Social Work Spotlight - Episode 27: Jon

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

In this episode I speak with Jon, whose life has been dedicated to living and serving amongst Australia’s most disadvantaged. His work has seen him sharing his home with people seeking asylum, refugees, people in recovery, and ex-prisoners. Born in Malaysia and migrating to Australia in the 1970s, Jon’s life is testament to the power of hospitality. Jon heads up Wayside Chapel and continues Wayside’s mission of creating community with no “us and them”.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:An article in The Guardian newspaper on the sanctuary movement to protect asylum seekers (2016) - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/13/the-whole-nation-is-on-board-inside-the-sanctuary-movement-to-protect-asylum-seekersWayside Chapel - https://www.waysidechapel.org.au/Love Over Hate (a book by Graham Long, Jon’s predecessor at Wayside Chapel) - https://shop.waysidechapel.org.au/products/love-over-hate-graham-longSouthern Migrant & Refugee Centre - https://smrc.org.au/Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH) - https://unoh.org/ABC Australian Story article on Jon commencing in the role of Wayside CEO (2018) - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-20/changing-of-the-guard-at-wayside-chapel/10132328This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C5TfcyxHkMRODKvdi0Bco4aAWMrFYA2IPjHGz0k0j1o/edit?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, Yasmin McKee Wright, and today's guest is John. John's life has been dedicated to living and serving amongst Australia's most disadvantaged. His work saw him living in Bidwell in the Mount Druid area for 10 years, where he shared his home with people seeking asylum, refugees, people in recovery, and ex-prisoners. He has many stories, including being attacked by samurai swords, seeing a battle tank drive past his house and mistakenly being sent to immigration detention. Born in Malaysia and migrating to Australia in the 1970s, John's life is testament to the power of hospitality.

John heads up Wayside Chapel and continues Wayside's mission of creating community with no us and them. Thank you so much, John, for coming on to the podcast. I'm really happy that you could take the time to do this and very excited about chatting with you about your experience in social work so far. Can I ask you when you began as a social worker and what led you to the profession? Well, I first started studying social work in 2002. I certainly didn't set out to choose social work as a career. I stumbled into it. I was exactly four years into a five-year degree studying computer science and electrical engineering at Melbourne University

when I had a bit of a – I had a moment of pause where instead of answering, what do I want to get out of life? The question kind of flipped and says, what does life want to do with me? And so I had a moment where I was on, this is in the late 90s, university campuses were pretty exciting places. And there was a lot of public debates

and life on the campus that I really appreciated and valued. And there was, often speakers would roll through at lunchtimes and we'd sit there and listen to these lunchtime talks. And one teacher said, look, you know, get out of your own head and go and do something of significance with your life. And so I won't go and travel through Europe like all my friends are. I'll go and just start volunteering somewhere and try and use some of my skills in that area to,

you know, help tutor kids or, you know, do whatever it would take. And so I did that, took a year off uni and began to work in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne at the time was a very rough neighborhood that we had a neighborhood that had a lot of issues. And there was a lot of heroin in the area in Springvale at the time in Melbourne. And so just kind of fell in love with the work. Started working with asylum seekers, started working with men who were coming out of prison, started doing a lot of advocacy work, a lot of protests around Australia's treatment of asylum seekers as well.

Through that time and got involved in the southeastern region Migrant Resource Center down that way. and a few political campaigns that were there. The Sanctuary Network was one of them that was started up in Sydney and continued in strength down in Melbourne. And kind of just fell in love with the ability to be a part of helping create better outcomes for people. And I thought, well, that fits me far more than this computer science, electrical engineering degree that I'm 80% through. So my year off turned into a life off of that kind of work.

And after a while, I really began to see the need to have an understanding of ways that we can more effectively work within the systems that we have. And so that naturally took me into the space of social work. So I enrolled at Monash University in the early 2000s and did my course there in Corfield. So I've been a true believer ever since. And you've lived and worked in some of the most disadvantaged communities, both in Sydney and Melbourne, and dedicated your life to closing the gap on inequality. What has led you to this point now in your career? Well, you know, that was 20 years of my life.

So I worked for an organisation where we identified neighbourhoods that had higher than normal rates of negative issues. particularly where there's a high concentration of generational unemployment as well as perhaps issues around domestic violence and cheap housing. You kind of mix all those things together and you tend to have a lot of opportunities to get involved in community. And so we lived in those neighbourhoods in which we were working. And, you know, we had an open home and then we would take people in. and so we were taking a lot of people in off the streets who were doing home detox from heroin.

I met my partner who was working for the same organisation. She was taking in women who were escaping domestic and family violence situations and helping them have a little refuge before moving on. And yeah, that was 20 great years of our lives and we partnered up and we had a few kids. And then the opportunity came to start a new expression out in Sydney. So we looked at Western Sydney and we set up in Mount Druitt for a decade. And then our kids got to their mid to late teenage years and their kind of natural opportunity came in life for, I think one of them said, Dad, I'm trying to do HSC here. Can we have less people in the house?

So we said, all right, okay, fair enough. You didn't choose this lifestyle. And so then we decided to make the move outside of that organization. And then the opportunity came up a lot earlier. I always figured in my work and my life and my vocation that opportunities would come to take on more leadership roles in terms of realizing that the greater impact can be made not from me being solely on the front line, but empowering others to be on the front line. So I, yeah, this opportunity came up to work for Wayside Chapel. So I joined in 2016 and then not long after I joined the CEO got prostate cancer. So the board suddenly started deciding about whether or not the succession planning that was already in place needed to be brought forward.

And the boss kind of pulled me aside and he said, for God's sake, don't let a manager win this position. Make sure it's someone who has a heart for the community, someone who does things from the ground up, someone who's lived a life of authenticity and integrity in his view. And so I put my hand up, never expecting to kind of get the role of CEO because I'd let a small. smaller organisation and I'd been involved in management teams but never to quite the extent of 150 staff running an organisation. I really still have my L plates on even after two years in the top job, but the opportunities come up to really continue to bring the focus of how do we continue to run an organisation that keeps the power of wayside's always been in our proximity to pain in our location to the gutter. So it's been a real honour to be able to do that for the last couple of years and to really work at how do we design programs, how do we make organisational planning and decisions that keep

the most vulnerable people in mind. And COVID has only served to really heighten and sharpen that focus as well. And given that it was a very competitive process, I read somewhere, something like 50 applicants for that CEO role, what do you think it was about you and about maybe social work and your training or your experience that makes this role a good fit. Why social work rather than a different professional? You know, I think it was a very competitive process. It was probably my ability to character assassinate the other 49 candidates. No, I don't really.

It was more the wisdom of the leadership of the organisation was their ability to listen to the fact that you can't put a manager in these kinds of roles because managers do what they've always been taught to do, which is managed, which is to eliminate risk, to eliminate, you know, all aspects of messiness when if we really want to conduct effective work. I'm not advocating for a model of chaos in engagement, but I'm saying we need to be able to realise. I've recently spoken to the risk team at the head of a bank,

and they said, what's wayside's approach to risk? And I said, yes, our approach is yes. And because, you know, so many of our beautiful people who walk through our doors, you know, don't want to be managed, they just want to be loved. We say no one's a problem to be solved. They're a person to be met. That's core to our philosophy. And that needs to be front and center in all of our engagement.

I think the work we do is important insofar as it points to the fact that I think how we're living as society and as community is in a pretty messed up place. I see the rates of mental health and anxiety in youth. and I think when are we going to say enough's enough? You know, when are we going to rely on each other, on community? When are we going to get past the myth of the perfectability of the individual? And I really believe social work with its holistic and systems approach has the greatest opportunity to be able to help us really address some of those issues

and to be a voice for change in the sector as well. Yeah, great. I'm sure there's no such thing as a typical day for you, especially in your role, but in your current role, what are you responsible for? What would it look like from day to day? So my role is pastor and CEO, and don't get afraid of religion there. We're not here to beat anyone over the head. It just kind of acknowledges the fact that what I love about the uniqueness of wayside is

when people ask us, here you're a government agency, are you a church, are you a welfare agency? I say, yeah, we're all of those things and we're none of those things. It also names the fact that, you know, we don't try and change people if we were to attempt to change people, we would be manipulating them. We wait patiently and we wait for that spark of life to appear in people's lives and then we place all our skill and strength alongside that person particularly. We find that a sign that someone's life is in chaos is driven by two questions, right? One is, you know, how much can you give me? And the second one is, what can I,

what's the most I can get for the least, right? You don't have to be homeless to be driven by those two questions, right? But we see the sign of a life turning around is when the question changes to how can I contribute, what can I do? And so how do we create systems that allow participation, that allow for community, that allow for growth? How do we kind of move away from the kind of of old systems and structures that have gotten us to where we are? Even, you know, I think words create our worlds and language is really important in that. So we don't call it crisis management or case management we call it care coordination. Everyone who walks in our doors is not, we don't use the work client here.

Everyone who walks into our place is called a visitor. And so everyone is welcome here. That goes from politicians and celebrities that volunteer on the front desk through to our blogsie who's waking up in the gutter around the corner. And so, you know, a typical day is very non-typical. And it's there to work with the teams. You know, so many of our volunteers are 600 volunteers that come in and out of the place. and their job is to be themselves and to love other people.

My job is to really keep speaking the mission and the values around this place. I'll run you through them if you'd like it. Okay. If that's okay. So, look, our mission is about creating community with know us and then because we see the way we've constructed society is broken. You know, we've become more and more unhealthy as atomized individuals disconnected from each other. We've seen technology has given us the illusion of connection

when it's actually showing up that, you know, we, you know, in a crisis, who do we have to reach out to? And it's less than two or three people in that space. So how do we create community in a face-to-face way, which is a real challenge through COVID, let me tell you. And so it's about going, speaking, the mission and the vision. And the values are around. We have, our first one, we only have five, is no secret.

You know, there's no secret formula that can make you want to come back to life, you know. No cowboys. Our mission is our method. we create community through being a community. No secrets, no cowboys, no judges, that's quite prevalent. A judge sits on high and judges from above. No complacency is another one that's core to us in that we say we've always got to remain awake because I think the systems and the structures, even in the helping sciences that we've created,

help rock us to sleep and help us fall asleep and miss the potential of people and waiting for that spark of life, you know, that is there and prevalent. Even social work needs a bit of reform, I would say. You know, if someone walks in because, you know, the number one reason for homelessness is disconnection, right? You know, there's a whole bunch of mental health violence addiction, but it's because at some point the capacity of the community or the family system in which someone existing reaches capacity and it can no longer support the individual, right?

And I don't, we don't judge family units, particularly if someone is really struggling. you know, I've got 10 nieces, soon to be 11, would you believe it, no nephews? We so often say if two or three of them were struggling, we'd be able to cope in the family unit. If that were to go to four, five or six, pretty soon we'd reach a limit. And so often people walk through these doors on the worst day of their lives. And unfortunately, the way the systems and structures have been set up is, you know, we say, you know, come to the front door, what's your problem?

You'll be met with a clipboard, you know, and here's a pillar program or a pamphlet, And they walk away feeling just as misunderstood as when they walked in. Right. You know, we want to see people. No one's a problem to be solved. They're a person to be met. So how do we not rock ourselves to sleep? No secrets, no cowboys, no complacency, no judges, right?

And, you know, how do we make people come back to life in all of that? The other one is no rush, you know? You know, we can't make people change. And if we could, we'd be guilty of that manipulation of some kind, right? and said we were on the lookout for that sign of the spark of life and help people move towards better days because we find if someone's been met rather than worked on is they move to health by themselves.

And then we also quickly worked out in this organisation that we needed a different set of behaviours in how we treat each other because so often in social work and in the human services is, you know, in my last organisation, we used to have this kind of catchphrase that was pretty sad that we even had it, which was it's the poor we love.

each other we can't stand right and you know often we have infinite compassion for people who are on our streets but you know if someone eats our lunch we're willing to kill them in the you know in the staff room yeah so we named four behaviors that we said if we can put these behaviors front and center in our lives you know we'll be an unstoppable team which is you know stand back and recognize that we're each necessary significant but not central right we need to create space to be able to cool off to hear what's going on, to work as part of a team and work out what don't we know in situations. One is to speak of each other. You know, how often do we fall into the trap of speaking quite meanly of each other, even in the helping profession as well?

You know, we talk to others and colleagues and ourselves in ways that we would never dream or dare speak to the people we're working with, right? Yeah. Embrace errors, you know, like how much time that we waste trying to cover our butts instead of just owning up to mistakes we've made. And I've got to be honest. I've never heard someone embrace an error and say, I screwed that up. And I've never heard someone bring that up in a way that when we walk out of the room, people have less respect for them. In fact, it's the opposite.

We walk away filled with a sense of increased respect for that person. And how last one's simple. It's just be kind. It's kind of a mantra for my life. How can we be kind? And I don't say to mention that on the, kindest person in the world. It's something I need to constantly remind myself on. So we can combine our vision and our values. So that's mostly my role. We have students doing

placements here for social work and I remind them of the slave labor of our social work placements. I was very lucky. I got to do my second placement in a slum in a Montessori school in Bangkok, which was very lovely for me because it was a lot cheaper to live for eight weeks as a volunteer in a slum than it is where I did my first one in the Migrant Resource Center in Dandino. and just to support students and to support some of our social workers here on staff too. What we've found is the social work team is really essential here because I don't like the phrase best practice. I always call it better practice.

I think better practice is always the goal because best practice ultimately for me runs the risk of having no risk at all and forgetting that every person we're dealing with is quite unique. And so I hate to use the phrase, but how do we take a good? a bespoke approach to everyone we're interacting with and working with is really the key to and the cornerstone for better practice. Through COVID, we've had an increased focus on outreach because a lot of our work occurred in our centres here in Kings Cross and in Bondi Beach. But since COVID, we've also had a renewed focus on visiting so many of the people we've

placed in public housing towers and on the streets. And what that has led to is for us to quite literally stumble into the middle of some serious child protection scenarios. And it was our social work team that was able to help reorient our practice to get in some up-to-date working with children training and the best child safety and protection kind of work that we can do. It was quite an unexpected, quite a shocking thing. You know, when you're running a centre where it's mostly people who are falling into

homelessness, you don't see that many children in this space. So our outreach teams did come across that. and it was our social workers that were able to really immediately look at us up with the most up-to-date resources and responses in that space. So I get to boast about my team and kind of just encourage people to continue to live out, the vision, the mission, the values and the behaviours. And how many social workers do you employ? We have four on staff here at the moment for an organisation of 150. That's with 73 frontline workers. So really not many. Would you like to increase that or is it just how the cards have been dealt?

That's currently how the cards have been dealt. And so all our four have masters in social work. But as we increase the number of student placements, because we can supervise more, I would definitely be looking at bringing on more just because the way they sharpen up the practice of our frontline teams because we have a mixture of volunteers. And in the sector, we have workers that have been doing this for three, four decades. And they certainly have long ago abandoned better practice and just involved in what I call very comfortable familiar practice. Doesn't always necessarily create the greatest outcome

for the people that we're trying to serve. Yeah, sure. I love that your values don't include any jargon, be that health or government. So you're not trying to have people fit into boxes. You're not trying to manipulate systems. You're not manipulating people. to make judgment calls around whether someone is eligible for something or whether you can apply

funding to something. I think that's really incredible. I know a small portion of your funding comes from government grants, but the majority is generated through donations and you do have some prominent ambassadors, such as David Wenham and Indira Nidu and Claudia Carvan. Much of the time, in my opinion, at least, a reliance on government funding can result in a need to demonstrate solutions to problems and show that you're supporting a certain number of people, whereas what you're saying is that no one is a problem to be solved, they're a person to be met. How does Wayside then, in your opinion, differ from other NGOs or charities in terms of how you're able to set the agenda around who your priority populations might be and how you know

you're on the right track? Great question. Not a simple one either. There's a world of difference between meeting someone to solve a problem or solving a problem in order to meet a person. You know, at some level all day long we are running around solving problems, you know, helping people get into housing, helping people with legal problems. All of the care coordination that goes on is very focused on helping people with some of the issues that they have in functioning and with their mental health and smart recovery groups. So there's a lot of activity that goes on. Look, my other role as well as CEO is pastor.

and that acknowledgement that someone is, you know, it's very dangerous to take a snapshot of someone and call it the whole movie. And I walk around the building sometimes saying to some of our people, look, I can, I see your potential, I see your glory, but you're killing yourself. And I wish you could see what I see, you know, but if you don't, I'll give you the best funeral ever. So if things end up that way, I bury people, we bury people.

Often at funerals, you'll see a whole bunch of agencies come in and everyone gets a chance to share and cleaning people from the street, which is an amazing thing. You'll see other agencies coming going, oh, he was a great client, but you'll just see our people just weeping because they've lost a brother or a sister.

And I really think that kind of takes that whole of life approach. It also gives us the freedom to be able to say, how do we take a human-centered design framework to what we're trying to achieve in our outcomes? So that's why we go out boldly. we never want to be beholden to government outcomes. We never want to be chasing funding. We want to be doing what's right.

And that's kind of the history and legacy of wayside in this place. And always will be, you know, life education started out of here, lifeline started out of here, the freedom rides that from our front doorstep. The medically supervised injecting centre was first started here. You know, we've always been that kind of rebel in the space, not for a rebellion sake, but saying how do we keep people front and center in the space. So having said that, though, our programs have just begun. on the work of saying how do we map our outcomes to the human services outcomes.

And that's not to say everything that doesn't fit within that framework gets kicked out. You know, we have ambassadors. We have people from all over, you know, this is one of the most outside of Redfern, socioeconomically speaking, Kings Cross Potts Point, is the most diverse postcode we have in Australia. It's the most dense. It's the most diverse as well. The richest people in Australia live alongside the poorest in Willamaloo through to Elizabeth

Bay. And yet when everyone walks through our doors, they see something and they begin to get captured by something, you know, that is way bigger than themselves, which is how we're meant to live, which is in community and friendship, in connection with each other. And so that means we have things that will never be government fundable, like choir groups and a little jam session that occurs, you know, where we have some of Australia's premier rock stars jamming along a kid who's just stolen a guitar from around the corner, you know. and having a ball together. But, you know, we're certainly mapping towards, you know, we want a greater outcome. We think the wayside way, the way we do things, certainly can reform the sector

because we see everyone's moving back to human-centered design as well as creating outcomes that definitely align with what we do. You know, we're taking a wayside approach to healthcare delivery. We have a nurse now that comes in and works on site that works with some chronic health conditions. It's about creating a safe place for people. You know, how do we, create better outcomes. Most people who are on the streets have no coordinated sense of

healthcare. Their GP is the A&E. You know, every time anything goes wrong and how do we get proactive healthcare started? How do we get involved in communities? We're going into public housing towers. How do we maintain stable tendencies? These are all things that create outcomes that definitely align with some of the human services outcomes framework. We're around health and cultural connection and safety and housing. You know, so we're doing both, but we'll never sell ourselves over into one side. You know, I've worked in scenarios where, you know, you kind of do your funding rounds and work out what programs you're running

based upon where your funding's coming from and that should never be the way we operate. And you've mentioned previously that you did kind of what we're told not to do in university. You took people home, literally. So how in those spaces where you have opened yourself up quite literally, figuratively, you've opened your family up to people that you're supporting in the local community. How and where do you find time to prioritize looking after yourself and your family amongst everything that you do? How do you separate the personal and the professional?

Yeah, look, that's a great question. And I would like to give you an answer that gives you the impression that I'm an expert on that. It's, I'm not. You know, one of the things I do want to say is, you know, you think about community services, diplomas, and you think about social work and all the kind of new ways we can get qualified to do this kind of work. And I think it kind of, something's got to give. This struck me in my first year at university study social work, was, you know, most people get into social work because someone recognises and sees something in them. They say, you're really good with people.

You know, you really have a gift there. You can connect with people who are in crisis and you can also give them some practical assistance or you can help them kind of help work everything out. Anyway, and how does that start? Normally that starts, you know, at the school gate. You know, you're sitting there chatting away after dropping off your kids and then you start talking to Sally and Billy and you will say, let's go for a cup of tea and then you have a cup of tea together

and then you take them into your house and then you say, hey, let's write a few things out and let's try a few things. And then you go, gee, I'm good at this. I'm going to sign up and do a course. And then the first thing you learn is that everything you did was wrong, right? You shouldn't have done that. You broke all the rules of social work and that professional distance. And I get it.

I get it. But, you know, the therapeutic bond that we create with people, the bonds of trust, you know, I would never try and case manage or care coordinate someone who was living in our house. That just wasn't on. So we would have different households, different teams where the coordination would occur. And often we'd love it if there was an external social worker involved, you know, and how is housing contributing to the plan that you've developed here? I'd like to say we did this and we continued to do this because we made a choice to leave

because of the times that we did. But we soon found that one of our children had some unique issues of her own. So one of the decisions to finish up in that work was to create a home environment that was a lot more conducive to her health and well-being. She's not only got Asperger's. She also has bipolar with a BPD organization. And that comes with a lot of anxiety and also depression tied in with it. So once we recognise that these were some of the challenges she was facing,

we made some changes at the home front, which means it's provided a more stable, predictable environment, less traumatic in certain ways. You know, we had some great experiences. I also got another child that says, Dad, life is so boring now that no one comes over. You go and stuff, but it's all about balancing everything you got. I found that it made us better members of our community and more effective workers being connected relationally rather than disconnected. When you go to some of our public housing estates

and you sit in the food courts of some places in western Sydney and you can tell the professionals are sitting at different tables to some of the local community members. They dress different, they look different, and I don't think it creates better or more effective outcomes either. I think being a member of the community certainly helped. In the practice, I started working as a welfare worker in the local high school too,

but I was a well-known member of the local community. That came with different barriers and boundaries. certainly, and I respected those. You know, if a kid would present with an issue, I would be able to walk down and talk to their parents as well just to get a more holistic kind of view of what's going on. So I think being connected members and connected social work, I think is the challenge for us because so much of our practice now

is professionalised and etherized. How do we get a bit messy? How do we get a bit mucky? I think is the challenge for us as a sector. And now that your children are teenagers, how has your work and the work of your partner influenced their worldview and the direction that they might take after school? So we've got two girls by birth and one girl by adoption. So one of our kids in our one of our youth clubs, both their parents overdosed and passed away

tragically. And we didn't want her to go into the foster care system at 15. So we kind of took her on as a foster child. So we got three girls. And one of our girls wants to be involved in the helping sciences, the helping profession. Another one says, hell no, never, I would never do that, ever I'm going to get a boring job where I don't have to get messy and one's already working in the sector. But they all appreciate the values that they're raised with. The values weren't done by, this is what we say you should do.

It's come and watch what we're doing. So the values of hospitality are strong for them, of compassion, of care. If I had my time over again, I'd do very little differently. We would do very little differently, yeah. Yeah. You've already mentioned a few things that you love and that you find challenging about your work, but what would you say is your favourite thing

about what you're doing at the moment? I certainly never forget what my heart's for, and that's something that I really value. A week wouldn't go past where I'm not moved to tears. I'm also experiencing the highs of life. You know, I used to think the highs of life was, you know, having enough money to retire, but now I see it. It's when someone comes back to life and they begin to be driven far more by a picture of who they can be in the future rather than by the self-hatred that kind of traps them

in a cycle of shame and destruction. And so getting to witness that every day makes me one of the richest men in the world. And what would you say is the most challenging thing? It might be for you personally or it might just be something that you can see could be changed or you're trying to influence and it's just not happening. Our power is always in our proximity to the gutter and so we see right now through COVID an increase in women accessing our centres because of family violence and domestic violence and we're seeing a significant intensification in coercive control that's going on and trying to get involved in some of the campaigns to criminalise coercive control.

So that's currently breaking my heart. If you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have said, and I would continue to say it's our treatment of asylum seekers and people locking them up in immigration detention centres. So there's always something that's kind of coming up and always kind of breaking our hearts, but it's also reminding us that we still got them. Our whole approach, our relationship with the Aboriginal community,

just, you know, as a migrant, as an Indian Malaysian, Sri Lankan migrant to this country. You don't realize what our Aboriginal brothers and sisters experienced until you walk in relationship with them and you hear, you know, you see Donald Trump saying, you know, at one point when the looting starts, the shooting starts, and then he says, you know, go home, we love you and you think there's two different worlds out there. And in Australia, the thing that we don't necessarily see is, look, I'm as dark as anyone, right?

but I enjoy the fruits of the tree are the good Australia that works in the system that works for me. Every new migrant community has a five, 10 year teething time, Polish, Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese, Cambodia and the Sudanese were currently going through the first 10 year tribe that's rough

and then they'll be accepted as well. But then the system works for us. But we still have Aboriginal brothers and sisters who have a system that seeks to the stop and frisks in this neighbourhood is still way too high and that is definitely targeted. You don't appear to have it all together, get out of this area and you see the impact that has on Aboriginal people,

a simple conversation can turn into resist arrest, assault and freight. And, you know, I know a guy that for drunken disorderly is essentially done 10 years prison. And so you can see the systems are still slanted towards privileging those who enjoy them and disadvantaging those who aren't a part of it. So, you know, that's the thing that kind of gets me up, gets my blood boiling, but also gets this action. You know, we're really getting involved in the campaign to decriminalise use and possession

in small amounts of drugs, you know, that there's just no value in taking someone who's got a couple of drugs and then putting them into the criminal justice system. It's a punitive system. It's not a reform system and it's not creating good outcomes. So ask me a topic and I'll give you a rant, Yasmin. Well, that's actually a good tie-in. I was going to ask if there are any special programs or projects or partnerships that you're working on at the moment that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, look, we're really looking at some of the issues that we have around how do we create some better systems

and better immediate options for housing for women experiencing domestic violence. You know, so often, you know, these kind of boarding house situations are more unsafe for the women who we try and place. in them than they are in their own homes, you know. And I sadly see a lot of women say I'd rather stay in the situation I'm currently in and make a move into a boarding house with 25 men and open doors everywhere. So that's kind of we're working closely doing a bit of an asset map in the local neighbourhood and trying to work out if there's anything we can do to play into that space to create better outcomes. And, you know, I dream of being able to set up a little local house that's actually pretty and beautiful and communicates, okay, well done.

You can rest in safety tonight. And so that's one of the things I'm very passionate about. We're looking at how we can create with our Aboriginal staff and mob space that we've got up here that's a place of healing and connection for them. So they're two of the projects I'm really passionate about lately. Given that Wayside Chapel was funded in 1964, obviously personally you wouldn't have had too much more experience with it. but what have you seen from what you've read or what you've been told over time in terms of

changes specifically in this area of practice? Oh, look, definitely if we contrast the practice, I mean, what was best practice certainly wasn't even a phrase back in the days. You know, I think it's the challenge of the sector, really, is we have so many people who, and I see a lot of hope coming through. Like I'm looking at some of our new social workers and social work students, gee, they're switched on and they're more switched on than we were. You know, to be frank, studying social work in Melbourne in the early 2000s, I think it was the only bloke in the whole course there.

And it was just full of people who chose that course because their family said, if you want to go to university as a woman, you can only be a nurse or a social worker. And so there was a lot of people in the sector who were not necessarily being driven by the vision of what effective social work could do and achieve and the way it could reform society. but I see the young passion that's coming through now and it's pretty excited and so I'm really looking forward to tracking the future of the profession actually over the next of a while because what I see is and the sector is riddled with it people who have reached management positions

because of tenure rather than skill people who have taken a real toxic charity mindset people who are in the sector not to create good outcomes but to prevent themselves from feeling bad you know and I think you know what I mean when I say that we still have far too many people who are driven from that kind of place as opposed to saying how do I create better outcomes for not only the people I'm serving but how do I challenge the society in which I find myself located in it's the vision right it's it's about who got into it for what reasons and why did they stay in it

ultimately so have you stayed in that for the right reasons are you enjoying what you're doing do you feel as though you're contributing in some way or that you're learning from the people around you? Because ultimately, I think we have this idea of we're learning by doing professional development. That's not how it works. We learn from the people that we're supporting. Learn from the communities.

We learn from our mistakes. And I think that means more than a title. And I think we just need to embrace the learning opportunities that come as we go, as we start to engage with the community, as we start to develop our own passion and our own idea of where we fit within this whole system. Yep. And so I couldn't agree with you more.

And we won't make poverty history until we make it personal, until it becomes a flesh and blood relationship with someone. You know, my journey into social work really began when I was running a youth club and a young girl who was a part of a family, 12 years old, seeking asylum. I said, John, what can you do? like I don't want to be deported. I don't want to die. And that was kind of my moment where I said, you know,

I'm not going to give up on you. You know, and I remember that was the Sanctuary Network campaign, and it was a 10-year campaign to advocate for permanent residency for the people in the community seeking asylum from East Timor. And the people who were driven into the work ideologically or who were driven by a negative vision of society, society screwed, so I'm going to fix it. They didn't last.

They burnt out. they were not going back to a source of a relational source from which to draw. They were drawing from a well of bitterness that was inside them. And they burnt out on the cause. But it was those people who were connected to community that were able to remind themselves about why they were doing what they were doing. And that's got to be the source from which we draw our energy, a generative source, to be able to sustain and maintain healthy practice over a long period of time

for those of us in the profession. I think the risk is that, especially for community social work-based roles, the salary isn't great. You get into it for the passion or, you know, you really need to want to do what you're doing. I don't know if there's any reform planned or anything happening around that space, but I just feel as though maybe some of that is what's driving those moves up a ladder when perhaps those people might not be the best people to be in those higher-up roles. Well, that's the hard thing, you know. I think we need to look at, Yasmin, you're hitting all the right points with me.

Look, I think we know that beyond a certain level, money doesn't buy us more happiness, right? And in fact, over-incentivising some roles attracts the wrong people to them as well. We do a lot of work, don't we, as social workers, trying to create better, more inclusive workplaces as well as better, more inclusive societies. and how do we create ones that create more room for life? You know, how do we create more space for flexible work arrangements? Because these are the things we need to be working for and advocating for, more time with family, more time with friends, more time to enrich ourselves.

Because beyond the if then rewards, beyond a certain level, is we know quality of life doesn't lie in that place. So how can we walk the talk? You know, how many social workers did I see in my early practice that were saying, I need to help people and I don't care what impact it has on my life? anything, actually how we do anything is how we do everything. How do we have restorative practice in our own lives and generative practice in our own lives work? How do we meditate?

You know, how do we get away and retreat from some of the intense work that we do? So, and I think what we need to be doing is not advocating for necessarily greater wages. Look, I lived on the Henderson Poverty Line with Lisa. We lived there for 20 years. So we never saw financial gain as a goal in life and we still don't. You know, we're 25 years behind our peers in that space. And that's a different topic for a different podcast, probably on another day. Yet we wouldn't swap it for quids, you know, because the quality of life we've had,

the relationships we have with our children, the relationships we have in community. You know, two of the kids that were in our youth clubs, are where they're godparents for their kids now. And, you know, I'm having breakfast with them tomorrow morning. These are people who are part of my mob, part of my tribe, and I'm so much richer for them being in my life. And they're the intangible benefits that I think go far beyond any kind of remuneration that can be offered. I think also, from my perspective, having worked in health and disability,

I've seen far too many people who are my age and not much older who have had life altering accidents or injuries or being diagnosed with something horrible that's given them a life expectancy that's incredibly shorter than they had imagined. and these are people who are being working their whole lives to save for retirement and save for that experience that they're hoping they will have once they no longer have to work. So it comes down to, I think, what you're saying is it's the experience. It's about living in the moment and it's about being able to enjoy and feel satisfied in the work that you're doing because you don't know what's coming up. You don't know what's around the corner and you have to enjoy the time that you have now

so that firstly you can be a better social worker, you can be a better human, but also so that you can feel when that time comes. Maybe you get to the point, hopefully, that you are able to retire and rely on whatever you've created for yourself. You can look back and say, I've left a legacy, I've left a mark, and maybe the world's not a better place, but I feel as though I've contributed to something that's a little bit bigger than me or my immediate family,

or you might not even see it. It might not be something tangible, but you can feel a sense of gratitude and ownership and just, I don't know, just feel as though you've been part of someone's life. You've touched someone in a way that if you hadn't put the energy in, there would have been very different outcomes for them. Well, part of my role, I often get called in

the last moments of someone's life or I get called into hospitals or to deathbeds. And I get to see what really, matters and what really is important. I mostly see some pretty sad and terrible deathbeds, but the best ones that I see are the ones who have realized that it's, you know, it's not how much you've got in your life, it's who you've got in it. And have I invested significant amounts of my energy and life into those relationships? You know, that's where true joy and true satisfaction does lie. You know, it doesn't mean you get a free pass from doing financial planning in life.

need to do it and it's beyond a certain point. So I had two breakfast this morning. Don't tell anyone else or my doctor. But one was with someone who is sleeping rough in a park and another one is with someone who lives in a big property that faces into Elizabeth Bay. And they were both in absolute crisis and absolute chaos from completely different ends of the spectrum and both driven by the belief that there was no one there for them in their lives. So we get to be in the muddling middle and I think that's the best place to kind of be. If there was any other kind of social work that you could do, obviously you are very passionate about what you're doing now and you can't really see yourself doing anything differently in

the near future, but what would that look like? What are you interested in pursuing? You mentioned you did a placement overseas as well. Is that an option for you? Yeah, look, some of the community development kind of role, so it really do kind of appeal to me and fascinate me. Sadly, I think I've got the best job I'm ever going to have and I'm only 40, you know, 44. They're like, oh no, what's from here? But then I think I've always kind of been lucky enough to feel like the job I'm in is the best I'm ever going to have as well. So, look, I don't know where it leads to from here. I think I definitely in the kind of space where I could go either way, one is do I take this opportunity to try and leverage and advocate for a better

society at a bigger level or do I just go and find a nice little job somewhere in a community agency somewhere to you know once this is all kind of wound up you know and I could go either way to be honest I really could go either way I hope that doesn't sound arrogant I just um it's again sitting back and meditating and kind of letting the answer come to me rather than me trying to grasp at it and trying to say what what's next universe where do you want to use me next I've got great relationships in the Aboriginal community. If opportunities were to arise there that were appropriate, I'd love to pursue some of those down the track.

Age care, I think there's a lot of reform that needs to go on in that sector, and I think some of the wages we're paying are disgustingly low, and that's leading to some of the adverse outcomes for elder abuse, as well as we see transmission rates in nursing homes, because when you farm these jobs out to the lowest bidder, what do you get the outcomes we've got? So look, I'm a bit torn on that one. I could go anyway.

But I'm passionate about a lot of things, so I'm lucky. Yep, that definitely comes through. And I think it sounds as though you've just kept yourself open to opportunities. And that's what's gotten you to the point where you are now is you've obviously worked incredibly hard to open those doors. But once they've opened, you've gone, you know what, this is going to be hard and messy and maybe very ugly, but I've got to give it a try because I'm here now and I can see the impact.

that I can have, so I'm just going to go for it. I've definitely taken an approach to, I've never really looked for jobs, never really applied for jobs. I've just said, what task do I have to do and let me do it to the best of my ability? And when I say, my, I mean, you know, I do things as part of a community with a team and good people around me, how do I surround myself with good people and continue to do what needs to be done. You know, when I became leader here, what I've done is assemble a great team. When opportunities come, though, I tend to kick the crap out of them. And if the door opens, it opens.

And if it stays shut, it's meant to stay shut. So, yeah, look, I couldn't tell you I've had a career plan. I had no idea what was next. When we finished up in our last placement, it was three days between that placement and the phone call for Wayside coming through, which was very lucky. I didn't have my name down with any agency or recruiters. I kind of just said, all right, universe, you tell me what to do next. And if that's getting a job in a shop somewhere, I'll do that or if it's something else,

I'll do that. So, yeah, I can't say I was ever operated to a grand plan career-wise. If anyone wanted to know more about social work or just this area of practice in general, it might be reading or organisations or viewing. Where would you point them? What should they be looking for? Read a book by my predecessor, Graham-in-law is called Love Over Hate, and you'll find out a lot about Wayside and his baby.

background as a social worker as well there. And you can see our practices change and evolved over the decades from going to visit people alone in their houses. There's a lot of great things that, necessary things that have come into place since then. But also, if you are studying social work anywhere in New South Wales, give me a call. Come into a placement with us. We'd love to have you. That's incredibly generous of you. Thank you. Is there anything else before we finish up that you wanted to mention about the work that you do or about social work in general, the floor is yours. I think we just need to remember to take care of ourselves in this space and remember to be able to breathe and to be able to realize that we do our best work when we realize that we're necessary,

significant but not central to the task. That we have an opportunity to play a role in people's lives for a short amount of time and we don't need to grasp at that. We just do the best. job we can with the time we've got with the people that we have placed in front of us and to trust that that's going to be enough in the universe in the full knowledge that you know we're never going to see the impact and the only quick outcome wherever usually going to see is the wrong one just stay true to the call that's on your heart that's really incredible I think people will benefit from hearing that even though you've had some very specific roles and they've all been community-based, you've dealt with a lot of variety within your work. So you've dealt with disadvantage,

with domestic and family violence, refugee and asylum seekers. And now you've moved into a role that is more social work leadership rather than management. So empowering others to be on the frontline, as you suggested. And I love what you said about your work is not about mitigating risk. It's about embracing chaos or embracing the messiness. So it's about just being welcoming of whatever comes through the door on a given day and just thinking, that's all right. I'm going to lead my team. I'm going to empower them to be the best people they can be so that the people they're supporting your visitors to Wayside Chapel can be the best people they can be. You've said that these systems you're trying to build and create are systems that allow for participation and helping people to come to

life. So it's an incredible value. It's a great mission and the way that you're going about it. I think will serve many, many more people in the future. And I really thank you for the work you're doing. It's incredible. I feel as though there are people that you come across in your professional life that give you extra energy and give you extra motivation to keep going. And I think Graham was definitely that person for me. I'm hoping you're that person for many people. and yeah, I'm really excited that people will get to hear about your experience and hopefully then they might want to engage, they might reach out, it might prompt a few more people to think, well, social work sounds like a really good thing to pursue.

Thanks, thanks, Yasmin. Thanks everyone who's listening. Remember the pays crap, but the rewards are amazing. Incredible. Thanks for your time, John. Thank you. See ya. Thanks for joining me this week.

If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or John, 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 Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Elise, an experienced trauma-specific therapist and social worker specialising in children, young people and families who have experienced trauma, abuse, out-of-home care and the child protection system. Elise is also a yoga teacher trainer

combining yogic healing modalities with trauma counselling to provide holistic healing and self-care opportunities that increase resilience and supports people to access their internal resources to use in their unique recovery journeys. 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.