Social Work Spotlight - Episode 21: Alexis

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

In this episode I speak with Alexis Stonebridge, NSW/ACT Manager of Social Work Services at Slater and Gordon Lawyers, with previous experience in the fields of out of home care, homelessness, drug and alcohol, family counselling and mediation. Slater and Gordon was the first private law firm in Australia to employ social workers to provide free clinical support to its legal clients.  In this role for the past 9 years, Alexis provides telephone-based counselling, case work and referral to significantly injured and ill clients, as well as coordinating Slater and Gordon’s AASW endorsed Legal Education Program for Social Workers in NSW and the ACT, and is co-editor of the ‘Social Work and the Law’ e-newsletter.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Slater and Gordon Social Work Services Team (for general inquiries or to join the mailing list - [e-mail] of life law - https://end-of-life.qut.edu.au/ & https://planningaheadtools.com.au/Guardianship/NCAT resources - https://www.ncat.nsw.gov.au/ncat/publications-and-resources/fact-sheets/guardianship-division-fact-sheets.htmlSlater & Gordon web page - https://www.slatergordon.com.au/the-firm/our-commitment-to-you/social-work-servicesThis episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1epIEpJ-lx3NKh845Ir7oDCwXO8SOq5Ez/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 of the profession each episode. I'm your host, Yasmeen McKee Wright, and today's guest is Alexis. Alexis is New South Wales ACT Manager of Social Work Services at Slater and Gordon Lawyers. She obtained a Bachelor of Social Work in 2003 from the University of Sydney. Prior to joining the social work team at Slater and Gordon in 2011, she worked for nearly 10 years in the fields of out-of-home care, homelessness, drug and alcohol, family counselling and mediation. Slater and Gordon was the first private law firm in Australia

to employ social workers to provide free clinical support to its legal clients. In this role, for the past nine years, Alexis provides telephone-based counselling, casework and referral to significantly injured and ill clients across New South Wales and ACT. Alexis also coordinates Slater and Gordon's AASW endorsed legal education. program for social workers in New South Wales and the ACT and is co-editor of the social work and the law e-newsletter. Thank you so much, Alexis, again, for coming onto the podcast.

I'm very, very excited to chat with you about the type of work you do. I think it's really unique. When did you start as a social worker and what drew you to the profession? Oh, well, thanks for having me. I started as a social worker, probably just prior to graduating as a social worker, actually. I did two placements as part of my uni degree at Sydney Uni, one in child protection and one for an organisation called Uniting Care Burnside in out-of-home care. And so I did my placement and then I took on some casual work there and then actually went on to work in various different programs as part of that organisation for nearly 10 years before then later coming into this role. And I guess in terms of what drew me to social work, my name Alexis actually means defender and helper of mankind.

So I think I was always raised with this idea that I would be in some way part of the helping profession or a helping profession. And I think I was drawn to social work because I wanted to have a career that was meaningful. I didn't want to just go to work and do a job. I wanted to have a career that I felt like I was making some kind of difference, positive difference in the world. And so I had these quite idealistic views of social work, I suppose, when I first came into it. But I certainly was drawn to social work out of seeking a career that was meaningful. Having gone and done lots of other little jobs while I was at uni and things like retail and other industries, I knew they weren't for me.

I needed to do something that left some kind of positive imprint, I suppose. Sure, left a bit of a legacy. Yeah. Did you know much about social work going into the degree? Did you have an idea of what you were getting into? I knew a little bit about it and I'd sort of done my research. I have some people in my family doing similar work, but I don't think I had any concept of the breadth of the work that's possible in social work.

and the different ways that social workers can work until I actually got started. Yeah. And what would you say has led you to this point? Because you said you started in out-of-home care and then various other roles for Uniting Care Burnside. How do you feel that kind of translated into the type of work you're doing now? Okay. So within United Care Birds, I worked in a number of different programs.

So I started in out-of-home care working with young people who were unable to live with their families and who are living in sort of a program that helped them to become independent and could start to live on their own. So teenage young people. And then I went from that into a program that was called the Drummuthers Resource Centre, which was a program that assisted people in crisis to find accommodation and to address drug and alcohol issues, mental health, domestic violence, a range of different things, sort of like that front line drop-in type surface where you are seeing people at the cold face and help you. them to access accommodation and have their needs met. So I was encountering legal issues all the

time through my work and I've always been really interested in that intersect between social work and the law. So my early, I guess, opportunities to see that intersect were in things like assisting in supporting young people and families at the family court or going as a support person when a person had criminal charges against them or for someone who had a range of say fines from sleeping on trains and needed to sort of deal with state debt recovery or who was having difficulties with Centrelink and needed Social Security Rights law advice. And I was finding I was often in contact with the local community legal centre and looking for information that I could use to then empower the people that I was working with to have their access to their

rights. And I was really finding that useful as a resource in my work. as a social worker. And so, and I became quite passionate about the law and about how I can use that to then empower my clients. And so I thought about actually going back and studying law, but I didn't really want to become a lawyer. I wanted to be a social worker, but I wanted to find a way that I could, you know, more thoroughly incorporate both. And so when I came across this opportunity to work at Slater and Gordon, it looked like a really exciting opportunity to work in a setting that gave me insight into both worlds, I suppose. I'd also assisted a couple of young people at court, gone along as their support person and watched how solicitors interacted with those people

within the court setting and how particularly disadvantaged young people struggled within the court setting and within the legal setting and had difficulties kind of communicating with their solicitors and who, you know, struggled to kind of understand the process and no one was really there explaining that to them and, you know, I felt that we could do better and that, you know, social workers should be working more within these settings to assist people with that process and we have unique skills in order to do that. So I guess all of that together led me to want to work in a setting where I could better support people to access their legal rights and entitlements. That sounds amazing. It sounds as though you're a bit of a generalist of sorts

because you see a little bit of everything, you'd have that emotional distress, you'd have mental health issues, financial difficulties, homelessness, a loss of independence and supporting families as well of someone who might be victim to a crime or going through the legal system. But is there a type of law that you, say, specialize in or have more of an interest in? Well, certainly I've come from quite generalist sort of roles in the past, But in this particular role, I'm more involved within the compensation legal system. So I now work with people who have serious and life-changing injuries as a result of various

different circumstances, workplace injuries, motorvicle accidents, medical negligence, situations, asbestos-related disease. And I assist them as they go through that compensation process to address any psychosocial needs that they might have that are impacting on their ability to kind of participate in that process. So the compensation law is, I guess, a key area of law that I'm, I suppose I'm focused on in my work. But more broadly than that, we deal with a whole range of different legal issues within all different types of social work. So, you know, whilst I might be working with someone who has, say, a motor vehicle accident claim, their brain injury may mean that we're looking at legal issues around

capacity and whether or not they're at they need supported decision-making assistance or, or, you know, they may need help with, you know, social security rights advice, or they may need assistance with, you know, a domestic violence issue. I don't think that social work works in Silas. I think we're all kind of a little bit more generalist than we realize sometimes because we do need to draw on information about all different areas of law that can impact on our clients. And it sounds as though Slater and Gordon have kind of pioneered the social work role

within their setting, but are there other law firms that you're aware of that do something similar? Yeah, so Slater and Gordham was the first private law firm in Australia to begin a service like this back in 2009. Lawyers at the firm were noticing that many of their clients were struggling with psychosocial needs during the course of their claims. So they were finding that their clients were really getting sort of lost trying to navigate through various different systems to access the assistance that they needed. And so they were sort of feeling like we needed to be able to provide these clients with more support so that they can participate in their legal claim and have those needs met. And so they were pioneering in beginning a social work service in order to address those needs.

And they employed a social worker name Olga Guntress, who's still our social work manager down in Victoria. And then the service expanded into New South Wales ACT in Queensland. land. We're still the only private law firm in Australia to have a service like ours. There are social workers that work in legal settings, some who work for community legal centres, for example, or who provide assistance within some firms with, you know, a certain area of support for clients, but we're still the only firm at this stage who has comprehensive social work service like ours. And I imagine a typical day for you would be you'd have lots of report writing, so you'd have to really understand the systems really well and help people to navigate through that. But what would you say

your current role is and what a typical day might look like for you? Yeah, so my role isn't to support people with their legal needs. They have lawyers that assist them with all of that. My role is to really support people with the whole range of other needs that can arise when, person is living with a serious injury or illness. And so what I guess a typical day for me would be if a lawyer is noticing that their client is perhaps emotionally distressed or having financial difficulties or having housing issues or a range of different things might be happening for them, they can talk to their client about our social work service and with the client's consent, they can be referred to me. And then I contact them and provide them with telephone counselling

and a lot of referral work to really get people linked in with the existing supports in the community. So what we know is for a lot of people who have serious injuries while they're in hospitals or rehab services, they do have access to social work support. So we don't duplicate that. But what we notice is that down the track, when they return home and they're living within the community, they can lose contact with support services. they can lose their support network as sometimes family relationships can break down, sometimes people live in quite rural and remote areas,

or they just have never had to access assistance like financial support or other types of support before, and they're just not aware of what's out there. And so my role is really to link people in with the existing support services in their community, as well as providing them with some telephone-based counselling, some short-term case management as well, if there's lots of, the different services are involved and they're having difficulty kind of mapping that and managing that process. Sometimes I can provide some support at a court or tribunal hearing, but most of my work is conducted over the phone, which is really helpful in terms of reaching people where they are

in the community. Sometimes I might write to their GP and try and, you know, raise that they might need a mental health care plan or assist them to find a psychologist that's affordable in their community or assist them to access food parcels or whatever it is that they might need. It's really guided by the client. And there's no limit to the amount of support that we can provide. It's really just guided by the client's needs. But what we often find is that, you know, people may only need a couple of calls to link them in with face-to-face services in their community that then they can continue to access as

they need as time goes on. And do you work closely with the insurance company? as well? Not particularly closely with the insurance companies. Sometimes we will contact them and advocate for a client if they've been late in paying for say reimbursement that they needed or that they've missed a payment of their weekly wage loss to the client. But generally our support is more provided directly to that client and linking them in with support services in the community. And it sounds like you cover quite a large geographic area. So you really need to know a lot about services in a huge range of spaces.

Yeah. So in my role, I cover all of New South Wales and ACT, but also my team, we sort of support each other as well. And I'll help out with assisting clients in other parts of Australia where needed. And I guess that's the beauty of the fact that we have a telephone-based model is that we can reach out and be wherever our clients are in the community. But that does, as you mentioned, mean that, I have to have a good working knowledge of services and systems in a huge part, you know, all over Australia, really,

which has been an exciting opportunity of this role is actually getting to know the services and systems right across Australia. But it also means I have to do lots of research and make lots of calls and check in and make sure that services are really going to meet my client's needs because the needs are really broad and services do change. So there's a lot of research involved with the role all of the time in, you know, getting to know that landscape. And also getting to know the service providers and building a bit of trust and understanding that, because you don't want to send your client out to somewhere out in the ether and then just trust that whatever they needed was met. You kind of would need to be able to follow up and you're relying on them to be able to provide that information back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I often do need to provide some follow-up to clients to see whether that, you know,

services meeting their needs and they're properly linked in. And I mean, one of the difficulties, too, is the service availability is very different across different parts of Australia. And we know that in sort of more metro areas, clients can have the luxury of a selection of services to meet their needs, whereas I often refered clients. And I guess one of the reasons why they are referred to me is because there just is a lack of services in their community and the reason why they're not linked in is sometimes those services just don't exist or have such extensive waiting lists. It's not uncommon for me to be referred

to a client who's living in a rural area who will need to travel, you know, an hour and a half or more in order to see a psychologist and access some face-to-face support. And so, you know, the use of telehealth and things like that has been helpful for some clients, although I think it's not always a helpful as being able to see someone face to face. And we also know that it's really difficult for a lot of our clients have serious injuries, particularly back injuries, that it's really difficult for them to sit in the car and travel for a long period of time in the car. And so that can make it really hard for them to access support that they might need.

So a lot of what we do is about sort of mobilising services, seeing what can actually come to them, trying to negotiate with services to find a way that can make them more accessible to clients and then sometimes we have to provide that support because there isn't an option for us to refer to something local and so we then need to get in and provide some of that support ourselves through our team. And I know that a lot of new ways of working have come about as a result of COVID and hopefully that has resulted in more telehealth options. But what would you say as being the impact, what are you seeing in terms of the people you support and the ways that you work through COVID? Yeah, it's interesting because the way that our team has worked has changed very, very little.

Unlike a lot of other services, we've been providing telephone-based support for the whole time we've been existing. We've always been using these online options or telephone-based options to provide our support remotely. So our service model hasn't really changed at all. I guess the only thing that's changed is the availability of services in some cases have changed. you know, sometimes waiting lists are more so there or services are not available face-to-face, which is often what our clients tell us that they want is to really sit down and be face-to-face in a space with a person. But what is also really interesting, and we reflected on this as a team recently, is a lot of our clients are telling us that COVID hasn't actually changed much

at all for them because they already experienced a lot of the isolation that the rest of us are starting to experience now. So a client I was talking to recently said to me, you know, I hear people talking on the news about how terrible it is that they can't leave the house and that they're so socially isolated, but I can't leave the house because of my injury. I've been pretty much housebound for a year because of the extent of my injuries. and I don't have family and friends that I can see nearby and I can't travel because of my injuries. I'm already socially isolated. I already can't access things that I need.

I already can't leave the house. So what was interesting in that conversation was her reflecting that people often don't understand how terribly isolating it can be, living with an injury. And that perhaps through the COVID experience, we're sort of coming to appreciate how important those human connections are. for people. And so, yeah, mobilising support through our service, I think, is really important. And hopefully it would make people a little bit more sympathetic to the plight of people who are in that situation 24-7. It's not something that's potentially going to improve and you're going to be able to step outside tomorrow or whenever there's a vaccine that there might not be a cure for whatever illness or injury they've developed. Yeah, we work with people, many people who

haven't and probably won't ever fully recover from their injuries or illness. I work with people who have asbestos-related disease who are at end of life. And I also work with people who have injuries that will change the course of their life forever and that they won't fully recover from because of the nature and extent of those injuries and whose lives are completely changed in every possible way as a result of their injury and who then face these issues of socialising. isolation and difficulties accessing support, you know, on a daily basis, whether or not that is also complicated by COVID. I was talking with another person who came onto the podcast, Sarah Whalen, a few weeks ago.

She was talking about the concept of hope and specifically relating that to missing people. But I think it's incredibly relevant when you're thinking about the grief and loss that comes around illness and injury and that uncertainty around Amelago. to get any better? What is what is my life like now? And have I lost all those things that previously gave me a bit of identity? And yeah, so that's something that I think a lot of people just don't conceptualize. They don't think, well, you've had an injury. You might be getting better. And that's something that people are facing every day. And I think just the concept of having people understand that things might not get better and that's okay. Yeah, I think what's

interesting is we receive a lot of referrals to our service around the two-year post-injury mark. So in the first year after a person's injury, their hope for recovery is quite high, and they hope to get back to the life that they had prior to all of this. And around two years post-injury, for someone who's quite seriously injured, we notice that their psychosocial distress can increase as they get to that point of starting to sort of adjust to this idea that I'm not going to get back to where I was before. And now I need to work out what the future looks like for me because it's not the future that I had anticipated for myself.

And when you mention the things around identity, I think that's a really key part there around identity, particularly for someone with serious physical injuries that's no longer able to participate in their hobbies and interests and the things that they identified themselves by. So I often work with people who have, for example, been in a workplace injury where they've got quite a serious back injury, but they were always very active. So perhaps they were a football player. They liked being, you know, the handyman around the house. They identified themselves as sort of a helper who would get in and do jobs at home and would go out and play sport every weekend. And so now as somebody who's not able to do any heavy lifting, who's not able to play sport, who's not able to do many of

those things that they identified themselves with. I think psychosocial distress often goes up as they start to think, well, okay, who am I now? Who am I going to be going forward if everything that I saw myself as is not possible now? What is possible? And I guess our work with them is around that question of, well, what is possible and what are some of the things that you would like to build on to create, you know, potential for a future for yourself that sits well with you. Yeah. Also, there's a big legislation implication there. I know at the two-year mark, there are a lot of changes and expectations and they're probably getting a lot of calls from insurance people and wanting to wrap things up if that's the stage that they're at. So that's something that I'm

or you're needing to be mindful of in your work and be able to help someone through what might be bringing up of issues at that two year mark? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the legislation issues are a part of that. But it's interesting that's also at that point of sort of the stabilisation of injuries. And, you know, that's what's triggering people to sort of question, well, if this is me stable and this is as good as it's going to get, then what next? And that's a question.

I think many people have to face. And where they have, you know, good family support, you know, good groups of friends, you know, perhaps a GP that they have a good relationship with, it can be a smooth transition into the what next. And for somebody who perhaps doesn't have family support around them, who's lost touch with friends due to being isolated at home with their injury, who perhaps sees a GP at a, you know, fly-in, fly-fly-out GP clinic where the GP changes all the time. and they haven't really got that good relationship with the GP, those people tend to be more at risk of, you know, struggling through that process.

I know in our social work degree we touch on concepts around counselling and that sort of thing. And it sounds like that's a lot of what you need to do for your work. But have you needed to complete any additional training to work in the legal sector? Not additional training so much to work in the legal sector, although I've done lots of professional development as an AAS, be accredited social worker, we're required to do lots of training. And so often doing that, you know, short courses and conferences and all sorts of things, I love to take in whatever information

I possibly can. And so not specifically an additional degree in counseling, but counseling is a big part of what we are able to do as social workers and obviously a big part of my role as well. And you also deliver training. So there's the family law education seminars for social workers. Can you Tell me a bit more about that. Yeah, so aside from my clinical work with clients, I'm really passionate about this integration of law in social work and the way that social workers can, you know, let their clients know about their legal rights or entitlements and use that information to empower them to, you know, do what they need to do.

So our team is all really passionate about this as well. And all of us have really reflected that in our social work careers prior to working here, how little we actually knew about law and how much more information we could have used to the benefit of our clients. And so the legal education program was set up to be able to provide social workers with information on a range of different legal issues that impact on their practice, not so that they can become, you know, quasi-lawyers, but so that they can actually know what rights and entitlements are potentially out there so that they can give their clients, you know, information to make informed decisions about their futures and whatnot.

So the legal education program, it's a free program for social workers. We run seminars and webinars right across Australia on a range of legal issues. We also produce an electronic publication called Social Work and the Law that goes out three times a year to social workers across Australia. And that again is about, you know, educating social workers on various areas of law that are of interest to their practice and impact on their practice. So we cover topics like consent, documentation, privacy, right through to obviously areas of compensation law, medical law, areas of risk for social workers. Recently, we've been also looking at legal issues in relation to

COVID and working from home. So I've really enjoyed being the co-editor of that publication because it's a learning process for me. And I've also got to know social workers from right across Australia and they'll often contact me with a legal question. And then in my researching an answer for them, along with my colleagues, I'm learning more and more every day. So people often ask me, do you have a legal degree? And no, I don't have a legal degree, but I feel like I've learned so much just from questions that my social work colleagues in the community asked me and me finding those answers. And yeah, I really enjoy that process. Because writing for publication is a completely different language, different process,

different style of writing. So it's great that you could stick your foot in a little bit of that and that will probably lead to more things I imagine. Yeah. And I do see a number of clients of our firm that have come to us quite late who've missed, you know, deadlines in terms of their particular claim, who weren't aware that they actually had rights and entitlements until quite late and had seen the social worker and the social worker wasn't aware of that either. And they've been sort of legally and financially disadvantaged as a result of that. And so I really hope that through our education program and our newsletter, we can be educating social workers so that people, you know, get the information they need to not miss out on rights and entitlements that are theirs.

What would you say is the most challenging thing of your work? I guess knowledge of services and systems right across Australia is definitely challenging, particularly when you find a service that is really helpful and then they're not longer there and you've got to try and find another or where the services just don't exist that people need within certain communities. I think it's also challenging working with people who are very distressed and in some cases who have lost that sense of hope for the future and to find a way to try to look for hope in a situation that feels really quite hopeless for somebody who's lost a lot of connection and who's really lost so many things in their life.

working through those layers of loss and grief is a big part of the work that we do. And that's a part of the work that I both enjoy and also find incredibly challenging and difficult at times when someone has lost so much to find ways to build hope is the ongoing challenge of the work. Yeah. What do you love most about where you work, what you do? I think seeing small change is fantastic and it's re-energizing and exciting. I think even just a small thing about linking someone in with a service they didn't know existed

and having their needs met is always really rewarding and an enjoyable part of the work. I really enjoy the grief counselling side of the work that I do. So working with people who have life limiting illness, mesothelioma and their families, that work is some of the most challenging but also rewarding and enjoyable parts of my work. I find it a real honour to be able to work with people at the end of their lives and for them to share what that experience is like for them and working with their partners or family members who are bereaved. It's such an honour to be able to share that time with those people and to be able to provide that support. So I really enjoy that aspect of the work. And I also work with people at end of life in relation to illnesses that affected them through the workplace.

or through medical negligence type situations, and I find that work to be, yeah, probably the most enjoyable for me. Given that the life expectancy for something like mesothelioma is so short and usually it's not diagnosed until very close to someone's passing, I would imagine then a family member might not have had an opportunity to really process what was going on, so the grief process might be drawn out a little bit more

than with someone who had more time beforehand to process what was happening. Do you have much of an opportunity to support the family and the people around that person once they've passed? Or is there sort of a timeline where you have to say no, this is where I draw the line and we need to refer you on to someone else? Yeah, I do work with quite a lot of people, a lot of families after the person has passed away. And some of that can be because as far as the claims process is concerned, it might be started before the person has died. but once they've died, that family member can continue the claim on in that person's place. And so, you know, they can still be going through that legal process and I can still be providing them with that grief support while that's going on.

In terms of the grief that they might be experiencing, there's some really unique aspects of grief in association with asbestos-related disease. Asbestos products were continued to be produced and actually the production peaked at a time where these companies were well aware that it was killing people and that it was so dangerous and had known for a long time. And people weren't given that warning. And so what I noticed with a lot of my clients who have mesothelioma and actually more particularly their family members, there's a huge amount of anger there about the reason

that this person has died. And often those family members will describe their loved one as having been killed by a company rather than having died from cancer. And so working through the grief that they're experiencing, it's a lot of working through that anger that they're feeling as well. And rightly so, because these people should never, you know, these deaths were preventable. They should never have died from the work that they did. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm wondering whether it's a difficult process trying to prove that the illness was caused by the workplace exposure. Well, people can have been exposed to asbestos in a range of different ways, is not only through work, but through, say, home renovation or a whole range of different ways that they're exposed. And often when they come to the firm, they don't actually know how they're exposed. I mean, some people know that they worked, say, unloading asbestos off boats and there's quite a clear exposure, but for some people, they don't know. And there's a huge, a lot of investigation work that has to go into working out where they were exposed. So that can be, you know, a tricky process.

but they certainly still have entitlements and they investigate that exposure. But people can be really angry to find out that, oh, actually that happened when I was a child and renovations were going on in my home and how was I to know that that was dangerous or, you know, all that happened when I was washing my husband's clothes and I must have briefed in some of those fibres. People have a lot of anger about the way that they're exposed when they really shouldn't have been. And I think there's also a new generation isn't there of, it's something to do with granite benchtops. And I think that exposure is a newer thing, not so much asbestos, but some of the

other materials that are being used in modern homes. Yeah. So we know that people are continuing to be exposed to asbestos, particularly through home renovations. And we also know now about silicosis, which is an illness through exposure to silica, which are contained within manufactured kitchen bench tops and many people in that industry are now affected by silicosis and will have similar entitlements to those people who have been exposed to asbestos. Once again, because a product was produced, knowing that it was dangerous without really being able to warn people. Where do you see social work going in this area over time? Where do you see us making an impact? I'm not sure. If you'd have asked me this question back when I started,

in this role, which was just over nine years ago, I would have said it makes total sense to have social workers working within plaintiff law firms. This will be something that more firms will start to do because they'll see the value in being able to support their clients and how that then gives a holistic service to those clients and those clients are more likely to attend their medical legal appointments. And the lawyers can focus on doing the work that they do in terms of managing their legal claim, knowing that the client's needs are still being taken care of. It makes total sense. So I thought that this would expand, but unfortunately it hasn't done that. So I'm not sure what the future holds for social work in these fields, but certainly our team have all

been here for the longest period and we all enjoy the work. So we'll be continuing that. I guess what I hope for the future is that social workers will start to build their knowledge of the law and actually use the law to empower their clients. to have their needs met as well and we'll seek out information that can benefit their clients in terms of their legal needs. Yeah. And is there any other type of social work that has interested you in the past? Or now that you know a little bit more about this area, is it kind of interest you in pursuing other areas? I don't know. I think every area of social work has its interest and I think one of the reasons why I really enjoy this job is because I work with people from so many different walks of

life and with so many different sorts of issues. So, you know, in any given day, I might be assisting someone, you know, who's experiencing grief in relation to mesothelioma, as I said before, but then I might also, my next call might be to someone who's experiencing some financial difficulties or somebody else who's experiencing some mental health issues or has a domestic violence situation they need assistance with. So I like the variety in the work. So I don't think there's an area of social work that doesn't interest me or that does interest me more than a other in that I find the variety to be what's of most interest to me. Yeah.

Yeah. Having said that, I think for my future, I'm interested in opportunities to develop my leadership skills and to moving into more leadership or education roles because I'm really passionate about educating other social workers and supporting other social workers with the development of their careers. So I'd be interested in providing clinical supervision or. or roles where I can, you know, pass on what I've learned and, yeah, build on that, I guess. Do you have an opportunity to supervise students in your role?

I don't. I'm not able to take on student placements, but I do have students do day visits quite regularly. So lots of social workers I know will call me and say, can my social work student come and have a day visit with you? And they come out and I talk to them about social work and the law and, you. intersect between those and about the kind of work that I do and about what life might be like sometimes for people with serious injury who are adjusting to serious injury in the community. And I really enjoy getting to know students that way and talking to them about that. And I think it's helpful, particularly for students who are working in hospitals or who intend to go on to work in hospitals, for people within that front line sort of setting to have an

awareness of what life might be like down the track for their patient in terms of, you know, how their injuries now might impact on them later and what are some of the things we can do at the early end to prevent some of the psychosocial distress that we see later, whether that's about talking about people's financial planning and things like that to prevent some of the financial difficulties that we can see later or, you know, things around supporting families early on to sort of prevent some of the family breakdown that we sometimes see later. So I think it's good for them to have an experience of our work before they then continue on into hospital work so that they've got that awareness, I suppose.

That would be a very full-on single day though for the student. It is. There's lots of talking. Yeah, but so valuable, as you said, it's just good for them to be able to firstly step out of their placement environment and do something different for a day, but also to be able to get a bit of an insight into, as you said, what's to come for that person that they're seeing and they might only have the opportunity to see them for a day or an hour or a week. And then it's where to from here and having the confidence that there are supports out there longer term. Yeah. Yeah. And are there any other projects or programs that you're working on at the moment?

Well, a big project that has come out of 2020 has been working with webinar. So for a long time, we've been providing legal education seminars on site in hospitals around Australia, or we've done sort of larger sort of forums where we invite social workers to come together and we provide them with legal education. But I wouldn't have dreamed that I would have been offering webinars. So that's been a big learning curve for me. But it's been really great to be able to find ways to offer our education. education through webinars so that we can reach social workers where they are right around the

state. And so people have been coming to those from, you know, the very top of New South Wales to the very west of New South Wales. And it's really great to be able to offer those more broadly through the webinar programs. That's probably the main project that I've had that I've been working on. I'm also involved with the number of social work special interest groups through the AASW and others. And so I find those to be really helpful and interesting as well. Yeah, brilliant. And it also builds diversity within your role and shakes it up a bit, makes it interesting. Yeah. And if people wanted to find out more about social work in this field, where would you direct them?

Are there any good resources? I assume your website would be a good start. They're most welcome to contact B or anyone in our team. They can email social work services at slatergordon.com. We'd be more than happy to provide them with information. As I say, we have our social work and the law e-newsletter that goes out three times a year, which is a helpful resource for them to learn about different legal issues. There's also lots of other really helpful resources out there that social workers can be tapping into

to learn more about the law and how that impacts their practice. Things like the University of Queensland has a site that is end-of-life law, which actually provides lots of information about end-of-life law in various different states and territories around Australia and explains the, different sort of documents that people are able to use at end of life, whether it's advanced care planning and those sorts of things and how that works in different states. They also update on things like voluntary assisted dying legislation and some of those changes. So that's quite an interesting resource. In New South Wales, Planning Ahead Tools is a helpful website put together by

New South Wales Health to also provide information about end of life law. And then there's things like NCAT has a really helpful lot of fact sheets on various different. guardianship related issues. I'd also encourage people to go to places like welfare rights centre, which has fantastic resources in relation to centre link issues, applying for DSP, all of those sorts of things. There's just lots of really helpful resources out there that people can educate themselves with. And if people have trouble finding those or they'd like more information, feel free to contact me. And I'm happy to pass some of these resources on to you. That's amazing. I hope everyone was writing that down.

I'll include links to all of that in the show notes just so people can go off and do their own reading. But yeah, that's definitely a good start. And I think that will help them rabbit hole down in another direction if they're really interested in learning more about one specific aspect of that. Yeah. And is there anything else you'd like to mention before we finish up about what you do or any final thoughts about your work? I'm not sure. I just really hope that the discussion today has inspired some social work. and students to think more about how they can incorporate legal knowledge into their practice

and how they might want to do their own research to learn more about various legal issues that impact on their clients and how that information might actually be really empowering for their clients. Yeah, no, I think it's really interesting, especially to hear about areas of social work where you would not expect to find a social worker. And law firms, as you suggested, there aren't many social workers out there who specialize in this area, but you are pretty much a generalist. So if you have worked in an area of social work, you can usually translate that knowledge.

And hopefully in the future, we will see more firms incorporate a social work team, or at least a single social worker, who can add value to the work that they're doing and the support that they provide for their clients and just helping them through that process, which at the best of times is challenging. So just acknowledging, I guess, within each law firm that it's not going to be smooth sailing

and someone has come to them with a traumatic event and something that's potentially quite life limiting or disabling and being able to understand the value that that brings and what social work as a profession can bring to that setting. Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, prior to my work here, I wondered about how much legal knowledge I would need to have to work in a role like this. And I've discovered that I don't actually need a lot of legal knowledge because there's plenty of people in the firm that have lots of legal knowledge. What they needed was these specialist skills that social workers have in providing psychosocial

support. And as far as my team goes, my other team members have all worked in either hospitals or community health type positions who've been doing that hospital type social work. And that work has really transitioned well into this particular work. And for me as well, my background in homelessness and family counselling and things like that has also been helpful in this particular role. There's a lot of crossover there. I agree it would make sense for this to open up in other places. We do provide this service to our clients as a free service and perhaps not all firms for comfortable providing a free service, but it's important to us that it is a free service to support our clients. And yeah, providing them with that support then in turn actually supports the lawyers

because lawyers are often quite worried about their clients, you know, taking that information home and thinking, gee, I hope that client's okay, I don't know what to do with what they've just told me. So through our work, they're able to refer them and know that we are there to provide that sort of assessment and to provide that information and support to their client, which, you know, then in turn supports them to feel more at ease, I guess, in the work that they do as well. Yeah. When someone's had an injury, their legal needs is only one really serious. small component of what's actually going on for that person and of their needs overall.

So it's not enough for us to just hope to deal with their legal issue in a silo and in isolation. We need to actually be supporting them with their psychosocial needs in order for that to really be of help to them long term. And not every client of the firm requires a referral to social work. So many of them, most of them, are linked in with some sort of support in the community. It's really just about addressing that gap for a few of our clients who are just living in the community, not LinkedIn, not with support, who are really struggling with that and need someone to come in and give them that assistance to get those connections happening. So it's not needed for everyone. It's really just needed for those people where there is that gap.

Well, thank you again, Alexis, so much for coming onto the podcast and for speaking to me about the unique and really important work that you do. just really enjoyed the opportunity. So thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to get to speak on the podcast and yeah, it was really good. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Alexis, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed,

or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Ashton, an accredited mental health social worker, consultant, and private practice owner. Ashton has many years of experience working with children and families who have experienced trauma and works collaboratively with each client to create a safe and positive therapeutic experience. Ashton is also a clinical supervisor and live. leadership coach who uses a trauma-informed approach to support people in their roles, as well

as helping them to achieve their career goals. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this next episode is available. See you next time.