Social Work Spotlight - Episode 17: Maegan

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

In this episode, Maegan and I discuss her work as a perinatal social worker providing services to pregnant women receiving care through a general obstetrics clinic and a hospital Women and Newborn Drug and Alcohol Service. Maegan enrolled in a PhD at UWA in 2020 where she will use qualitative methods to conceptualise the phenomenon of hospital-based infant removals by child protection grounded in the perspectives of the practitioners involved. She has a strong interest in research which focuses on interdisciplinary knowing and practice that can be applied to improving outcomes for vulnerable and marginalised consumers of maternity health services.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:* The Patient Assisted Travel Scheme – http://www.wacountry.health.wa.gov.au/index.php?id=pats* Ronald McDonald House Charities - https://www.rmhc.org.au/* Centre for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees - https://www.carad.org.au/* Cancer Council WA palliative care information - https://www.cancerwa.asn.au/patients/coping-with-cancer/advanced-cancer/palliative-care/* The Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne - https://www.thewomens.org.au/patients-visitors/covid-19-advice-and-updates/covid-19-advice-for-pregnant-women* AASW Health-Based Social Work - https://www.aasw.asn.au/document/item/8306* Australian Department of Health, Family and Domestic Violence in Pregnancy - https://www.health.gov.au/resources/pregnancy-care-guidelines/part-e-social-and-emotional-screening/family-violence* Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety - https://www.anrows.org.au/* USA National Association of Perinatal Social Workers - https://www.napsw.org/This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xMpM1j0pgm7Eg-3EsXn02U-UqFaA-qxX/view?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas at the profession each episode. I'm your host, Yasmin McKee Wright, and today's guest is Megan. Since graduating with a Master of Social Work from the University of Western Australia in 2018, Megan has been working as a perinatal social worker at Western Australia's tertiary maternity health service King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women. Megan currently provides social work services to pregnant women receiving care through a general obstetrics clinic and the women and newborn drug and alcohol service. Megan enrolled in a PhD at UWA in 2020 where she will use qualitative methods to conceptualise the phenomenon of hospital-based

infant removals by child protection, grounded in the perspectives of the practitioners involved. She has a strong interest in research which focuses on interdisciplinary knowledge and practice that can be applied to improving outcomes for vulnerable and marginalising. consumers of maternity health services. Thank you so much, Megan, for your time. I'm so glad that you could come on to the podcast. When did you begin as a social worker and why did you choose this profession? So I'm actually quite a recent grad.

I graduated from UWA with a Master of Social Work at the end of 2018. So I've been in practice now for almost two years. So I guess I'm a bit of a baby in the grand scheme of things. And I spent a long time, I'm now 40, so I was a latecomer to study. And I completed an undergrad in communications and gender studies and knew at the beginning of my undergrad that I wanted to go on to do the Master of Social Work. So it was actually a really lovely pathway in. I didn't really know that I wanted to be a social worker.

To be honest, it was an accidental, an accidental. an accidental moment that led me to make that decision. I was sitting having a drink with a friend here in Perth. And he mentioned that he was a social worker and I was like, oh, that sounds amazing. And after a very brief conversation around what he did for work, I enrolled at uni the following Monday. So I ended up studying for five years altogether to get to where I graduated.

And I've been working in the same place. ever since. And I know you've then continued to study. In regards to my master's, I mean, my master of social work at UWA, so it's a two-year, quite intensive course versus a bachelor that's offered over four years at different universities. So it's quite a theoretical course, the one that we did. And we had to do, as per the ASW guidelines, a thousand hours of Prack. So I did my first placement I did at child protection and the second placement I did at the hospital where I work now. So it was a very smooth transition into employment once I graduated. Yeah.

It sounds like that was always going to be your direction then if both of your placements were in a similar area. Yeah. And one, certainly there's a lot of overlap around the knowledge areas and theoretical understandings between both. And I think that that combination of placements really put me in good stead for the job that I do now. Having, even though it was only a short time that I worked for child protection, it was still enough of a glimpse into how the system works. And it also led me to make the decision that I wasn't particularly interested in working in a statutory environment or for a statutory organisation.

And that was quite a clear decision once I completed my degree. Now I'm enrolled in a PhD in the area where, well, looking at, into a topic in the area where I work. So again, it's a really nice transition into a research project that's related to the work that I do. And what was the research that you did through your master's? What was the outcome of that? The way that UWA structured their master's degree was you could either do a two-year coursework. So you get a master of social work by coursework or you can do an optional research component. and so that was in the second year you were required to write a dissertation up to 20,000 words, but it was an optional component.

And the reason I opted to do that was because I wanted to direct pathway into PhD. So I knew that if I did well in the dissertation, that that would open the door to PhD, and it was the cheapest and quickest way that I could get into PhD program was by doing that. So I did a qualitative study on non-residential mothers, so mothers who live apart from their children following parental relationship breakdown. So it was a very ambitious study for a one-year research project, but I was very lucky I ended up going through ethics quite quickly, and my recruitment was, I thought, surprisingly successful.

So I interviewed 10 women from around Australia, actually on a similar platform to what we're using now. So it's quite a familiar space. And has that then led into a similar approach for your PhD or are you focusing on something different? Definitely a similar approach methodologically. I love qual work. I'm really interested in story and narrative,

people's experience and the way that human beings make meaning, especially in complex or traumatic circumstances. So my PhD is exploring the experiences of different health disciplines, so professionals working in different disciplines of health, and their experiences working at the intersection of child protection and maternity health in Western Australia. So I'm particularly interested in how health professionals or health workers understand the process of an infant being removed from a mother at birth.

and the impact that that has on us as professionals and how we work in that space and how we make meaning. So, yeah, and it's a very interesting state to be doing that work because of the diversity of culture and cultural understanding. So I'm, yeah, I'm really looking forward to moving forward with it. Early days, though. But that sounds like it would have a really interesting implication for interdiscipline. work within health settings but also in community and then various learnings across the disciplines.

So I imagine what would come back is they would have a different set of learning or experiences that they could then contribute to how social work approaches that field. So that would be really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also, I mean, I made the decision to actually do my PhD through population in global health versus social work, primarily because. whilst I'm a social worker and I certainly see the world through a social work lens that

because of the area of study is looking outside of the social work profession, I felt that it sat really neatly into global and pop health. And I think initially I'd consider just looking at the social work perspective because it's very interesting that the social work role changes depending on which setting you're in. So where I work, there's a certain, there are certain protocols in place where the social worker really acts as a gatekeeper in the hospital. So child protection sits outside of the hospital and the social workers work in very much an advocacy space. But I know that that is not the way that it always works in different settings.

And it doesn't work that way all around Western Australia. It's very different. So that will be part of the interesting findings, I think, of the study. Yeah. And do you have a social work supervisor as part of the PhD or are they population health-based? No, I have, I'm very blessed to have a very strong panel. So my coordinating supervisor is Professor Colleen Fisher,

so she's the head of school at Population Global Health at UWA. And I have Melissa O'Donnell, who works very much in this era through the Telethon Kids Institute here in WA, and I have a lady by the name of Maria Harries, who's very well known in the Child Protection Academic sphere. And we've just had a lovely, very strong Aboriginal woman join our team as well by the name of Shrin Hamilton. So she has agreed to come on board to help me make sure that I do the work well and to give me advice on how to do the work in the way that it needs to be done in order to honour those Aboriginal Torres Strait voices that will inevitably be part of the study.

So I'm very excited to be working with that team. It's taken me a while to get that team together. So it's been really interesting process already. Yeah. Sounds like you're in good hands though. And that support is so important when you're going through such a large research project. Yeah. Their support and enthusiasm for the project has blown me away, actually.

I've been quite overwhelmed by their level of commitment and support already. So I've heard lots of nightmare stories from other PhD students and everybody who I spoke to. talked about the importance of supervisors and finding the right supervisors and I do truly believe that I have hit the jackpot in that regard. So yeah, no, it's very good. That sounds wonderful. Maybe you can tell me about your current role, what you're doing at the moment and what a typical day might be like for you. A typical day. If such a thing exists. You never know what you're going to get, literally, when you turn up. So I'm currently working in a large maternity hospital in WA. So my role is I am a perinatal social worker. So what that means is that I work

with women during pregnancy and then for a short period postnatally. So they come through our hospital to receive pregnancy care and then they deliver their baby and a short time after they discharge from the hospital. So the window of time I work with a woman would be anywhere from very early in pregnancy through to usually up to about five days postnatally. I am currently allocated to, I have to have a think, one, two, three, four clinics, but only two of those are two of our primary clinics. One is a specialist diabetes clinic and the other one is a general obstetrics clinic, but I also am the allocated social worker for our preterm birth clinic and also for our family birth center. So there's a really sort of wide range of women, I suppose, that I would see.

But I suppose my role in general is providing social work services to women who require those services. So I guess a day in the office, we receive referrals for, I suppose, the most well-known reasons why a social worker would get the referral. We just receive them in pregnancy. So I think the primary concern at the moment is most definitely family domestic violence. We are it's really significant the amount of referrals we're getting for it. And of course, the risk of incidents and risks of family and domestic violence and pregnancy, it goes up. It's a high risk time for women, pregnancy.

But then we cover drug and alcohol use or homelessness, grief and loss. I work sometimes on what we call the perinatal loss service. So if women lose a baby or a pregnancy, we provide counselling and referral services. for those women and their families. But I think at the moment, my favourite work is working. I really love the diabetes clinic because what that clinic brings is many women from all over Western Australia and a lot of women off country. So my learnings through working on that clinic have been exceptional.

It's a clinic that I just love to be a part of. And does the hospital have some support there in terms of accommodation and somewhere for them to stay? if they're so far away from home? Yeah, so W.A has what we call the patient-assisted travel scheme, which we refer to as Pats. So say, for example, a woman comes in from Kanaura because she's got a high-risk pregnancy, not only because of diabetes, but for any reason, she may be threatening preterm labour.

She may have some abnormalities with her baby and needs to be monitored or with herself some illness. And so we have accommodation close by to the hospital, and then Pats will also support accommodation in and around the hospital area. So they subsidise the cost of accommodation. And then we have two family Aboriginal hostels in the Perth area. So we have Allowa Grove and Derbibirr. Those two hostels provide accommodation support for our Aboriginal families specifically. I think there's another one, but I can't think of the name of it at the moment. And then of course we have Ronald McDonald House. So the Ronald House is for the NICU families. So families that have

babies in the neonatal intensive care unit and they can play there with their families if they have a bubby in the nursery. Yeah. So we have the largest neonatal intensive care unit in Southern Hemisphere. So it's pretty busy business for us, little preemie babies. I mean, it's a huge state, so that kind of makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no, it is. Do you have to travel much as part of your role or do you mostly stay in the hospital? No, we are definitely confined to the hospital. We don't provide and are not funded for any outreach. So all of our work is done within the hospital walls. So we get outside occasionally for some sunshine. I guess then part of the role would be having really good networks in the other health districts and knowing who to refer back to or to liaise with.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, referrals are a huge part of what we do, I suppose, because we have the beauty of practising social work with women in pregnancy is that you have a very clear time-limited window to intervene. So that can be really great if the woman is only 10 weeks pregnant, which is unusual. We usually start seeing women at around anywhere between 15 and 20 weeks, if we're lucky. But sometimes we have a referral. We walk in in the morning and we've had a woman deliver overnight who we don't know, nobody knows. She's had no antenatal care. She might be under the influence or she might have some really significant mental health concerns. And so we then have a very, very short period of time to do the work. And I would consider that area of work and unbooked

pregnancy would be more of crisis intervention than being able to do the really sort of continuous casework that we can do with the earlier pregnancies. For sure. What would you say the favourite thing about your job is? Oh, there's a lot of things I love about my job. I'm very lucky. I think there's lots of things that I love. I think one thing that I have to say about the job is that it's never boring. it's never boring. There is always something to learn and learn in a lot of different respects. Learn about yourself, learn about how to work in a team, the beauty of, and the privilege of being able to work with the Aboriginal women that come off country. I mean, the learning that I get from working with those ladies is incredible. But I think probably what I value the most out of

the role in that space is that there is a very clear role for me as part of a multidisciplinary team. There is no question what my role is as a social worker and it is we are valued and yeah, there's a very clear referral pathway. So there's not a lot of role ambiguity and I've spoken to other social workers in different spaces and they often talk about not really being clear or for others not being clear about what their role is and where I work it's very clear. What do you think it is about that workplace then or that environment that makes it so clear? work they done to make that so? I think that we have a really strong department that ultimately we are responsible for,

really for having a lot of the difficult conversations that aren't medical. Obviously, we wouldn't be having medical conversations with the patient, but any kind of complexity that comes through, because it's not only the woman, it's also the unborn child or the newly born child. So we've got multiple stakeholders. And because of the implications of a baby coming or a baby having already arrived, the work has to be done quite quickly. And so we get involved as soon as there's any complexity from a social perspective,

so any psychosocial distress. And I suppose it's just the avenues of communication around what we can do must just be quite clear. And we do a lot of work at that interface of child protection in the hospitals. So I think that the other staff might not necessarily have the same level of comfort or knowledge around working in that space as we do. So they're very quick to hand it to us. There's no question around whether or not we would be involved. We just are. I feel like there would be a very high referral volume.

And that might be why they've had to put some very strict boundaries on what you can do within the amount of time that you have. because I can imagine anyone coming into a hospital would be fearful, let alone someone who is pregnant or is giving birth, and it doesn't matter if it's a first or a 10th child, it's always going to be slightly different, and that time period in their life is going to be different, and the resources they have available to them, and that's completely independent of any complications that might be going on for that child. So there would be a lot of referrals, I imagine, and I assume part of the role would be being able to say, this is my priority, this is my triaging system and this is what I can help with within the

parameters that I have available. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when I first started, that was one of the things that I struggled with was prioritising my own workload because everything felt important. And I think as you do the work, you begin to think almost with a pregnancy clock in your head. So I guess it's difficult to really articulate how that process works. To be honest, I haven't really tried to picture it in my mind how I do that work. But I mean, I've been there nearly two years now and I can see by what comes across my desk in a referral, I automatically think, does this need to be done immediately? And where does this sit in the context of all the other cases that I might hold? It becomes, I think, almost second nature. But we have a, well, I have a very good relationship

with my head of department. So if there's ever any query around the work that I need to do on something, or if I have any query around the risk, then I would automatically go to her and ask for a consult because I know as a practitioner, especially as an early career practitioner, that holding risk is actually not my job. I have to assess the risk, but it's not my job to hold it. So I learnt that very early on that I need to take that risk and I need to deliver that and share that with somebody else who's my superior. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to manage the work. And I'll take it home with me. So yeah, I have a bodily feeling sort of, I guess, under my diaphragm with risk there and I can feel it. And as soon as I identify that, then that's something that I share.

I don't keep that to myself. But I think being able to identify that in the first place is such an important skill and it's something that takes some of us 50 years to develop. But it's not something that is automatic. You don't think, am I experiencing something that makes me uncomfortable in the first place and if I am, what is it about that? That makes me uncomfortable. Is it the system? Is it the backlog of referrals? Is it that I have to get to a meeting now? And then knowing who to go to and feeling comfortable to do that, feeling as though you know that other person that's going to be on the other end of the phone or at the office that you kind of knock on unexpectedly that they're going to have the right response and acknowledge that, yes, this isn't just your

responsibility. And I think it takes time as well. It takes time to develop those relationships and they're not necessarily innate at the beginning of your career. You have a, you know, you're consciously incompetent when you begin in practice. And there's that, I suppose, with myself as a practitioner, I really wanted to be seen as competent in the beginning. But the reality is that, you know, I'm always learning and it's not okay for me to take on board. It's not my responsibility to hold that. I can't because if I do, then I'm actually putting the patient or the unborn child at risk by not talking and not debriefing and not checking in. But that's been a process and I've had to develop strategies to be able to do that with my manager

and to be able to feel safe, doing so, professionally safe. And that's taken working quite closely with her around what my triggers are. and there's no such thing as a stupid question. And, you know, if she's really busy and I need to see her, then I need to have a plan in place around how to make that happen in a professional way, but being able to express the urgency of it. Yeah, but I mean, it doesn't, there's always a little bit of time. There's generally not, unless there's a woman who's decided that she's going to walk out of

the hospital with a baby that has been brought into care, that's when things get really urgent. or if there's a crisis situation on one of the wards. But generally there is always enough time to have a conversation and to get the right guidance before taking an action. You become more adept at working out when that's necessary, and I suppose it's required less as you become more experienced. But yeah, I have lots of conversations with my boss.

She's very supportive. Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. What parts of the job do you find most challenging? What keeps you up at night? what gives you that funny feeling below your diaphragm? I think that's probably a question that's the catalyst for my work now, for my research now, is that a newborn baby being removed from a mum after birth, knowing that it's going to happen and then the build-up to the actual event is really difficult.

You sort of don't quite settle. And then there's a period of relief and grief, even though it's not my grief, but just grief and having to have held space with that woman and that family and seeing a baby go. It's really difficult. And I've been quite lucky on my caseload recently. I haven't had a high number of babies with statutory action or families facing statutory action at birth, but it comes and goes. And I know some of my colleagues recently have had several at a time. And it's very draining, very emotional work.

So that's definitely the most difficult part of what I would consider to be the most difficult part. But, yeah, other than that, I find the work actually really enjoyable. I think there's always a tendency working with women, especially women who have just delivered a baby. I still struggle at times to go into that very intimate early space in a woman and baby's life and be asking questions or, I guess, completing an assessment. in that space, it's such an intimate, private moment where a mother is just newly bonding

with a new baby. And it certainly has taken time to get used to working in that space and to be able to do it in a sense that of kind way, even though sometimes the things that we're talking about are quite confronting. And yeah, it's tricky. But we do it. Yeah. Yeah, we do it.

Given that it is so confronting and so heavy, how do you look after yourself in the work that you do? How do you decompress? What do you do to kind of come down from all that? Well, I get really good supervision. So I get internal supervision and external supervision. Look, I guess for self-care perspective, I think I say no a lot more now to making commitments. and I've got a much better idea of how much I've got left in the tank at the end of a week. Sometimes I just need to stay in the house on the weekends. And sometimes just that, choosing not to go somewhere, choosing not to go out to have a party or to the city or that act of not going is actually really probably my primary self-care. I've got a very supportive partner and being able to have somebody who understands the work I do and can, I guess,

hold me and hear me and see me when I finish for the day is just invaluable. And I haven't actually experienced that before. So I'm very grateful for that. And also you've done quite a bit of, I know you say you're getting better at saying no to things, but you've also done a lot of work outside of regular work. So you've mentioned the PhD, but you've also done some volunteer work. And are you able to tell us about that and how that may have informed? the way that you go about your work or the way that you kind of frame your experiences in life.

Has it been completely separate or has there been any crossover between the volunteer and the paid work? I think the volunteer work was, especially during my master's, was out of a desire to get my, I suppose, foot in the pool around what area I would like to be working in. So I worked briefly for Cancer Council, just providing some social support for residents who were staying in Perth for treatment. And that was lovely, certainly nothing clinical about it, but more just interacting with people that are experiencing adversity and quite often just need somebody kind and easy to talk to. And so that was a fairly straightforward volunteer role. And the work that I did briefly, I did some English teaching for an organisation called Karad here in Perth. And I worked with a lovely woman who had very limited English.

And it's just that it's very rewarding to, I guess, donate time and to spend time with people from different cultures and different experiences. And I will also say that the volunteer work was strategic for me. I hadn't had a lot of experience in the human services prior to starting my master's. So it was really important for me while I was studying to also build my resume. And so I sort of strategically looked at a diverse range of experiences that I could gather together and put on a CV when I graduated. And I was lucky enough to have some really strong placements. So by the time I graduated, I did have a fairly short, spanning, but quite diverse, a lot of experience.

I still, the Working Cancer Council, I guess I signed up for that out of an interest in palliative care. I still have a strong desire to work in that space at some point in my career. I really like the grief and loss work. I feel very comfortable in that space. I really like the perinatal loss work at the hospital. And I suppose the work with a refugee family that I did gave me amazing preparation for the work that I do now. I mean, we see a variety of women from many different cultures through the hospital and those understandings of the world can be very different.

especially when we're talking about topics of family and domestic violence and completing assessments, my learning from that volunteer work has really informed, really informed the way that I work with women, especially Muslim women in, you know, in the work that I do. So, yeah, the experiences have been invaluable. Yeah, I do have people approach me occasionally or I see posts on media about people who are really struggling. They've completed social work and maybe they've worked. somewhere previously and now for various reasons they can't find appropriate work or work in the field that they want to be working in. And my recommendation would always be to volunteer or to

find another way into an organisation whose values you appreciate or that you align with. And that's probably the best way to be able to say, hey, I'm here. You know, look what I can do. Do you have anything else going, but also as you suggested, to build your resume and just get that on there to demonstrate that you do have a diversity of experience and capacity and that you're not a one-trick pony, you do have quite a lot of skills that you can translate to different areas. So it sounds like that's something you would definitely recommend for people as well if they're not able to find employment for whatever reason in the particular area that they're looking in. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, we've got, I'm not sure what it's like on your side of the country, but I do know that around

October, November, every year, all of the graduate sort of entry-level positions open up with the government organisations and learning how to write a job application, you know, fulfill selection criteria. I mean, I worked in hospitality while I was studying before I realized I could actually get money from the government to help me through. I mean, I worked in hospitality and I've had several interviews, successful interviews now, and I can't think of one where I haven't used my experience working in a bar and working with people who, you know, who are intoxicated or aggressive and how I've applied that experience to my role that I'm interviewing for. And it doesn't really matter what you've done prior, all of the skills that we build for relationship

building, for communication, for our assessment skills, they don't necessarily have to be in a clinical space. But yeah, being able to demonstrate is the most important thing, I think, around getting a job, I like to think. Yeah. How has COVID changed the way that you've had to work? Have there been substantial changes in the way that you deliver work or with the people that you're supporting? Yeah, I mean, here in WA, we've been pretty lucky. We haven't really ever gone into strict lockdown. We've really been allowed, especially essential workers, been allowed to move around and continue living life. I suppose from my professional perspective, it's really been business as usual. Not a lot has changed. We've had less humans walking around

the hospital. So public entrance into the hospital was greatly restricted and restricted during certain hours of the day. So at one point, women could only have a visitor for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. So you can imagine for a woman who's just had her first baby, and it's the father's first baby as well. There's certainly been a lot of women that I've worked with who've expressed loss, you know, grief and loss around what they thought their pregnancy journey would look like, and then they managed to get pregnant, and then there's a pandemic, and all of the things that they had in their mind that would happen like baby showers and, you know, having husband and partner and mum at the delivery,

all of those things just went out the window. So there's been a lot more, I suppose, informal counselling around adjustment to a new reality. Certainly, I would have to say there's certainly been also benefits to us as social workers. So the restricted visiting hours in the hospital has provided us with an opportunity to spend time with women without a partner present. We've had more time, I think, which is probably the primary benefit that we've been able to see, or at least I've been able to see, and I know that my colleagues have shared the same sentiments, because especially when we're working with family violence in pregnancy, quite often a woman will come to a clinic and the partner will

come with her. And there's very little opportunity to separate the woman and the partner, if the partner is quite controlling or manipulative or so we can't actually sometimes separate them. And so the first chance we have to truly have a conversation with that woman maybe once she's delivered the baby. So we've had a lot more time to do that because there's been no partners on the ward, which has been good. But obviously there was certainly, especially when there were such strict visiting hours, there was a lot of distress in the women. Yeah. So I know I'm projecting a little bit further down the track once you've, finished your research and you've got the outcomes of that and you can disseminate them.

And obviously there's translational impact there for the work that you're doing day to day. But where do you see that taking you in either a research sense or a clinical sense? I think the beauty of the research that I'll be doing is that it is so closely intertwined with the work that I do. And I think that's going to be part of the challenge is making sure that they stay separate and that I have really clear boundaries between one and the other, and that there's not too much bleed of either. But ultimately, when I started university, I was 33,

and I guess that's why I work well with women in pregnancy, because I always seem to have this very visual ticking clock in my mind, and the same thing went for my career. I figured that I was a late starter. I probably had maybe 40 years left in the workforce before I retired, and that I really wanted to map that as much as I could. So I guess the motivation behind PhD was inevitably to teach. I love to teach.

And I like the idea of not only working with social workers, but working with other disciplines as well. And I have a love for health. Like I just find it is such a rewarding area to work. And to be honest, even at this early stage, there has been no strong drawer in me to work elsewhere. That has surprised me. But I think I've landed on my feet, so to speak.

Yeah. I've been very lucky. But ultimately I would like to teach. I'd like to write and continue learning even into my old age. And academia provides the pathway to do that. It's also, you meet some very interesting people through academic work, people that think differently and it's a very different space to be in than clinical work. And I like both. So I'd like for them always to be some of each. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're setting yourself up well for that hybrid. of maybe a professional educator role or allied health manager within the health setting, but then the academic work and teaching. And obviously teaching covers both areas quite nicely.

Yeah, it does. And there's something exciting about being around new knowledge, not the new knowledge that I'll necessarily be producing, but people that produce knowledge, and we all do it. Everybody does it. I see it in my clinical work all the time, but that really reflects. of critical thinking about the world. There's not necessarily a lot of time for that in clinical work. I think you really have to gouge out time to have time to think and reflect and process.

And I guess that's the value of supervision and peer support, peer reflection. But the research and the academic work spins my wheels in a completely different way to the clinical work. And the combination of both of them is really what works for me. and one definitely feeds the other. So if at the end of my career, I can look back and I can say that I've helped, that I've taught and that I've learned, then I will be a very happy woman. I will be very, I will be very pleased.

Yeah, perfect. Have you seen, I know in a short period of time, but have you seen many changes in the field or where social work might be able to make an impact in the future in this area? I mean, I think the one beauty of the social work profession is regardless of whether or not you're in clinical work, the learning that you get from becoming a social worker is applicable in anything that you would do. And I think that that really is the beauty of being a social worker.

There's so many opportunities out there that might not necessarily have social worker on your name tag, but you can still apply your skill set. So I can certainly see a value of the learning in a lot of different spaces. And I think that that will continue to happen. I mean, we live in a world that's getting smaller, especially with the way that we communicate. And especially now when there's so many people that are reliant on different forms of communication. And I suppose that's one thing that goes back to the COVID situation is,

you know, ways of practicing and ways of intervening that don't necessarily include having somebody sitting in front of you, but working out ways to do that work in an effective way and apply those skills on a platform that's not necessarily the traditional, I'm going to sit next to you in a room and put my, you know, hand on your shoulder and comfort you, finding ways to do that in a different context. And what would you imagine would be an ideal outcome if things were to continue in a really good trajectory for social work in perinatal care, what would be the, what would the world look like? What would that space look like for social work?

What changes would have happened in that time? Well, I mean, I guess I think on a micro level in answer to that question, I think specifically in the space that I work in and how many changes that could be made in order for us to do our job more effectively. I mean, we talk all the time about patient-centered care and putting the patient, you know, as the primary focus in the work that we do, but creating systems, facilities, ways of prioritising through space and place as well,

not only in the way that we practice, just ensuring that what we build, that social workers are involved, I suppose, in the development of space and place. And I suppose that's particularly pertinent because, you know, there's conversations around new facilities being built and we say, well,

sometimes we don't have a room with a closed door to sit in and do an assessment, whereas if it wasn't for us, then potentially, you know, that message wouldn't get out. So I think that we have sometimes the most difficult conversations and helping facilitate ways to have those conversations that prioritize the needs of the patient are really important. And I think that that's our perspective. We bring that perspective to the table because we're the ones talking about family violence, drugs and alcohol, sexual assault, you know, homelessness, all of these very sensitive topics. And I guess ways to have those conversations, yeah, that keep the client at the centre.

Yeah, which seems like such a basic, simple solution or resolve to what is really a large, large issue. But some very small changes that can be made that would have a huge impact. Absolutely. And I think we need to do more research. I think social workers need to do more research. I don't know. I think that our perspectives and the way that we think we can bring a lot, We talk about being agents for change and it's part of our, you know, our ethical mandate is to make change or to help to make change when things aren't right in the world. But unless we, you know, invest time in producing work that's evidence-based and tangible, then it's difficult to do that. And I've had many conversations with frustrated, not even where I work, but frustrated social workers who feel power.

us to help in a system that seems to constantly work against them, but you know, need to change the systems. Yeah. What do you think it is, given that you've had more recent university experience and current experience, what do you think it is that makes research such a dirty word or something so scary for social workers? Because it does, I love research. And for me, it's such a wonderful way to.

have your practice feed into further development like you were suggesting, but also to have that research make a real impact on the systems and the services that are provided and awareness. But why do you think, have you got any ideas as to why social workers might in general shy away from research? I think good clinical jobs are really hard to find. Not hard to find, but they are competitive, especially for early career workers. And I think that there's this idea that research takes you out of clinical. So you can't have both.

You know, you either are working in clinical or you're dedicated to an academic area. And I mean, there's a truth for that. Clinical work in a clinical setting does take precedence. And there isn't always time and there isn't always staff. But research doesn't necessarily mean a PhD. Research can be, you know, a very small study that can be very powerful. I can't speak for the rest of the social work profession. and indicate what the barriers to doing it are because I'm doing it.

So I'm probably not the right person. But all I know that I personally have, there is something inside of me that says, I have to do this, that I'm not satisfied to just work clinically. But I know many people that don't have that drive. But I think that not all of the social work degrees placed a lot of emphasis on research. I think that sometimes there's, I know UWA did. We had the option to do that. but a lot of the social work degrees that I've heard of and since looked at is very much a focus

on primarily clinical. But if you want to do research, you need to go off and do a different degree. This is a social work degree, not a research degree. So that was the beauty of doing that hybridised study is that I got to taste both. I'm not sure why it is. And that's not to say that there aren't active social work. There's many social work researchers out there, but there's certainly a lot more, a lot of potential. people with a huge amount of experience that could bring so much benefit to the world just by putting their experience down on paper and having it published. That's a nice way of looking at it instead of seeing it as a divide, see it as potential.

I mean, I work now with women that have just, they alone could write a book on their experience and the changes that they've seen and the ways that they've adapted through policy and legislation change. and I go, oh, just doing an oral history with one of them to be able to capture their career would just be incredible. And that is research, you know, understanding the experiences of other humans in order to better the world and learn that research isn't necessarily sitting at a desk and, I mean, that's part of it, writing it up.

But the actual act of researching is just curious inquiry, just being curious. I wonder if maybe there could be more support within every workplace, like more more emphasis put on it and even to the level where you have someone within a dedicated organization who is in charge of research or in charge of QI projects and then employers, employees have a dedicated, like even if it's four hours a fortnight or something of research time just to say what is an option? have that research person within the organisation, provide them with some guidance and then support them through that. And yeah, I think that would be so valuable. But again, as you suggested,

clinical focuses on clinical and that's the priority. But in an ideal world, there would be a nice blend. Oh, and there would be. And I don't think that that's to say that the spaces that aren't necessarily doing the research. I don't think that that's not because the people that are running the ship don't want it to happen but you know i mean i just finished a consultation project around wa with social workers and the primary concern that they expressed was a lack of time a lack of time in their day to do everything that they needed to do and i think that that's a very common narrative in the field is time constraints and thinking takes time thinking and having space to think and not having a brain and heart that's so full of other people's trauma, being able to lift that off

and actually have a clear space to think it's actually really challenging. Because we do work. We work in trauma all the time. We are constantly surrounded and being exposed to other people's trauma. Social work referrals don't generally, at least not in my line of work, don't generally come through and I do an assessment and there's not trauma present. I mean, yeah, yeah, there's a cost to. that and there's a cost to how much we can give outside of that work. So it's not because there

aren't people that want to do the work. I think it's just a capacity issue. Yeah. Well, you've mentioned other avenues of previous study like your gender studies and you've also suggested in the future you might be interested in working in palliative care or in the grief and loss space. Is there any other type of social work that you might be interested in exploring? Oh, look, I think two years into my career that's probably, you know, I'm very much of the mind that if opportunities arise for me to undertake a role that's different to what I'm doing now, basically the role would have to be pretty good because the beauty of the work that I do now is that I, as far as clinical work goes, I see everything. Yeah. I work in mental health space. I work with grief and loss. I work

in all kinds of psychosocial spaces and sometimes I don't just work with women because they don't have any other family around. And I guess going back to, I love the work with the coal and the migrant communities because there's so much to learn and there's just completely different perspectives. And I've worked with so many amazing strong women that will stand there and they'll say, Meg's, you just have no idea. And those really heartfelt, robust conversations with a client, you know, who will actually tell me how to work better. Yeah. I like that. I like that work. So I guess, In the space of consultation, not necessarily clinical. I love consultation.

I just find that there's just so much fantastic learning to be had from having conversations with people that come from a different place than I do. And I think it's probably for me, more about geographical. I'd like to go and work somewhere else in the world and see how it's done there, more so than doing different kind of work. But you never know what the future brings. Yeah, keeping those doors open. Exactly.

Yeah, absolutely. If people were interested in reading a little bit more about perinatal social work, where would you direct them? Are there any good organisations or documentaries viewing, reading? It's quite a specialist field. And to be honest, I'm not actually sure in an Australian context the best place to go specifically in relation to perinatal work. Obviously, there's information on the ASW around hospitals-based social work.

which is really where I sit. I sit in that hospital clinical space. There's some really good information around working with women in pregnancy through the WA Health website. There is also some really good resources through the ANRO's website. They've got some amazing work coming out of, well, from all around Australia, but specifically I think it's women's in Melbourne. They've done some amazing work on working with women in pregnancy and the risks involved

specifically around family and domestic violence. We have projects here at the moment in Western Australia around that as well, and those can be accessed through the WA Health website. I think whilst I practice in Australia, the National Association of Perinatal Social Workers in North America is an excellent resource. They are a really active association. They have an excellent forum. Their website is quite prolific.

They have really good newsletters. So I've actually found membership with them to be really beneficial and a wealth of experience, especially working in the US side of the neonatal surrogacy, all of that side is really, really interesting in the US, very different to hear. Have you noticed much difference in terms of the models internationally? Yeah, some. The child protection system works quite differently in different countries. And some countries don't really have a child protection system. Like the concept of child protection is really strange.

And not only outside of Australia, to the clients that I work with, the concept of child protection is an unknown. So I guess that is something that's been sort of quite stark in regards to policy and legislation around how things work in the perinatal space. You know, women have babies. They experience very similar psychosocial comorbidity, you know,

and that's how we end up seeing them. And then babies are born prematurely, and they end up in a nursery and that work, I suppose, is all quite similar. What I know from the States and from my experience speaking with social workers that work over there is the US is a lot more litigious. So one thing that I've heard people speak about is that concern that they're going to get sued all the time, which, you know, I can't imagine working in a space where that would be occurring or that that's a constant source of tension.

I guess it makes sense then that you have to be registered as a social worker. with their body. Yes. Whereas in Australia it's, you just have to be eligible for membership. So, yeah, if you're constantly afraid that you're going to be sued for something you've done, I guess, yeah, that makes a lot more sense. And I suppose that indemnity insurance is, you know, in the event that you were sued, that would be helpful.

It's the benefit of membership. But, yeah, so they have very different, different ways of doing the same work, I think. Yeah. But it's very interesting work. I certainly don't want to be anywhere else at the moment. Yeah. That's good. You've found your niche.

Oh, well, I love it. Yes, I'm very lucky. Yeah. Is there anything about what you do or about social work in general before we finish up that you'd like to mention to our listeners? Look, I think when I tell people that I'm a social worker, one of the most common responses that I get back from people who aren't social workers is, oh, I could never do that. Or that must be so hard. Or how do you sleep at night? or and the reality of doing the work and the preconceptions that, you know, that exist around the job

are really quite different. I guess if there was anybody questioning whether or not they wanted to become a social worker, all I can say is that it is a career and a job that regardless of what you want to do in life, if you've got, you know, a strong sense of social justice and a desire to make things better or to be helpful and to have some parameters around how to do that in a healthy professional way, it is the ideal career for that. And I think it is a very malleable career. I think that it is a career that you can go into thinking it's going to be one thing

and then it turns into something completely different. And I mean, I'm early career. So I look forward to finding out how mine takes shape and changes and evolves over the years. But I would encourage anybody to take up the work if any of those things resonate do research. Yeah. I think that's, you know, I know it's a, I just, I read the work of others that have gone before me and even just reading one article

can make such, just a massive difference in the way that I practice based on the learning of somebody else. So, yeah, I think if you can implement that in the practice from the beginning and have that part of your professional habit, then there is huge value in that. And get good supervision. And if it's not available for. find it. Yeah, good call. Obviously, your passion for research definitely comes through, but I'm hoping, and also for your clinical work, I'm hoping this will help others to get a little bit of fire in the

belly and to see that there is such diversity within the profession, there's capacity for lifelong learning. You don't need to know everything right away. In fact, it's best if you don't, and it's best if you keep that willingness to learn and even just demonstrating to other people that you want to learn. You're learning from your colleagues. You're learning from above and below. And even people within maybe they've been working for 30 years already, but just being creative, not being afraid to be vocal around, as you suggested, that professional habit of what can I do, what do I need?

What resources and support do I need to be a. able to do a little bit of research here and there or even just to report back on trends or themes that have come up in their work and what can be done differently to explore alternatives. So I'm hoping if anything else, that's what comes through from our discussion and that people feel really excited and invigorated and want to go out and give it a go even if it's just for one of their placements and see what it's all about. Absolutely. And there's some really valuable research placements out there as well, as well as clinical.

But I think that there's, I think that we have a responsibility to continue growing our body of knowledge and to share that with the world. It's very important, especially here in this country with the history that we have and the opportunities that we have to work with people that are different. And, yeah, there's so much learning to be had from that. Yes. Perfect. Well, we'll leave it there.

But thank you again so much for your time. it's been such a pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Megan, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm-fm-slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,

or you can email SW Spotlightpodcast 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 a few or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Michelle, who has worked in the Adult and Youth Homelessness Services, family and domestic violence services, asylum seeker service and for New South Wales Health for the past 17 years. Michelle has extensive experience providing care coordination and counselling with people experiencing substance use disorders, mental health, physical health and trauma histories.

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