Social Work Spotlight - Episode 142: Dylan

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

In this episode I speak with Dylan, who currently supervises a team of Support Coordinators spanning across South East Queensland. With experience in Child Safety, NDIS Social Work and Pastoral Ministry, Dylan takes a holistic approach to working with people, incorporating feminist theory and humanistic theory in his work.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Choosing Change - https://www.choosingchange.com.au/Circle of Security parenting program - http://www.circleofsecurityparentingprogram.com.au/Summary of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed - https://bookbrief.io/books/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-paulo-freire/summaryJan Fook’s ‘Social Work: A Critical Approach to Practice’ - https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/social-work/book260992Janet Hagberg and ‘The Critical Journey’ - http://www.janethagberg.com/critical-journey-book.htmlMoral Injury and the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003281122/moral-injury-humanities-andrew-cohen-kathryn-mcclymondThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qFcXba9ZZJPYcdCI0CFEAWQxkGx8m8vBW9ws4ADl3fE/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

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

I'm your host, Yasamine Lupus, and today's guest is Dylan, who currently supervises a team of support coordinators spanning across Southeast Queensland. With experience in child safety, NDIS social work, and pastoral ministry, Dylan takes a holistic approach to working with people, incorporating feminist theory and humanistic theory in his work. Thanks, Dylan, for coming on to the podcast today. I'm really looking forward to having to chat with you about your experience in social work. Sounds great. I'm super keen to be here.

Thank you. I'd love to know firstly when you got started in social work and what brought you to the profession. Yeah, sure. So funny answer to that one. In theory, I have been an accredited social worker for two years. So quite new on paper. However, I've had quite an extensive career, I guess, in the broader human. services, health and professions. And it took me a while to do my master's because COVID happened.

So yeah, it's a bit about, it's a bit of my journey. But in theory, about two years now. Yep. And what was that journey like for you in terms of it sounds like you really had to persevere. It wasn't going to happen easily for you. Yeah. Well, I, yeah, if I go back to several years ago, so a bit of my history was more in the child safety area and arena. And so I spent a fair few years there and then team led a couple of teams there. But then I had this itch to study social work. So in 2019, I made the call to study it and then COVID happened. And I had a couple of young, a couple of kids at the time. And just with the instabilities, it meant that I needed to put a bit of a pause on that just to be present with my family during that time. So then kind of the back end

of 2021 got stuck into it and then, yeah, finished in 2023. And did you know much about the profession before you got into it, had you had much exposure, or were you just kind of, you enjoyed the values and liked the idea of it? No, that's a good question. Again, I led a lot of multidisciplinary teams, particularly in kind of the early intervention family support space. So that had meant that I began to rub shoulders with a few social workers. And I had kind of, I had been in these roles for many, many years,

but then I remember one day one of my senior team leaders pulled me up because she heard myself and a few other speak about ourselves as social workers. And it was that moment where I distinctly remember it. It would have been about probably around 2018. And she said, you can't call yourself a social worker. You haven't started to be a social worker. And at the time, I remember thinking, I've been working in this field for years. But then she was one of the early people who actually, who took me aside lovingly and said,

No, Dylan, this is what it means to be a social worker. This is what it looks like to be formed as a social worker. and therefore she kind of instilled in me this early professional identity around, hey, you know, we can call ourselves whatever we want, but at the end of the day, social workers have gone through this rigorous theoretical formation, practical formation. And I kind of, since then, I guess I've been quite passionate about making that distinction too in other people in that social work is a field of its own with an expertise of its own and those who have begun to be formed as social workers have put in a lot of practice and theory

framework and formation around that. So that was kind of a shift for me because in the child safety area, everyone called themselves a social worker. Right. But, yeah, and I'd kind of internalize that at the time. So, yeah. Yeah. Some of the social workers I've spoken with from the UK or maybe Australians who have

worked in the UK talk about social workers being a protected profession in terms of the label. So I feel like perhaps that's where your colleague was coming from in terms of, hang on a minute, don't assume that you've got the same history, the same background. But I understand that you've done a lot before, I feel like you've been a bit modest. You've done a lot before you've come to social work, right? You've studied ministry, you've studied pastoral care. I'm really keen to know a little bit more about that journey and how that informs the social worker that you are now. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's correct. So in and out of kind of of various helping professions. I've spent a chunk of my career in, yeah, as you said,

in pastoral ministry spaces. So leading faith communities, trying to do church a bit differently to kind of, I guess, how most people would view and probably rightly so critique a lot of the church. So yeah, so I've been doing that for about probably 12 or so years on and off in formal, vocational and unpaid capacities. And I guess with that, there was, what kind of brought me into social work from that space is that in the kind of the church pastoral ministry space, there's a really strong conceptualisation around calling and about helping people and helping wounded and oppressed people. And so very early on in my young adolescent life before I had kids and had to be a bit of an adult now, it was a real strong drawing for me to help people at their

most vulnerable moments and to come beside them as they're journeying through asking these kind of broader existential questions. Now, where that led, though, is that that led me in a pastoral context to care for the spiritual needs of an individual. But very, very quickly, as you kind of, as you lift up the spiritual needs and you lift that rock up and you look at what's underneath that, you realize that there's quite a convergence there with deeper, holistic needs of mental, spiritual, physical, emotional, sexual, it opens up that a person is multifaceted, and therefore, when working with the person requires a multifaceted approach.

And so as I began to kind of put some runs on the board as a minister, I began to see that I had this other area in me that needed to be developed to turn up for people that I was working with, which got me to study counselling and then got me to move into social work. But I could talk about that all day, but that's kind of how that path converged. Yeah, I love it. I actually know another social worker. Actually, Damien, who was the very first guest on this podcast many years ago, who studied theology and was big on, I guess, the same sort of trajectory as you and then the convergence of, hang on a second, we need to be thinking about things more holistically and how do we support community and systems and all of that sort of thing, because not to say that, I mean, pastoral care, I've worked with ministers and faith supporters in hospitals and do amazing. amazing work and so important when people are at their most vulnerable. But I get the sense that, you know, you can support, similar to counseling or psychology,

you can support what you see at the time, but you can't necessarily support the broader picture. And so that's perhaps the journey that you've gone on to try to address that a little bit more widely. Absolutely. And if I could comment on that too. Yeah. I think where social workers converge with my spirituality in that way is that after

several years as a pastor and as a church planter and as a pastor or carer, I myself had quite a crisis of my own faith, which is broadly now known to be kind of deconstruction. Now we know that there's Foucault and other people who have spent extensive time on this, but for a lot of the Christian community, that was a newer postmodern concept, which was viewed as what do we do with this. And so it's actually, and we can get to that a bit later, but it's actually some of the underpinnings and theory that I learned in my social work degree. which actually helped me to navigate my own crisis of faith and come out the other side with a Christian worldview that has more room, is more inclusive and can really take of some of the best

thought leaders out there. And I have a lot to thank my social work formation for that. So it's actually, that's a whole other niche that I get very, very excited about and very interested in. But yeah. You love that. You reminded me of another wonderful guest on the podcast, Josie McSkimming, who she had her own crisis of faith and left the church and ended up writing her PhD dissertation, doing her research with other people who had had similar fallings out with the church communities, and that whole re-identifying and trying to figure out where you fit because your whole life has been

wrapped up in this community. So yeah, that really reminds me of what you're kind of describing. Cool. I'd love to look into that. Yeah. I mean, some light reading if you want to have a look through the PhD. Yeah. No, some incredible people out there who are just putting some real thought into the social work rather than, hey, this is what we've learned and here is how I apply it. It's that back end of the, how do I know what I know and how do I apply that, as opposed to just here is a process that we follow because it's the same way that we've always done things. Absolutely.

Did you get to do some interesting placements as part of your degree? And did you get any say in that? Yeah. So I have a few very close friends who are uni lecturers in social work as well as just very experienced social workers. And I say this with a bit of tongue in cheek, but much to their dismay, my first placement, I received recognition of prior learning for that. So my first 500 hours, I think because I'd supervise a team and kind of a child's safety. setting before. My first 500 hours was done away with, which was helpful for me in that with a young family. And, you know, there's been a lot of obviously development recently around outcomes due to placement poverty and the paid placements now. But in 2019, that wasn't there. So my first placement, I got RPL4. My second, my final placement, I actually joined a support coordination company

because I wanted to learn and be formed in an aspect of social work that I hadn't spent much time in before. And that was more in the NDIS disability allied healthcare space. So yeah, that's where I did my second placement, 500 hours of goodness. And I loved every minute of it. And I got to sit under my now boss who is also a social worker, which was just brilliant. And what was that transition like for you then going from a student on placement to a professional in the same organisation. Yeah, it was, it felt quite natural in many ways. And again, because I moved into a leadership space quite quickly, yeah, I think I quickly associated with the organisation

that I work with now just as my tribe. And so it felt very natural to step into paid employment there. And again, the owner of the company who was also a social worker, her and I had known each other for many years and had actually met through her finishing her master's at the same uni that I was at. And we had spent there for part of the 500 hours was really looking at how we could bring more of a social worker framework and identity into our role of support coordinators and how that would kind of leak into our teams across Australia as well. So it's really cool.

Yeah. And was that leadership development chosen, organic? I just feel like there was probably something that people could see in you in terms of leading a congregation or leading a group of support people. How did that work? And do you feel as though you had enough support to be in that role quite so quickly? Yeah, I think there was, I mean, I'm very lucky in that. I think I had a lot of transferable skills where, again, as I was being formed as a social

worker, I was able to, the theory and the practice just clicked for me. Because in many ways, it was unconsciously what I've been doing for many, many, many years prior to that as well. So, yeah, I felt really supported by Maddie, who was my colleague and owner. So yeah, it was very natural. And we also spoke quite transparently early on in terms of, I had said to her, I said, hey, this is an area that interests me. I'm committed to staying here post my placement.

So I honored that in her, and then she honored that back in developing me. So it was a really lovely, lovely experience. Yeah. And what does that role look like now? What's your day to day? So now my role is, my technical title is a regional leader of a support coordination team. So I oversee a team in Brisbane and a team in Mackay and a team in Tasmania. So quite a large scope of role now there.

But I also have a, I work with some really incredible participants myself just because I want to. I think it's important that leaders don't get tucked away in their ivory tower and forget what it actually means to rub shoulders with some of the most beautiful but often oppressed individuals in society. So yeah, my day to day now looks like providing a lot of supervision and support. support to staff, working alongside a lot of participants who I get the pleasure of doing a bit of case management for as well. And then the other part of my role is just a lot of business development,

a lot of networking, and also a fair bit of advocacy recently in the NDIS space, given there's been a lot of developments there as well recently. So I kind of, yeah, it's a nice fit for me. I have a few different hats that I wear, but each of them tie into one another in a certain way. Yeah. And what are those changes that you're seeing. Are they positive, not so great? And how does that impact you? Yeah. If I'm honest, I always preface this question with people by saying that, again, I have only been in NDIS spaces for a couple of years now. So by no means, I want to be very careful to distinguish that I'm not someone who's been there for years and years. And so when I speak, I don't speak with that authority that many people do who have just seen the NDIS grow and evolve

and change since block funding kind of was done away with. But that being said, some of the recent changes that have kind of sparked a lot of airtime and media time and therefore require a lot of advocacy is it's around a lot of the funding cuts to Allied Health in the NDIIS space, particularly that of physios, OTs, a lot of social work funding has been stagnant now for many years and similarly that with support coordination. My role now, we are often considered to be the case management glue that enables participants and plan nominees and guardians and child safety and office of the public guardian to ensure that participants are able to receive the supports that they need. And support coordination has now not had an increase in over six years,

which again, some people will critique that notion by saying, well, you know, why are we focusing that much on a market model of care? I would agree with that, but nonetheless, the market model is here. So what that does is it puts a lot of strain on businesses to be able to keep their head above water because we are in a capitalist society. As much as we don't like it, we are. And profit and loss is a thing in order to be able to continue to provide support to participants. So there's been a lot of work down at the moment in pushing back on the NDIS recent price arrangements and price limits and trying to speak to the powers that be saying, hey, we really need to look at,

is this a sustainable funding allocation for Allied Health that enables us to provide the support to participants that they deserve and need? So it's a big conversation at the moment. And as we have this podcast right now in end of June, the new arrangements come out tomorrow. It's going to be a very interesting space to navigate through. Yeah. There's a lot of anxiety in the NDIS Allied Health space around that at this current time. But I imagine it's not just social workers, everyone's kind of getting in there and trying to advocate and make change, or at least say, hey, this is what shouldn't be changing because it's working and this is what we need. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, it's a very, it's very beautiful actually to see a multidisciplinary

approach to this and also just to see some of the amazing participants who, despite the complexities of their life, are also up there advocating for themselves and their fellow people with disability. So it's a beautifully complex and hard time at the moment. Yeah. Why do you think support coordinator and not case manager, case coordinator, that sort of thing? In many other areas, the type of work you do might be called case management. Yep. Do you think perhaps someone, and I guess, you know, you've not been in the space for too long, but you might have gotten a sense of why we're called support coordinators versus case managers,

I just don't know what the distinction is or whether you feel really strongly about one or the other. Yeah, that's a really good question. So if we look back, support coordination had its inception due to the recognition within the agency that there is a need to have allocated individuals who can liaise with teams, allied health, participants, plan nominees amongst all the systems. It was a really systems approach to saying, hey, the agency acknowledges that they have a limited capacity in order to completely turn up and provide that support that's needed to be able to navigate what supports are needed for each individual.

So then support coordination begins. So different levels of support coordination. But the real scope of the role being that here is the identified person who is going to take the charge with multidisciplinary teams, with stakeholder groups, with putting in certain reports that are needed, like for instance change of situations in order to see a participant receive funding that is reasonable and necessary in order for them to have a quality of life that they deserve. So that's why I would distinguish it from more broader kind of case management in that sense. I think how I would conceptualise that is I think case management is it's one of

the frameworks in our toolkit and one of the aspects of our role. However, we support coordination prioritises itself by delivering face-to-face support and really understanding the needs of the individual rather than just hiding behind a computer and doing some administrative tasks, which I think case management is not that, but I think people see it as that. So that's why I'm very strong in our identity of support coordinators and saying no, we're people here who provide case management as one of the scopes of our role, but we combine that with face-to-face interaction, information gathering, looking for providers who best fit the needs of our wonderful participants,

and therefore that's kind of grown into this role of a support coordinator. And I think too why every time there has been talk about removing support coordination, both the support coordinator community as well as the participant community, as well as the broader other systems all come into bat for support coordination because I realize that it's much more when sending a few service agreements. It's quite a multi-faceted role. And due to that, sometimes it's a role that's hard to identify what the actual scope of the role is.

And so there's an ongoing tension there, but I think it's a really dynamic, wonderful role. Yeah. And I guess it sits differently to, say, in my role case management, where I'm paid a salary by the agency, by the government, where I don't necessarily have to justify every minute of every day and what I do, whereas you would probably be a little bit more conscious of, hang on a minute, I can actually quantify the money that's coming out of someone's plan and therefore I'm being a little bit more strategic or flexible or creative around how I provide my support. Absolutely.

And the next part that leads on from that too is I think that's that real emphasis that I have on ethical practice there as well, which is partly why I think a lot of this comes under scrutiny is because of that, that whole notion of billable time and billable KPIs. Left in the wrong hands, what that means is someone can view that as a bucket of funds that they have to use. That is actually on someone's plan. Whereas bringing now in my social work ethics and the code of conduct and all those things that we know are super important, that informs my view that, and it's a struggle.

How do you work with 40 participants and ensure that you're using their funds ethically whilst wanting to keep funds for that rainy day as well. It's a real juggle and a real dance. And so your people who support, say, 40 participants, how many are in your team? How many people do you support who support the participants? So in my team, I have around six support coordinators. And yeah, each support coordinator would have,

ideally around 30 participants. That's a case load where I think we can turn up and we also have some margin for crisis. And what I mean by that is we are not a crisis service. So we do not work outside of our 9 to 5pm scope around that. However, what I mean by crisis is that if a participant requires a drastic change to their funding, you know, that requires eight to 10 hours of work to get that change of situation in. And so I think we've struck a bit of a sweet spot there.

But as I'm sure you can appreciate it always ebbs and flows and there's always life happens. So, yeah, for sure. I think it would be boring if it didn't. That's right. That's right. It keeps us on our toes too. Yeah. So at any given time, you would have to have a fairly good understanding of, let's say, 200 participants.

Yeah. And what's happening for them because you then need to be able to provide feedback, support, guidance for the people that are their support coordinators. So that's a lot to hold all at one time. Yeah, it is a lot. Plus your own participants, right? Yeah, that's right. And I guess that's why what we've done at the organisation that I'm with, we've made a real move from more of a traditional kind of a case consult, case management approach to more of that critical reflection and professional supervision to kind of A, because we want to be aware of what's going on in the life of participant. So when I meet with one of my staff, I want to go through, I want to know what's going on, not in a managerial way, but so that if there are a way, I can pick it up and take it off from where it best is.

we've really revolutionised what we've done there to maximise a shared knowledge where appropriate around participants, but also looking at, yeah, how do we actually produce change and some really good outcomes too, rather than just making it an administrative task. Yeah. Yeah, so it's good. And how do you find balance in what you do? How do you know whether your caseload is kind of at a sweet spot in terms of taking the time that you have in the week?

And how do you know when you need to pull back a little bit? Yeah, I recently, about a month ago, had a conversation around this with my clinical supervisor, just noticing that we all have so many hats and how do you ensure that you are being proactive with support, not simply reactive? I think it's quite easy to sit there and just respond to emails that come into your inbox. That doesn't often equate to people being cared for who you're the support coordinator for or people having their needs meant or understood. So I've actually taken a really pragmatic approach with it now. I let my calendar and what I have in my calendar communicate to me whether I need to look at rejigging a few things or I need to be honest with my capacity.

So what I mean by that is I basically give almost a day and a half a week to just support my staff and provide some really good, intentional all of Dylan time to just turn up for them and what they need. That will be where I put a lot of my professional supervision down, where we do case reflections, case consults, and get creative and have team times as well. Beyond that, I have learnt over the years that reports and admin are a needed part of any role in any helping profession, be it social work or be it more broader than that. So I will really be proactive with putting in time that I need to give each person and each participant and each staff member.

And if there comes a stage where I self-reflect at the end of the day and say, I actually have needed to kick that down the road two days now. That's when the critical reflection and self-reflection in me comes in and says, all right, we need to look at that, whether that's reallocating someone to someone else or whether that's just being honest and saying, hey, we need to look at, does our team have capacity at this time? Which gets me back to this billable KPI model in the NDIS. I'm a very big believer that we need to take an approach,

which means that we see people not as dollar signs. We see people as people. I have a group of around three to five support coordinators outside of my organisation that if we reach capacity, I trust them and we can refer on to and then organise a meeting place to see whether that works for a participant. That's amazing. And yeah, some people would have opinions on that, but I see that as the best way to be ethical and give continuity of care. And I think it's actually best practice. Yeah. I think that comes back to your building your tribe, right?

So you've got these great networks around you and do you know what their skills are and their talents and their specific interests might be very different to what your teams are. And sometimes it's about knowing when to hand someone over or when to refer someone when you're not going to be necessarily the right person or the right fit. Absolutely. And I mean, that's how we start with, you know, for instance, when we do allocation meetings, I will not allocate someone with complex needs who deserves a high level of care to some. someone who on our team or myself who it's just not our niche area. So for a classic example is that I'm really passionate about the psychosocial space, so the mental health and a lot of kind of what we call level three support coordination. So a lot more complex requiring a lot more of a systems approach.

That's my passion area. But I have three of the support coordinators that I supervise are just brilliant. And they have their own lived experience. For instance, with physical additional needs. So if a participant is referred to us and really needs a lot of help getting into the right housing that best supports them, so what we call SDA housing, I know that that's not the participant that's going to be best, that Dylan is going to be the best for, that might be someone else in my team.

So I think it's just getting onto it early as well. And we have an open rule that if we don't feel comfortable or we don't think that we're the best person, we have an open communication. policy where it's my team will just say no Dylan this isn't this I'm not the right person for this person yeah then we will reassess capacity internally and then if it's not there then we will look at as you said navigating out to our tribe of three to five others who we trust and they will do that back to us as well which is really wonderful how do you build your team given that you may have an office space but it sounds as though you're all spread out quite wide across Australia how do you come together

How do you make sure that everyone's on the same page and feel supported? I know that we had to do a lot of this around COVID time and kind of be really creative in how we come together for each other and for our participants. But how do we make sure that we're looked after as staff members? Yeah, that's a great question. I guess my approach there is I take it back to basics. I'm quite regimented. I'm not clinical in my approach in terms of impersonal, but I'm structured.

So my team knows that on a Monday morning, we're starting the week, they're going to hear from me. I'm going to be checking in with them just saying, hey, how are you? How is your weekend? Do you need anything? And I will remind them, I have capacity today for you to just call me if you need anything. And I have time. And I really guard that time as a leader and as a manager as well. I don't really like the word management, but we can talk about that later.

I conceptualise that I'm there to support them and empower them. And so that's to my broader team. So with Mackay, Tasmania, Brisbane, we have a, we've gone old school. we just have a team's chat where I check in with them, and then we will break off into our more contextualized geographical locations where I will be sharing with them and them with me, you know, certain providers who are in the neighbourhoods. So we just have an ongoing conversation there so that I can have my ear to the ground with what's happening.

But culture is a big thing for us. In the past, we've employed a lot of people who have been wonderful, but we haven't nailed what it means to ensure that we are building a tribe. remotely and that has led to be honest to some people saying, hey, I don't know whether this is for me and then returning to more of a traditional office-based environment. So we work quite intentionally at, yeah, touching base often per week, having team meetings, but also what we do is even though I supervise a remote team, my manager, Maddie is just wonderful and in that she's prioritised from the budget, just being able to avail people of a shared space so they can

go into a local office share space, feel like they're part of something bigger, and then get supported from me remotely. So we're trying to just, we're trying to throw a lot of time, resources, money, supervision, energy and communication to acknowledge that yes, we're remote, but we can build a lot of these things around people so that they can take the best of what remote work is, which is, you know, capacity to be available for family. We've got a lot of people with kids, but couple that with this sense that we're all rowing in the same direction, and we're not siloed in our mission and our vision and our culture. So yeah, and we're not, we don't always nail it, but we're intentional around that. And do you have the capacity to,

say, have a quarterly regional meeting or a yearly case conference or some sort of thing where you can all come together and not just be faces on screens? Yeah. Yeah. So we, as a regional leadership team, there's about six of us. We, prioritise to meeting once every couple of months. So for instance, in about three weeks I'm flying to Kance, which is kind of our mother, our mother hub. And we're doing a big day of just team culture as a leadership team. And then we have what we call our monthly yarns. So we, we meet remotely as a complete team, which is about, there's about 45 of us staff wise, about seven regional leaders. And then obviously our CEO and our owner. So yeah, we kind of

scaffold it down in that sense. Now, there is a reality in that our Brisbane support coordinator, it's unlikely she's going to be able to spend time with our TASI support coordinator face to face. But in our locations, in our regions, we do get together once every couple of months. And then more broadly speaking, as a leadership team, we get together once every couple months as well. And then we have fortnightly teams meetings to just, again, ensure that we're rowing in the same direction. And because what a staff member might be experiencing in Cairns, if there's a lot of people

experiencing that, there's a good chance that someone in my team is experiencing that as well. So we all kind of share what's going on to get the heartbeat of our team. I think it's the best way that this remote model can work. It's the best that I've seen. Yeah. And it's hard pulling people together when you've got such unique needs in areas. But as you suggested, you've probably got a lot of things that are similar that are happening concurrently and you can learn from each other, you're not in isolation in terms of your working. So similar concepts across regional areas. Yeah. What do you find to be one of the most challenging things for you? In terms of the structure, you've got a great culture, you've got a lot of support around you, but the systems that

you work in can sometimes be challenging. What are the things that you're facing that kind of make you pull your hair out sometimes. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Yeah, I was reflecting about this just in the lead up to this conversation. One of the big things for me, I think, is that I am more and more noticing that the NDIS is known, you know, quite broadly in many ways, not the NDIS themselves necessarily, but the system more broadly. There can be a lot of unethical practice. There can be a lot of fraud from providers, there would be a lot of those types of situations that me and my team would encounter every week in terms of either from participants reaching out saying, hey, does this sound correct or right, or just what we witness and what we work through? So I think, and I would

make a distinction even prior to social worker Dylan, accredited social worker Dylan, I used to see some of these issues and complexities. I used to view them as, all right, I need to solve this, and this is therefore a person to person one-on-one thing to change. However, coming into the NDIS and moving into the NDIS from more of child safety, early intervention space, where it was still systemic, but you could do a lot of really good work one-on-one. And there was this kind of sense that you would gather that, oh, I'm changing something. Because, you know, if you're working with a mother or a father and you're doing circular

security or parents choosing change or you're linking them in with the domestic violence, agency. There's something tangible that you can see there, whereas the NDIS is so systemic and broad and probably wasn't birthed in a way that was sustainable for what is needed now. So one of the biggest struggles for me is how do we work for the liberation of the oppressed in a system which is really strong, really powerful and really loose at times, and therefore vulnerable people can be really taken advantage of by people who sometimes are not professionally trained, are not aware of their scope, and are sometimes, if I'm honest, driven by finances rather than providing support to the individual in front of them. Now, I don't have an answer for that.

The only answer I have for that is that it's a long game of love. It's a long game of needing to be consistent in advocacy whilst remaining in scope. And that's a consistent challenge for me is sometimes I want to get there. And I want to, you know, you read the textbooks about the various waves of feminism and marches and advocacy work. And it's the whole frere liberation to be oppressed. And you can go back to some of those early roots that formed you. But I'm learning more and more that the onus is on me as a social worker is to take that

theory that I value and love. And I myself would identify as what we would call a critical social worker. So I parade with a critical postmodern lens on viewing power or something to be navigated through. So I am a very progressive social worker in my social work identity, but I have needed to learn to harness that theory and that bridges aren't to be blown up because there's nothing to be gained by blowing up a bridge. Because all that you do is blow up the work. It's a long game. And that's where I pull my hair out sometimes. And that's why I need a lot of supervision.

It's to say, all right, how can I play a long game in the NDIS where I advocate for change? I do the next right thing. I participate with love and everything that I do. I operate ethically. I lean into my social work identity. I don't blow the bridge up by doing that, which I see a lot of people do. Sorry, I know I rambled a bit then, but. No, no.

I guess what you're trying to do there is. In playing the long game, how long is the long game? Is it 20 years? Is it two years? Is it something that I can navigate within the time that I'm at this agency? Or am I leaving a legacy somehow in showing other people, guiding other people through ways of being critical and how do they question the status quo? That's right. Absolutely. And I think that's what's been particularly interesting to me around that. It's an old concept, but it's rearing its head again around moral injury and how we navigate as social workers in a space and a system. where we have a lot of that. You know, there's a lot of that in child safety with people who are in the intervention and

assessment team who need to remove children. It's like, well, is that the best thing? And similarly, in the NDIIS space, it's the question that I continue to ask, and it's an ongoing dialogue for me, is do I feel that I can be complicit and play the long game when there are so many systemic issues that it wouldn't be hard to spend all my time quoting the legislation back to organizations or assessing budgets or it's a good question, isn't it? How long is the long game there?

But for this moment, I'm committed. Yeah, but when you're dealing with someone who, let's say they live remotely or regionally, it's all well and good to talk about choice and control. There might not be choice. There might not be controlled just because of the location or the situation that a person and finds themselves in. So you're having to negotiate and to navigate through muddy waters and there might not be a solution.

That's really hard to deal with. Yeah, yep. And we've had to do a lot with my team around getting back to, I guess, what you asked earlier about some of the distinctions maybe between a case manager and a support coordinator in the scope of this role, is that sometimes when there are the wounds there that individuals experience and participants experience from, not being available of funds that they need or housing or I guess as support coordinators we we become

the face sometimes of the person who didn't effectively lobby advocate or navigate what they need and I think that's what leads to a lot of burnout particularly in support coordination as well so yeah it's it's just an ongoing because transference is real and you want to hold the person as the person and say you are, you are wounded, traumatised from the system that is very broken. So the reason you're getting angry at me is not actually me. You're getting angry at what the system has done to you, but I am now the face of that system. But some people can do that quite easily, or not easily, but some people can do that easier and really separate.

Others can't. And for a lot of us who are social workers who got into this field because our hearts, we are heart people, as well as practice framework, intellectuals, it can hurt some days. Very flattening at times. So, yeah, it's an ongoing thing. Maybe then that management, you were saying you're reluctant to use that term, how you can conceptualise it is that you're managing or supporting someone who may feel powerless or perhaps genuinely lacks power in a specific situation.

You're helping them to manage the challenges of the systems or whatever they're facing. not managing the person, you're managing the situation. Yeah, yeah. And that's absolutely right. I guess that would be why I would balk it. That word is that I think more of a managerialist approach in that you are trying to ensure that someone executes task on your team for productivity's sake and businesses' sake and, you know, to tie up a few case notes to look good on a CRM.

I guess I don't think that leads to long-term staff retention. and I think it leads to people wanting to actually leave this profession because we all bring who we are into our workplace and our jobs. And NDIS, I guess in my space, more so than many of the other systems, it can be really, really hard. You can be working, doing everything right, advocating. You can be writing change a situation reports, progress reports, better than anyone else in Australia. And it does not mean you are going to get the outputs that you desire. desire. And so I think, yes, I think that manager approach, which is, you know, time plus people, plus inputs equals outcomes. That doesn't work in this system. And it becomes quite disillusioning,

disorienting, disorientating and disappointing and disheartening for workers. When we as leaders say, just do this and you'll get this, it doesn't work like that. So yeah, I guess that's why I'm passionate about holding space for those that I lead. And sometimes saying, how, I don't know the answers, but all I can commit to now is that all we can commit to is that we're going to be here with each other. We're going to navigate the complexities of this. We're going to do the very best thing that we can for these incredible people that we get the honor of working for and with. And beyond that, we just must navigate it. Yeah.

And that's what supports your team to continue doing the hard work. But what support do you need to make sure that you're not burning out? Yeah. I, as I said, I'm a very big believer in regular professional supervision. I think it's one of those things that people learn about at uni or they hear about certain things and go, oh yeah, great. But I see that as a complete essential non-negotiable. And I think an organization who can get behind that and pay for that and support that, that says a lot about the organization. And I'm very blessed and lucky to have that for who I work with.

But yeah, that professional supervision space to practice critical reflection to separate yourself as a human and separate your identity beyond what you do as well. Because in the space that I operate in, there's no one really outside of my own line manager who oversees the rest of us. There is no one else there who I can go to who is going to give me a pat on the back and say, hey, the long game's worth it. So that's where I've had to lean into that critical reflection and say, all right, this, if I'm going to do this role, if I'm going to commit to this role, I need to equally commit to reflection. And that will be my only lifeline. And that's proving to be true. Given that this is all you've done social work wise, not to say that's limited in any way, but in terms of the scope, is there anything else that you're interested in putting your hand to,

let's say you've done, or you feel as though you've done as much as you can in this role, are there other areas of social work that you're keen to explore? Yeah, yeah. I should also add, I took a break from where I'm at the moment. I was a behaviour practitioner for a while. Yeah, right. And then I was also a social worker in the NDIS. So I have a real passion for kind of counselling and more, yeah, more around that

counselling and psychotherapy. So I think if there was, if you were to say, you know, in two, three, four, five years time, what would be next in terms of being able to take all that I am and all that I've learned into the next space, it would be around more of that one-on-one counseling and couples counseling space. Yeah. And would that include, I know you've done some training in counseling, but do you feel like you'd have to do any additional? I feel like you're a lifelong learner, so that might come naturally anyway, but is that something that you feel might be required before you can step up into that? I think yes and no. Yes, in terms of what I would do is I would definitely want to go out there and get some

refreshes on various modalities that I've looked at over the years, you know, AC therapy, various things, because I think a lot changes and, you know, it's like a muscle. You've got to work the muscle. So I want to get a refresher. However, and this could be controversial, but given the kind of educational formation that we've had and I've had, I think a lot in this space is how you turn up as yourself and how you hold therapeutic space. And so would I feel confident to move into that next stage where I am now to?

Like, yeah, I'd say yes. And I would resource myself as needed through that as well. So, yeah, yes and no, I think. Yeah. Because on the flip side is that you can end up just micro-credentialing your whole life and then never take the plunge into doing something you're passionate about when a lot of it is caught, not taught. Yeah.

A lot of our experiences have led us to where we are now too. So, yeah, I would hold the need to be aware and updated with also this security in who I am as a person, how I end up into that space. Yeah. I've spoken with a lot of people who deliberate over the accredited mental health social work status. Yeah. That's a whole lot of conversation itself, that one. 100%. It's just, and it's constantly changing, which is part of the problem, is you think you got it sorted and then the requirements change again. but the number of people who just sit on it and think, I'll get around to it, but it's so hard.

And then they end up as you're suggesting the micro-training and I'm doing 100 things to try to get to that point, but I'm still not getting to that point. And you must feel as though, what am I doing? Am I, I don't think any social time is wasted time necessarily, but that's something that you could consider either before you jump into it or once you've jumped into it, you're building your experience in that area, the specific mental. mental health training and actual time that you're in there. So, yeah, there's no right way of going about it. No, no. I think it's, then I think it comes back to our commitments as social workers is to do no harm. We have our practice standards.

I mean, at this stage in my career, I probably wouldn't consider for various reasons becoming an accredited mental health social worker, even though many of my friends are due to some of the discourse around that, but that's a whole other conversation. Yeah. Are there any resources that you'd like to shout out either for ministry, pastoral care, or social work, or NDIS related? When you mentioned thought leaders, I immediately started thinking about Brunay Brown. Is there a minister equivalent? Is there someone out there that really speaks to those sorts of things that resonates with you?

Yeah, it's really good. I'm a huge Brunay Brown person. You can see behind me that Red Book is one of hers. I've done it all. But yeah, I would say there's probably three, three resources that are really important for me that cover those areas. Number one, Jan Fook, who many of us read in uni, Jan Fook for me is not a book to be left on a shelf to get a piece of paper, anything to do with her on her work on critical reflection. I think as I read it before I started studying social work because a friend of mine said, you need to read this. And it changed my life.

So Jan Fulcon, critical reflection and social work context is just phenomenal. Regarding more of that multi-faceted, intercritive space of kind of spirituality, social work, there's a really brilliant person who I would actually recommend everyone look at because it's in that scope, but it moves beyond that. Is a lady by the name of Janet Hagberg, really interesting last name. She has written a book called The Critical Journey. And what the Critical Journey does is it traces human development. both in a spiritual lens but also a non-spiritual lens through it's kind of a it's a model of

stages of development that looks at how we as humans develop a quick example of that is in a church context very quickly you might have someone who has a religious conversion experience is enamoured with this idea that there's a god then follows someone for a while for maybe two years then does the work themselves and begins to maybe be a minister or a pastor but then inevitably hits what she calls the wall and has a moment of deconstruction, a moment of saying, hey, in my naivete experience, it was really black and white here. But now I've suffered. I've lost a job. I've lost a loved one. I can't have kids. I have cancer. We're faced with what's going on. And the reason I recommend that book is because in social work, I think you graduate, you have this,

you're all amped up. You say, I'm going to change the world. Then you realize that it's not as simple as that. But there's a learning opportunity in there. So the critical journey, amazing, wonderful book that I would recommend. And then there's one last one. And I googled it because I just moved and I don't know where it is. But it's called Moral Injury and the Humanities. Moral Injury in the Humanities by Catherine McCleimond. Just really, really useful bit of research and kind of scholarship to look at what many of us

experience, both in an organization but also more broadly. really good. I would recommend read that. It's not cheap. That's incredible. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing good is, really. No, that's right. That's right. Is there anything else before we finish up, Dylan, that you wanted to mention about your work, your journey, anything really? No, I think that's it. Thanks to give me the opportunity to bring some thoughts into communication. Yeah. No, I'm so glad to have the opportunity. And I love that you're still able to keep your caseload. You've got that balance and you'll find. out as an organic thing and it's going to be a changing thing for you what that balance is and what that's going to look like and that will change over time for you. But you're doing such really great work in terms of advocacy and those funding allocators

and really caring for a person's spiritual and holistic needs, not just what you see in front of you. You've obviously got an entire network of people around the person and being able to pull that all together for your clients, but also for the people that you're supporting to do that good work. So thank you so much for bringing all of that. And you've done so, so much in a short period of time. So, yeah, looking forward to seeing where that takes you and what's next for you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Asman's been a real honor to spend time chatting with you. And I'm going to keep following the podcast. It's awesome.

Yeah, please do. I've loved being able to note out. So thank you for your time. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Dylan, 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. And now for an exciting announcement regarding future episodes.

I'm about to take extended leave and travel the world. And while I'm at it, we'll be interviewing social workers in the countries I'm traveling. to. Social work spotlight will continue, but with an international focus over the next 12 months. My next three episodes will focus on social workers based in Laos, Nepal and India, and I can't wait to share these different perspectives with you. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notified when the first of my international episodes is available. See you then.