolutely i think this has been incredible i love that we're only at the start of this journey right you've done so much already yeah even though you haven't finished the degree yet you've finished your first degree and you've being able to develop so much on those learnings and the work that you've already done in the sector. So even before you graduate, you're going to be so far ahead, I feel like, of a lot of your peers in social work. So it's only going to take you further. And you're very passionate about this area now, but you might end up doing your placement and going, hang on a second, this area

really excites me and makes me really want to get up every day and do this other work. And that's okay too because you're going to take all of this learning. So I feel like there's no wasted time in social work. Every single thing you do is contributing to the support that you can provide people. And that's what it's all about, right? You just wanted to support people. You wanted to make some sort of change in people's lives that didn't have the same opportunities. And yeah, I think there's so much excitement in your future, so much good work to be done. And I really appreciate you sharing that journey so far with me. I really appreciate your time. It's been really lovely to chat to you. I said I love meeting new people and this has been really special. Yeah. Thank you again, Charlotte.

Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Charlotte, please visit my anchor page at anchor.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 Celeste, a registered social worker and music educator with experience across domestic violence, refugee support and community development. As a queer neurodivergent professional with South Indian Heritage, Celestei draws from ancestral resilience,

person-centered frameworks, and creative pedagogy to walk alongside those impacted by systemic violence. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you will notify when this next episode is available. See you next time.