Social Work Spotlight - Episode 30: Shiri

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

In this episode I speak with Shiri, a Clinical Social Worker and Art Therapist. She has spent over 25 years working with children and adults who have experienced trauma, and mental health professionals who work with them. Her work spans private practice, public facilitation and research. Throughout her work, Shiri has found that art is a wonderful tool in which children (and adults) can communicate a vast variety of feelings in a non-threatening way. In addition to individual therapy and running therapeutic groups for women and children, Shiri has spent the last few years refining a model for preschools, using creative groups.Shiri’s next course on Understanding Trauma and the Healing Pathways of Art Therapy) starts on May 25. It will run as a 6 week course and if you use my name in the coupon code section (spelled Yasmine) you will be able to access an exclusive discount. Also, there is an early bird discounted price available if you sign up by May 17. https://art2heart.newzenler.com/courses/livecourse/Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Dadirri - A Reflection By Miriam - Rose Ungunmerr- Baumann - http://www.dadirri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Dadirri-Inner-Deep-Listening-M-R-Ungunmerr-Bauman-Refl1.pdfTrauma, Culture, and Metaphor: Pathways of Transformation and Integration (John Wilson & Jacob Lindy) - https://www.routledge.com/Trauma-Culture-and-Metaphor-Pathways-of-Transformation-and-Integration/Wilson-Lindy/p/book/9780415953313Shiri’s website - https://www.art2heart.academy/AASW professional resource library - https://www.aasw.asn.au/practitioner-resources/professional-resourcesThis episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jL90YH8VTRPqEKLnXWgGGKo8k1GUIqNLAkXuTJDo3QM/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, Yasamine McKee Wright, and today's guest is Shiri. Sheary is a clinical social worker and art therapist. She has spent over 25 years working with children and adults who have experienced trauma and mental health professionals who work with them. Her work spans private practice, public facilitation and research. Throughout her work, Shiri has found that art is a wonderful tool in which children and adults can communicate. a vast variety of feelings in a non-threatening way.

Shiri has worked with Ethiopian immigrants, Palestinian and Jewish social workers, mothers and their babies in jail, and remote preschools in Outback New South Wales, Australia. Continually, Shiri finds that art creates a bridge to reach people from different cultures and gives voice and color to people's individual stories. In addition to individual therapy

and running therapeutic groups for women and children, Shiri has spent the last few years finding a model for preschools using creative groups. Thank you so much, Sherry, for coming on to the podcast. I'm very excited to have a chat with you about your work. Thank you for inviting me and connecting. I wanted to ask when you started as a social worker and what interested you in the profession in the first place.

So before we start, let me just pay respect and acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Euro Nation, who are the custodians of this land that I'm coming and speaking to you from and pay respect to elders both past and present and maybe just take a moment to welcome and acknowledge all the custodians of the land of where you're coming from and all your listeners. And it was interesting because I'm thinking of what got me to social work and it was never anything conscious. I just knew I was going to be a social worker. But as I was thinking about this, when I grew up, I grew up in Botswana and my

My parents had friends, Lenny and Bill, who came to Botswana from the States. And Bill was a really kind, beautiful professor. And Lenny was this outgoing American who liked to play tennis. They were both quite elderly. At least they seemed that way for me as a very young child. And she was a social worker. And she did a lot of relationship therapy and a lot of therapeutic interventions. And I think it just really got to my heart.

and it was something that was instilled wake back then. And so it was come to studying time. I just went and enrolled to social work, not having any conscious thought about it. But it sounds as though it suits you quite well and you've been able to really find your place. Absolutely. It's sort of like an inner calling.

My mother wanted me to be a preschool teacher. And I just knew I was going to be a social worker and I do not have any regrets whatsoever. absolutely love it. But you've worked very closely with young people in your private practice and you've also done a lot of research and a lot of public facilitation. How did you know what area you wanted to work in? So I started, I didn't, but I started my professional journey

in a little developing town in the north of Israel in bum shelters. And so I worked with children and the families there. I was managing a mental health rehabilitation afternoon space for adults who suffered from mental health. So I did that. I think I just traveled where things were calling me and tried a lot of things, did a lot of group facilitation. I managed a parent and child center for people

who were about to leave. The last spot before they were removed from home, so it was a more therapeutic. innovative center that was just built in Israel. And so I think I tried my, tried a lot of different things. I worked with Ethiopians. I worked with conflict resolution between Jewish and Palestinian social workers. When I got to Australia, I worked inside the jail systems with mothers who had their

children in with them. And then I worked with remote communities inside. preschools, working with a lot of Aboriginal families, aboriginal communities, and then doing a lot of home visits to people who were marginalized. So I think I did a lot of different things, and it seems that I focus more on the trauma aspect of things rather than the age. So I do a lot of work with women and a lot of work with children and a lot of group works. Yeah. How did you find it working in remote communities. I imagine you wouldn't have a huge network around you and a huge amount of support. It was beautiful. I still work in remote communities. I absolutely love it. I've built my

networks. Just create relationships and connect with one person and that builds. It's very different. It's easy, I think, not being Australian. So I am also an outsider coming into Australian and working. I think that gives a space to connect. I always think it's very interesting because I'm a white social worker and in remote communities, white social workers is not something that is something with a lot of history and a lot of baggage. So it's coming to maybe undo and recreate the past and the future. Well, I think it's really great that you can reflect on that positionality.

You come across so many different walks of life. and I think it's common to situate yourself in a position where you think, okay, I'm working with a dominant culture, but within that culture, there are obviously so many different variables. So coming from a perspective where you assume that you're an outsider, you're not the expert in the situation, I think is something people can translate across all sectors. Absolutely. And we are not.

You know, each person is an expert of their life. And if I think of the Aboriginal communities, they have so much wisdom and knowledge. And, you know, it's co-creating and collaborating. And a big part of my work is this decolonizing methodologies and decolonizing practice where I'm still learning because I, you know, clinical social work and I do art therapy and I come in saying, oh, you know, these are my skill sets. This is what I do. and even remembering that that in itself is colonizing, coming in and, you know, offering,

do you want to try this and do that? I think it's an ongoing process. So you've completed a post-grad diploma in art therapy, and I'm just interested to see how that has shifted your focus or shifted your therapy and perhaps enriched it in some way. So I think if we go back to where I started my journey inside bomb shelters, it was there that I very firstly was aware that sometimes when we experience certain things words are just not sufficient. When things happen to us at a very young age, we don't have the words to express and in trauma generally

this experience that we go through is so big and so overwhelming. Often there are no right words to express it. And that's when I went and did art therapy. And I have since just integrated the two. So I use art as a way of expressing, as a way of accessing all those things that are non-verbal and merged the two hats of clinical social worker and art therapy. So I think the art therapy really enhances and complements the social work.

And the social work is often a big part of the framework that I use. But over the years, they've really merged and become just the way that I work and support. And I think it's a way of giving people, again, the choice and opportunity to connect and create and express their stories in different ways. And how did your PhD topic develop and what were the outcomes and how are you then using that in your practice? So I was called into preschools to support a child who had what educators called big behaviors. So big behaviors are children that would be screaming and hitting and swearing and wrecking. And educators were really quite at a complete loss and how to deal and support these children. So I went into the preschools and I suggested that we run a group, an art group.

Later, through the thesis we called it the seasonal model because it was inspired very much by Miriam Ungamurr's concept of didiri, which really means deep, quiet contemplation, a deep awareness and allowing things to unfold in their own time, just like the seasons, which is not something we do, not in the Western society, but definitely not in preschools where they have a very strong agenda and outcome oriented and we've got to achieve a lot of things and do a lot of things. And so what I suggested is that we create a pocket of time through the day,

consistent time and day and an educator and we co-facilitate art group where it will give these children an opportunity to express themselves and share their stories. and at the same time sit with the educator after the group is run in a reflection to think, hey, what happened in the group, what did you notice, what's going on for you? Because another big part of the way I work is the use of self. I think because we are often the tools, you know, as therapists, educators, we bring a lot and we use ourselves in order to both understand and create that connection. And so what we did in the schools is we created a space for children to express themselves

because a lot of these behaviors were a direct result either of immediate trauma or transgenerational trauma. And then the behaviors, what we found out is educators themselves are very much vicariously traumatized by this work. This work really impacts you, you know, both when you really are connected to a child and then you hear this story, you know, you'll be up at night thinking about it. But then also educators themselves have gone through their own trauma. So being present and being available is not something easy. So the thesis itself was to develop this model and this way of working and understanding it. And we have been using it ever since in preschools around New South Wales

and the outback of New South Wales. 2019, I think I completed it, but we did the first group in 2012, and it's been ongoing since, and running it since. And I think this, again, the decolonizing methodologies, this awareness of the system and the system that we work in,

awareness of how much, you know, we talk theory, but to see it in action is very different, to see the transgenerational trauma playing out is still mind-blowing, you know, how it affects this very young generation to, you know, what keeps, you know, what has changed and is changed in me. Educators, they work so hard. I think they show up every single day.

They give their hearts and soul to these children. And they're often because children spare such a long time in daycares, in preschools, and school environment, often educators become akin to their professional carers and are able to create a very different relationship from the ones these children have at home. So to be aware of just how hard these educators are working and how much they're holding emotionally, that really keeps blowing my mind away. And then how little spaces they have to actually explore and reflect and process what they're doing and have a professional guidance to understand the complexities of trauma,

the complexities of different attachment styles. It's a lot of things that they don't study. Yeah. And what is your current role then? What kind of things come up for you on a day-to-day basis? So I guess I have a few hats. I still co-facilitate and implement the seasonal models in preschools around New South Wales. I do a lot of supervisions.

both for directors, principals, social workers, art therapists. So that's a different head. And then I've got my clinical practice where I see women and children. And then on top of that, I do some writing. Yeah. Working on that part. And then have created an online course to explain both the fundamentals of trauma and of art therapy.

So that it's more accessible and clearer to understand. And how do you find the time to wear all those hats at the same time plus have a family? It's obviously very busy for you. It's very busy. And I read this story once and I don't know who to credit it, but it must have been one of those Facebook stories where a woman who was very busy and a very high CEO was asked this question, how do you balance all these things? And she said what she does is she differentiates between glass balls and plastic balls.

And the glass balls, you've got to keep juggling. And you've got to make sure you don't drop them, because if you drop them, something will break. The plastic balls, you can let drop or you just don't juggle. And I think the first thing I try and do is separate the glass balls from the plastic balls. The second thing is I let a lot of things drop. And I think it's just part of my explaining to people when I work. You know, I do things when I can and the way I can. And I prioritize relationships.

and, you know, my sessions and everything else happens when it happens. Yeah. No, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. I guess then you're supporting clients, communities, professionals who experience trauma either directly or indirectly. How do you look after yourself within all that? So I practice what I preach. I have my own supervisions and I do two supervisions.

I go to therapy. and then I play a lot with the things that we suggest. So, hydrating, drinking a lot of water, making time in nature, starting my day with a few minutes to myself to just check in, hey, how are you doing? What do you want? And I play around with them. So I think each stage of my life or each, you know, sometimes week and months, I will need different things.

So it's being very attuned to what I need and how I can support myself. blocking time out. So I think, you know, the big part of the seasonal model is we block time out to do the groups because you can't sit and do the groups the whole day and, you know, let children create the whole day because this still is the curriculum. I think the same with my own kids. So I, we plant times, moments where we sit and we create together or we do fun things together. And so then I know those are in place and I similarly do things for me where I know that that's put in place. I'll work around that. In order for us to be able to do the work and to do it well, we need to, part of the work is the processing and that takes time and part of the works needs to be that

reflection and self-care. I'm looking for a word that's better representational of self-care other than self-care because for a lot of women's self-care is very indulgent. It's selfish. It's something that you can only do when you finished everything else. And I really think when you work with other people, having a time to reflect, having time to digest all that information needs to be part of the work that we do. Yeah. One of my recent guests on the podcast was reframing that concept and she says it's more about allowing kindness than self-care because you're not necessarily creating space or time or energy to do something, it's just about that awareness and that mindfulness and that conscious effort to find space within your day to allow that kindness

and to allow yourself to feel the things and do the things that you're trying to cultivate in other people. So it was an interesting phrase. Absolutely. And I love this idea of conscious making time because we don't. And there's always something that's more urgent and more pressing and we tend to think we're okay and we can cope and we'll take that time later but what I find is that by the time later comes we're dealing with panic attacks exhaustion people wanting to leave work a flare of mental illness a physical illness so really is to create that consciousness and make time and I like this idea of kindness And I think the same, you know, with my own kids, if you have a child, what would you suggest that they'll do?

It always blows my mind how when you're dealing with a child or a client, you come up with a really good strategy of how to allow time and space and how to restructure your day. But when it comes to us, we don't always do that. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a lot easier for us as professionals to provide kindness to other people than. to ourselves. It's about that modeling. It's about demonstrating, you know, you can do this, I can do this, we can do this together. Let's just create space for it, but also create a language where we can articulate what it is that we need. Absolutely. I think it's really important that people hear that professionals such as yourself have had to cultivate that over time. It's not

something that we're just, you know, we wake up one day, we finish our degree and we're all of a sudden fantastic at self-care. I think there's an expectation when we're leaving university that we've, through our placements or through whatever theory we've covered, we're really good at that and we understand the concepts. But it is a lifelong process. It is something that we develop over time as professionals and we don't have to get it right all the time. Absolutely. You know, some people are better at it than others. For me, it's been, and still is a lifelong learning. and I think it's one of the biggest things that comes up with every single professional that I work with, psychiatrists, psychologists, managements, educators, everybody really struggles with

finding time for themselves, for the self-care part, for the inner kindness part. You know, I always think in order to heal we need that connection and we need to be empathic. and self-care is the equivalent of that empathy, except instead of it being external, it's internal. Yeah. What would you say is the most challenging thing about your work? What do you like the least? I think it is being exposed and aware of just how much work still needs to be done

in terms of changing the system. how the system is still broken in a lot of places. And I guess that's part of where we start with ourselves. You know, we talk about self-care and putting time and thoughts to reflections and supervisions and therapy. Changing the system begins with us. But I think it's something that I'm still quiet, shocked at how the system replays itself and how there's still things that we were doing 100 years ago that we're still

during today. Yeah. And what would you say then is your favorite thing? What do you like the most? Connecting with people, having deep and meaningful relationships with them, seeing their journey. I'm very blessed to see a lot of people really flourish and step into their optimal self. And I think that I absolutely love that.

Yeah. How has COVID impacted on the world? work that you're doing because if you're working with children, families, young people who are so used to routine and structure in their day going out to preschool or going out to school, obviously people are stuck at home. It's gotten a lot better in Sydney, but I think that's part of where some of your work has been really important in supporting families to do activities at home with the art or with the gardening and giving them the, not permission, but telling them that it's okay to do things at home and that's actually part of school or part of study.

You used the word permission. That was the word that played in my mind. I think not only permission to do art, but permission to know that this is a real difficult time we're going through, that it has impacted all of us that, you know, I think families that have been experiencing trauma, it would have re-triggered a lot of the traumas, a lot of their own past stories. And so just this permission to know that this is a really turbulent time. And whatever they're going through is okay. It's part of that. I think a lot of people had this thought off, you know, we're at home now. We need to enjoy this time. And it didn't always happen that way. And I think that was the very big things that I was dealing with. The other thing is

a lot of the daycares I was working with were still open and so educators were really finding themselves in this position of on the one hand showing up to work and really being available to the families they worked with and this was really families not only children because a lot of the parents came to the school to ask for support to ask for advice to share their own anxieties and so the educators had to be there for the, you know, the families and at the same time have their own families and their own worries. So to create a space to just digest and come up with a plan for that was really big with a lot of educators but mental health professionals as well

because they were still seeing their clients and a lot of clients, you know, had increased needs. There were more clients. So how do you make space for your own anxiety? are coming to terms with the uncertainty. And I think that was in terms of clients. And for myself, I think I learned that you can do art therapy via Zoom. You can do group supervisions on technology, whereas before that I was just very much a face-to-face person.

And I think it takes a lot of energy to just, you know, deal with things that you don't know and learn them as part of the process. Yeah. It must be so hard. As a teacher, as an educator, you work so much on preparing, whether it's a curriculum or just structuring a day. And when you're dealing with something like this that's unprecedented, all of a sudden it's throwing your plan out the window. And as you said, you've got all those background influences. You need to be mindful of what those people are dealing with in their personal lives and then bringing that to the professional world and trying not to let it impact. But of course, it's going to. And then when you know that it impacts you, if you make space,

for it then you're not working so hard to repress that pretend everything was okay and that seems to make a difference I guess it comes back to that modeling you were talking about and just demonstrating to people that it's okay to break down and it's okay to struggle with things and we do we're humans you know it's our common factor we're all humans and how how important is it you know when somebody sees that you are struggling with the same things and finding ways to talk about it, to deal with it, it gives them permission to be able to do the same and share their own experiences, which I think at the beginning a lot of people were hiding their experiences and what it triggered in them. Yeah. Would you say you've seen many changes in this

field over time specifically with social work and maybe the contribution that social work can make? Yes, I think there has been more awareness. You know, I think of, you know, I think of, that colonizing part of the theoretical part of the framework part I can definitely see there has been changes and I think the whole you know I do a lot of work with students and young social work is I think it's really very exciting because there's a lot of new passion and a lot of new learning and awareness and commitment you know for advocacy for for a deep change deep relationship which I think is very different from when I came out of school.

Different framework and people are able and willing to do a lot of inner work so that they can be the best therapist for their clients. Things that are very uncomfortable, you know, every time we talk about colonizing and institutionalizing, I think it's not an easy conversation to have, but it seems to be much more open and people are much more willing to have those conversations. Yeah, that's good. What would you say then is your hope for the future of social work in this area? If you were to get your magic wand out, what would it look like? So in terms of system, I think to have it to be more acknowledged, more highly paid, I remember that when I studied social workers, they said if you look at the list

of the subjects and their ranking in terms of pay and acknowledgement, social work was nowhere near the top of the list. And I think one of my magic ones would be to put, you know, educators to put social workers right up there because we work with the people. This is how change is going to happen. So that would be my one big change that I would love to see happen. And acknowledgement and awareness, I still think there is in some places this social work stereotype

of the work that social work. workers do and I think again part of my knowing and social work is that it's so diverse you can do group work you can do individual work you can work with elderly people you can work with young adults you can choose how and who you work with I think it is one of the most flexible professions that exist giving you an opportunity to connect and do what you love so I think it's it's again, that awareness for people to know what you can do with it. And then for social workers, when they go out of studying, to be able to really tap in,

because I do see a lot of young social workers looking for a job and just so keen to find work, they don't stop and ask themselves, where do I want to create change? Who do I want to work with? What do I want to do? So that would be my second thing that I would like to see a little bit more off. Sure.

So rather than trying to adapt yourself to a role because that's what's available, it's from your perspective important to think, what are my skills, what's my contribution, and then looking based on that. Absolutely. Are there any other types of social work that interest you? You've worked as a manager for an Aboriginal organisation that supported young people. You've worked as a lecturer as well. if you're not doing what you're doing right now,

what else would you like to do? I'm pretty lucky. I'd be doing more writing maybe, a little bit more writing and sharing. That's something that takes me a bit longer than I'd like to. And then this whole online platform is something that, again, I'd like to do a little bit more of and learn that side of things.

But I think other than that, I love group works, I love individual works, I like working in remote communities, I would go maybe more remote if I had a magic wand, if I was younger and with art, the things that are holding me down like here with my kids, I would definitely go and live in a remote community for a few years, like right out back. Yeah. Yeah, what an incredible experience that would be.

Oh, what a dirt. Maybe when the kids leave home. Absolutely. And I guess I get a taste of it because I do a few supervisions with people living in Darwin. So I get, and then three hours off of that, so I get a bit of a taste just to satisfy my own yearning. But I think that would be one thing that I would love to do. And I hopefully will still do one day. Yeah, fingers crossed. Are there any other programs or projects that you're working on at the moment? So there is a book that's in its still its first stages, but it's had a first

draft. And then there is my online program that I'm launching. I think it's on the 28th of April that I'm very excited for. And I'm happy to offer that to your listeners once it's out. So I'll get in touch with you before that. And accreditation program that's also just being started. So I'm working on a few things behind the scenes. But I'd really like to be able to get the seasonal model out into every single preschool in Australia because I think it's been really very beneficial both for the children and for the educators. So that's something that I'm sort of trying to figure out how to get out into the world on a bigger scale. Is that accreditation for social workers wanting to use your model? Yeah, to understand a little bit more about the use of creative arts

within therapy to have a little bit more of a deeper understanding of trauma and how that impacts both our behaviors, our bodies, our, you know, our entire being. And then a little bit more understanding about group work because these groups, they're open groups and small groups, but the open groups can be quite challenging for people because children can choose whether they participate or not and how long they participate for and how they use the materials in the group. So it requires a certain way of holding and being in the group. So that's the other focus of it.

Okay. If anyone wanted to read more about this area of practice or the theories that you use or the approaches, where would you direct them? So if you go to my website, there should be a resources page, I think, to go and read about Dideries, about the Aboriginal wisdom, ancient wisdom, for example,

gives us a lot of tools that we can use in therapy. The ASW also has quite a good website and a lot of resources put up there. And is there anything else about your work, about what you do and really anything that you wanted to share in addition to what you have already? I think the only other thing that I'm sort of trying to map our conversation today. The relationship part is something that we didn't talk. because I think we just take it for granted that, you know, relationships are foundation of all healing work. And then I think to myself that to create a relationship, especially with people who have been through their own experiences of very bad relationships,

is not something that is necessarily very simple, but I think that warm, attuned, caring relationship is the basis for all the work. And in order to come to that place, you know, you have to be aware of who you are, what's your own transgenerational history, where you come from because we bring with us our country and the country we come from and the country we live into. And so to just be aware of all that and how we can then connect and allow the other person to bring all those things. And within that relationship, so in the middle would be that attuned, warm relationship, the caring relationships, but then when you're impacted by trauma, what Wilson and Lindy say is that it'll impact your empathy levels. And so what you would find yourself is either by being on a continuum from withdrawn, which is really no relationship and no connection, to intrusive, which is over-identifying and over-religious, and sometimes even aggressive.

So I guess to be aware when you interact with people, how are you feeling? Because you would have somewhat a base sense of yourself. And we go up and down that continuum every day. We'd be prone to one way of behaving or others because of our age, our family statues, our own history. But I think just to be aware of it, to be aware how we show up, how we connect, how we meet,

and what happens within that relationship. Yeah, so I guess what I'm hearing from that is that there's obviously something very special about you and about other people that do this sort of work about that relationship to the self and the awareness of what you personally bring to art therapy and this field. But what do you think it is about social work and our training and our history that makes it a good fit for this type of work? So I think it's not necessarily for art therapy, this relationship, I do. is for social workers. I think art therapists rely a lot on the art as a different medium and a

way of expression, but this relationship and connection, that's what our social workers bring. And what we bring as well is this, you know, there is the person, but the person is not, which is, I guess what I was trying to say, the person is a part of his family, a part of his community, a part of his country. And I think that's really a very social work. way of looking at a person and being aware of their entire beings and who they are and who we are. So that connection then is allowed because of that awareness. I think that would be very different than a clinical psychologist, for example, a psychoanalyst who would look at one part of the person, whereas us social worker really try to look at the entire being

and understand that the person is made up of all his present and past experiences, but transgenerationally as well. Yeah, it's really good to tease that out and to help people understand, especially if they're trying to understand the difference for people who may not have studied social work or may they may be interested in studying social work, I guess understand the difference between what a clinical psychologist would have expertise in and what a social worker training would involve.

So, yeah, it's very much about those systems. and the structure and understanding the history and how oppression can impact upon things and how trauma impacts on people personally and intergenerational as you're suggesting. Do you find you use that in your work, this understanding? Very much in my work because I, so my work is supporting people who are severely injured in workplace accidents. And while it might sound completely removed from what you're doing,

it's a completely different population, you're dealing with people who have their own complex context to, you know, they've had this whole life before their workplace injury and they've got their own traumas potentially. They might be migrants. They might, a lot of our people who are injured are very poorly paid, poorly skilled, poorly supported people who are working in laboring industries and all of a and they're thrown into this world where they're not in their contained, supported community.

They're thrown into this world where their health literacy is really poor, their experience with authority is really difficult, and they're forced into a world where they have to quickly understand, what is this injury, how does it affect me, am I ever going to be able to return to work? and you can't just possibly work on one area of someone's health or recovery. It has all that contextual stuff behind it. So it is a very interesting field of social work. And a lot of my colleagues aren't social workers as well,

but we have allied health backgrounds and pull from different expertise. And that I think is what makes it an interesting team because we've got people who have, I guess, a really good understanding of prosthetics or equipment or continent's issues. Yeah, so I find I couldn't work within what I do without having a multidisciplinary team behind me. And that's something I love as a social worker having that expertise and being able to rattle off ideas. So yeah, it's a completely different world to what a lot of other people do. But that social work, training and experience and I guess frameworks and understandings I think are fundamental to be able to understand what's going on for someone and to be able to respond in a way that's supporting them through that journey.

So similar and on so many levels, isn't it, when you actually hone down and see the person. Yeah. And I love that multidisciplinary teams. I do a lot of work in multidisciplinary teams. And I think that's another thing of social work. You know, we're often a part off a bigger team. Yeah. Which is so wonderful. Yeah, and I think we enrich each other.

We learn so much from our colleagues. And hopefully I like to think they learn a bit from us as well. Yeah. Thank you so much, Sheri. I've really, really enjoyed this conversation. I'm really grateful for the time that you've put in and the energy and I've loved hearing about your experience. And especially that whole conversation around

sitting with uncertainty in whatever field you're working in, but that networking opportunity and sharing people's stories and experience and also just encouraging people and saying it's okay to not be okay. But I think what you've also said is you've traveled to where things are calling you. So you've been open to opportunities that have been interesting for you, even if they're kind scary and hopefully that's what people can strive to do is just go out of your comfort zone a little because that's where you start to learn and that's where you develop as a professional and as a person. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or sherry, 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. If you would like to sign up for Sherry's next course on understanding trauma and the healing pathways of art therapy, this will be starting very soon on the 25th of May. It will run as a six-week course and if you use my name in the coupon code section, spelled Y-A-S-M-I-N-E, you'll be able to access an exclusive discount. Also, there is an early bird discounted price available if you sign up by May 17.

The links for Shiri's website and this course are available in the show notes and on my anchor page. Next episode's guest is Felicity, who in addition to social work has trained in art therapy and education, psychotherapy and corrective services. She worked in the prison system for 18 years supporting inmates and running groups and workshops. She now works as a teacher of community services, aging and disability, and disability, and community arts and cultural development at TAFE, supporting a combination of high school students and adults, providing training for those who want to work in community settings, or looking for a pathway to university studies. 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.