Social Work Spotlight - Episode 5: Barbara

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

In this episode, Barbara and I discuss her work initially as a high school music appreciation teacher and managing a second-hand bookshop, further strengthened her resolve to pursue a Social Work degree at UNSW. In the course of 15 years as a hospital Social Worker, she was an integral part of a respiratory ward team and worked in a psychiatric unit, before working as the sole Social Worker in an inner-city private hospital.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Interview with Tony Vinson on reforms to corrective services policy and practice - https://www.what-makes-a-man.org.au/interviews/interview-highlights/prof-tony-vinson-free-download/Julian Short, An Intelligent Life - https://anintelligentlife.com/Irvin D Yalom, The Gift of Therapy - https://www.yalom.com/gift-of-therapyRichard S Sharf, Theories of Psychotherapy & Counseling - https://cengage.com.au/product/title/theories-of-psychotherapy-counseling-concepts/isbn/9781305087323Salvation Army slavery support services - https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/about-us/our-services/fighting-modern-slavery-exploitation/This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AGijiNis8LgOrcrwWjlCxT9YIJWtm8Ev/view?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas at the profession each episode. I'm your host Yasmaine McKee Wright and today's guest is Barbara. Barbara retired in 2015 having been employed as a hospital social worker since the year 2000. She had always wanted to be a social worker but failure in her arts degree meant having to work as a high school music appreciation teacher for six years while studying at nights to complete that degree at Sydney University, where she then managed the Student Council Second Hand Bookshop for 14 years. Although enjoying working with students in the bookshop, she found that her experience teaching adolescents in Cabramatta, Liverpool and Green Valley, many of them from migrant families struggling with poverty and stress,

had strengthened her resolve to pursue a social work degree at the University of New South Wales. In the course of 15 years as a hospital social worker, she loved being an integral part of a team in a respiratory ward for about 15 months and then in a psychiatric unit for another 15 months, both in inner city public hospitals. Her final 12 years were spent as the sole social worker in an inner city private hospital. She found that the role of social work was respected far more in the public hospitals than in the private sector where she worked.

In retirement, she is enjoying membership of a Baroque choir, a memoir writing group, and a gym. Each week she visits a brilliant music critic with dementia in a nursing home. I'm interested in hearing about when you started social work and why you chose the profession in the first place. Oh, okay. It's something that I'd always wanted to do, but didn't think I'd be clever enough. And that, unfortunately, that fear was compounded when I failed badly in an arts degree at Sydney University. And I failed so badly, I had to stay away. Like, I failed two years in a row.

So those days, I then have still a rule. I had to stay away for two years. And in the course of that, I went and asked whether I changed my degree to social work. In those days, you couldn't. You had to have had a better history of passing. So I resigned myself to just finishing my art degree and fell into teaching, learnt heaps through doing that, then did various jobs that inspired me, including teaching and running a second-hand bookshop.

But the experience of teaching had enlivened my interest in social work because I could see how terrible and stressed the lives were of the children I was teaching in Green Valley and their parents. And there was little interest in that by most members of the staff. But there was a quiet passion sitting there. So when my bookshop job ended, which was also a fascinating job, I thought really all of those left is to look in my waddy. box and social work was very prominently there. So I

are headed for that. I went to New South Wales uni because Tony Vincent was one of my heroes. He tried to reform the jail system. He died in about 2017, 18, but he was commissioned to look into the jail system but was sabotaged all the way by the government. But he did remarkable things. like sit in the cells with the prisoners.

First rule change he made was to insist that the prisoners be called by their first names. They were going to refer to someone. They gave them the dignity of their name. I was very glad I attended his memorial in the Great Hall of Sydney University because what other people had said to confirm my admiration for him. Anyway, so I caught the last of Tony Vincent during the social work course at New South Wales uni and I was fascinated by mental health, particularly my placements, but my supervisor thought I was being too weak and accommodating to a very troubled guy from Africa who's

obviously had post-traumatic stress disorder and I used to let him ring me each day and talk about it. And I'm sure I had a breakthrough with him that that's another story. However, because of her nastiness, another member on that staff complained on my behalf about her. Then I discovered from another member of staff that she freaked out the whole staff, even though she was actually in effect quite a good social worker and knew a lot about counselling. So I thought if one person can poison a group of quite strong and competent people, like about 18 on the staff, I'm not going to do very well in a small, group. So hospitals had always fascinated me. So I decided to opt for hospital social work.

And that's why I had a placement and instance and was inspired by what the social workers were doing there. And that's why I opted for hospital social work. The other reason I opted for hospital social worker was that I thought that when a person comes to a hospital, no matter how trivial the reason for their being there, but it's a chance for a turnaround in their lives. That was an amazing opportunity to be there if the person needed any kind of facilitating, making change or discussing what they're unhappy about.

And were there any people, any social work professionals that you worked within a hospital setting that particularly inspired you? Yes, there were that amazing gay man who was, you know, decades younger than me, but ended up working in the eastern suburbs and home visiting. He was my supervisor when I came to St. Vincent's. That would have been in the year 2000, I think. He was completely inspiring and he shepherded me through a difficult relationship with my supervisor, who was quite bossy, but she was inspiring in her own way.

in that we were on the orthopedic ward, and two things that inspired me about her were that she really brought home to me the necessity of good reporting, good written reports, and well-written letters of advocacy. And she sent me back to the drawing board several times until I got to the point and was effective,

but not overbearing. in a letter and it really helped. It's helped my writing actually. But also she made me appreciate what a nightmare having a knee replacement can be. She really got home to me to appreciate the pain that a patient can go through. And that was very, very helpful. So she was inspiring. As an aside, the pastoral care people are also inspiring about really listening and really

counselling. And at that stage, when I was actually a student, I didn't find the meetings, the group social work meetings, so helpful at that stage, nor even when I came back to work in the psych ward. It wasn't even helpful then so much. But when I came to the group in which you were part, when I was working at the last hospital, I found those groups very inspiring to hear how other social workers what they thought were worth talking about and the way that you all dealt with it and your ability to listen. That was inspiring. I wanted a job at St Vincent's badly.

I loved the general mentality of the place, but I didn't get the job. So the head of social work virtually rescued me because by that time I was, I was probably about 55 and I think she didn't like my chance plus the fact that I was very confident in interviews. I wasn't very good at promoting myself. So she knew someone at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

who must have owed her a favour and got me a year's low from there. And I absolutely loved it. That's when I worked in the respiratory ward. But the reason I think that I must have got the job because the head of social work at RPA at that time was quite agist. and other members of staff, when permanent jobs kept coming up,

other members of staff who admired my work had the impression that I would never get a job there if it was up to this woman, mainly because she was quite aged. Now that was interesting, but I had a wonderful time at RPA working in the Spiritary Ward with the most inspiring specialists. the four or three, I think the specialists in the respiratory ward, the two reasons they were aspiring were that they had so many good results. I thought if you had cancer or lung, that was it.

You know, that was the end of story, particularly as my father had died about three or four years before that of lung cancer, which I suspect was Miss Otheliama. And I had been smoking and in the late 90s giving it up myself. So it seemed like karma to be. working in their spiritual work. Anyway, so these men had incredible success, but also what was very inspiring

was the respectful way they spoke about the patients and how much they cared about them and how much respect they had for the role of social work. There was one specialist with an Italian name, but even as recently as this week, he still nods and speaks to me respectfully. You know, that's more than, than 20 years later, they regarded me as another professional. It was wonderful. And the rapport I

had with the patients was incredibly satisfying. Did you find it difficult working in a respiratory ward or with oncology, having had a history of it yourself? Initially, but I was grateful to learn more about it. And after I dared to ask the question of the head respiratory specialists, about whether I would automatically go down with that illness, particularly as I'd smoked. He said that my lungs wouldn't get any worse. And also what gave me hope was that they seemed to be curing people who came in with cancer. Maybe they caught the people in time, but it was a bit frightening, but I saw it as an opportunity to learn more about it.

And were there any times in particular that you needed to reflect on how you were responding to something? Yes, on two occasions. One was when a man came in, now what is that terrible illness where you gradually, Stephen Hawking had it, whatever that illness is. Modern urine disease? Yeah, that's the one.

Yeah, occasionally there was a man who was in the final stages of it, but still able to mail messages. and him looking into my eyes and saying, please let them go. That was a terrible, helpless feeling. And all I could do was communicate, you know, love and concern back to him because there's nothing I could do. So that was an awful feeling of helplessness. And I wonder whether I could have handled that situation better.

And the other one was a woman who came in who, I think she had bad lungs because she smoked. I didn't, I forget the details, but she was relevant to the Spiritary Ward. But she was very concerned that her son-in-law was abusing her grandchildren. And maybe I should have reported that. It was the year 2000. I didn't know whether or not to believe her. And I started to focus a bit more on her stress.

I think she'd never been listened to before. I used to use quotations and stories quite a bit. with patients. And I could feel the tension going out of her one day when I did read her a story. And it was like she was being looked after for the first time. And she became very dependent on me to the point of the year after I left RPA, she actually rang me at home. She traced where I was.

Oh, wow. And that was very unfortunate. I didn't encourage that. and it was a fairly embarrassing phone call because I wasn't rude to her, but it had not been appropriate to ring me. I felt that maybe I should have left her with some support to go on with.

Maybe there must have been somewhere where that breakthrough shouldn't have happened. I thought a bit sorry for her, really, that perhaps I should have directed her under some sort of counselling before I left or something, you know? Yeah. But I guess it's indicative that you did create a connection there.

I did do some work that I was very proud of there. Like I watched a young woman dreading that her partner would die and then he did. He was a person much older than her and I effectively directed her to a good counsellor at Coroner's Court area. It was appropriate that his body be sent to the coroner's court because he either died in hospital or he died at home and it was the wrong. there was a reason why she should get pre-counseling because she couldn't afford any other time and it was effective. I felt good about that because she was devastated by his death even though she knew it was going to happen. And you mentioned there seemed to be a lot of ages and at the time,

do you feel that that was the same with younger social workers like new grads or do you think it was just older social workers? It was this woman who was, I would say she was in her 40s herself. She was just the head of social work itself. She had the power and so she used it. Whereas no, the younger, my buddy who was vaguely a director for me, like I showed me around and her colleagues, they were really good. No, they weren't ages at all. No.

That was this particular woman who had the power to hire or buy me. So I was very grateful when I got the job in the psych ward at some instance. very grateful. But I was very grateful for the year at RPA because I blossomed. I learned that I could listen and I could direct and I could care about people

and I could be appreciated for it. Amongst my colleagues, anyway. And that was inspiring the psych specialists. Again, there were four incredibly different men but as respectful, if not more so, than the specialist at RPA. They really did very social work.

And that was a wonderful feeling. And I worked ridiculously hard. I spent ridiculously long hours there, as I had done as a school teacher. I just bent over backwards trying to help the patients and trying to get them housed or trying to make a difference in their lives. I feel I learned a lot. And it was very satisfying working with Social Security with those patients because there was an angel of a social worker.

He was an Egyptian-born person. I think his religion, it was an Egyptian variation on Catholicism. He really taught me how to listen to patients. So it was a pleasure to bring him up to interview the patients at Caritas when it was a separate building from the Stimincidence. So that they got an impression that social worker wasn't there. arch enemy or out to get them that there was a way through and was thanks to him not me really listening to a patient who had been living in the church ground at north Sydney for four years

before anyone bothered to do anything about him through patiently waiting for the patient to find the word because the patient had a stroke see um aphasia that's what he had yeah anyway through listening and waiting and you're giving the patient all the time in the world, he found out that the patient had a brother, and then he traced through the phone book. And it turned out the brother had been looking for him for four years himself. We, between us, we found him this really plush accommodation in Queen Street, or Lara. And I remember in the last stages, him being at St. Vincent's, I used to go to the bank for the patients because, you know, that was the means of being independent and having some, having action in your own life.

Agency. Agency. Yeah. So he and I were coming back from the bank and I remet somebody I hadn't seen for years. And I realised that I had to stop this guy talking, talking, talking, the guy who had a phage. That we were talking, talking. Once he opened up, you know, you couldn't stop him.

It was a wonderful feeling to realize, goodness me. You know, he came in in a wheelchair six weeks before, and, you know, he had hope in his life. And he was a man in his 50s by then, but it was wonderful. That was inspiring. That's so lovely. Yeah, and there was another person who had a dreadful heart attack and a very weak heart, and he was a brilliant pianist. He was very, very depressed and inclined to commit suicide, and he'd been found face down the floor of his place.

Somebody found him, thank goodness. And so we always wanted to hear him play, but his heart was so bad he could barely make the stairs down to where the piano was. So Minters de Paul in Waverly got really inspired about setting up the flat he was going to have in Darlinghurst, which was his new year. They even had a bed lamp for him. They sort of practically fluffed up the pillows. Like they were so inspired to give this guy a decent and dignified new life. in a place on a ground floor that would make him happy, you know, they hope. I really felt I was in my place.

So once again, the same head of social work rescued me and found me a job at the next hospital, at the Mata Hospital in North Sydney. I must say I was horrified. But I learnt a lot. What I mean is I thought I'd be dealing with people who were pretty well off and didn't have any problems because I had a kind of snobbery about well-off people. And I quickly learnt that illness and loneliness and depression are levellers.

I was housed with pastoral care people. A couple of whom were wonderful. But when I got separated from them after a few years and had my own room, I felt a lot better because I'd found other kindred spirits on the staff, such as the occupation therapist and some of the nurses were wonderful and they're still very close friends. You mentioned in some of the other hospital settings there was a really strong respect for the social work role. Do you feel like that was different in the private hospital? Yes, indeed. I was actually told not to counsel people. I think it was to do with the Catholicism

of it. Pasture care people, they had the monopoly on counselling and that was incredibly. of it frustrating for me. But I used to sort of sneak it in anyway because their idea for me really was to decently discharge people, keep them happy, find services to get them out of the place, really. So you're a discharge planner, not a social worker. Yeah, that's how I was treated. However, through my relationship with particularly the cancer ward and the heart ward

and the dialysis ward, I managed to establish enough credibility to do quite a lot of good with quite a few patients. The satisfaction of the dialysis ward, of course, is that you have regular communication with people and they need that, of course. And what would a typical day have been like for you at that hospital? Well, to wait for referrals, there were quite a few because they're keen on doing the right thing by patients. And it would be, you know, what sort of services is the person getting me at home, or which hospital they're going to go to next, and liaising with the next hospital.

Discharge planning type referrals, really. But what was good was they learnt to get me to see the person, quite early in their time there. So there was a chance to listen to how the person felt about being in hospital and about their lives anyway. I'm wondering what kind of referrals you would receive, what kind of patients were the ones most likely to be referred for social work? Quite a few patients were elderly, so they were sure to need services at home, you know,

particularly, say, the orthopedic ward, but usually, that was a referral to another hospital for rehab. It was obvious they were going to need some sort of program at home afterwards. So then that involved the next hospital and then being assessed by the aged care assessment team at the next hospital. So the war is learnt that you do have to give the overworked age care assessment team from Wilmore Shore plenty of time to time more visits to assess the person's chances of either getting a package after the next hospital

or getting a package at home. And some of the services are only available for people in public hospitals from memory. So it means that people in a private hospital have less access to that. Yes, true, yes. But the packages did cover most of the needs, except when they didn't. And I got quite a bit of pressure from one or two families of patients. very zealous sons and daughters who thought I hadn't tried hard enough,

whereas sometimes there just was a run on the services and there was a limit to the services available. That was quite heartrending at times and very stressful. Now, one very satisfying with how I learned what I could make was with a psychiatrist who was willing to come to the hospital very short notice when I thought that people were, it was not just pastoral care type counselling, it was ongoing serious problems.

And he would come and was very, very effective. He was the man who wrote the book called An Intelligent Life and he had been interviewed on the ABC and I realised, Short, his name was Julian Short. Yeah. And he was wonderful. There was also a very empathetic dialysis specialist. sort of doctor, him I was able to ask all sorts of things about. He knew lots about the dialysis

patients, of course. And he was a generalist, very, very clever and very empathetic man. And I remember asking him, you know, am I annoying you referring to you so much or catching you on the run? He said, look, the lack of that is what brings the hospital down when professionals can't talk to each other on the run. That must be refreshing? It was. And I felt supportive. but in the end I think I over did it with him because he looked a little bit irritated. I think he probably appreciated having a bit of different dialogue, not just clinical. A lot of people did call on him because he was incredibly popular. When he retired, it was elbow room only, like the number of people who came to farewell him.

They filled the courtyard, which is pretty big, if the matter, was full of people. he was outstanding because he cared so much and had a lot of, of course, with all that practice, had a lot of insight into the patients. What do you think your favourite part of working there was? Oh, definitely the counselling. That you weren't supposed to be doing. That's why it was so frustrating, not being able to do more of it. But when I was allowed to do it, when I got away with doing it, particularly in the

cancer ward and the heart ward, it was very, very satisfying. and I did go to a lot of funerals initially because I'd seen them out. I'd seen the end of their days and I had walked beside them and the dialysis ward too, yes. So other than personalities within the departments, what do you think was the most challenging part of your role? Really, it was personalities, keeping my eye on the point of being there. I feel like it must have been really difficult, being the only social worker as well. It was, but I mean, there were some wonderful nervous.

and inspired occupational therapist, and there were some very good physiotherapists as well. But unfortunately, I don't take injustice lying down and being bullied by relatives of patients. It was very hard. It only happened a few times, but I found that incredibly upsetting, particularly when I'd done my very best for the patients. Each time, it had involved me doing my very best for patients. And I think one of the most upsetting things was trying to help a woman who was a patient who was in a really dangerous domestic violence situation,

having promised her that I would, if necessary, go to court on her behalf. After she'd left the hospital, she rang me to say, would you be prepared to say what you witnessed with me in the hospital? and unfortunately that was just as I was deciding to resign and I pleaded with my ex-supervisor to be allowed to at least give the evidence

actually what I wrote in my notes and she wouldn't let me do that. That was very frustrating because I really wondered about that woman's safety quite seriously. So when things were quite difficult for you, what was your lifeline? who was your support? Let me see.

The occupational therapist, although by that time she'd left, and the nurse who used to live near me and drove me to and from work to save my exhaustion, and she really enjoyed my sense of humour and knew the situation I was in and appreciated how awful the people were and gave me credibility. And of course, the social work group at St Vincent's,

and to some extent my supervisor, and to some extent the head of the department, social worker. But I think really, yes, the social work group that I was part of, yeah, they really appreciated the hell when I was going through. You've mentioned a couple of ways or times when you were specifically not able to complete tasks that you would see as normal social work role. Yeah.

Are there the inverse? So times when you were asked to do things that you didn't think were part of your role? Yeah, just by the way, as far as support goes, there was an angelic member of the pastoral care team who was wonderful support. I should have mentioned her because when I was leaving, she collected so many signatures on the card. They had to use a few cards,

and people chose to give me over $500 and a very, very warm-hearted and generous farewell, in which my... ex-supervisor was forced to say that I was passionate about social justice. Well, I'm glad that it was appreciated and you were acknowledged. Yeah, yeah. Back to being asked to do what wasn't my job. I mean, I did whatever I possibly could to help patients.

I kept stats, but they were rarely looked at. I did it partly to cover myself, but also to keep back of what the patient had last said when I saw them, particularly if they came into the hospital a number of times. You know, it's so important for a person to feel known and recognised. Oh, I know. I'm not sure it was my job to, like there was a young man who had a geoblastoma, I think that's the term.

And I spent hours and hours and days with him, helping him effectively apply for sickness benefits. It was his fifth application. who was quite a young man and we had to say that it was likely he could die within the year although he had great religious faith

so he hoped that he wouldn't and I believe not everyone does die of Gia Rassanavut his very, very clever specialist didn't give him much hope but that was something that I I used to I remember the social workers at

RPA saying it wasn't their job to help people with Centrelink applications, but I used to think that patients are really in the least position to deal with forms and such. And to me, part of helping them with their stress is to deal with the stuff that aren't, or at least facilitate them dealing with the stuff, anything that's causing them tension. Something I did off my own back, which I'm not sure was a great idea, but it was a rare patient who was homeless. who was probably quite a con artist, but a determined smoker. And I remember staying there as late as 11 o'clock at night

and going out to the front of the hospital with her so she could have a smoke. It's just that too often when people went in with psychosocial problems, the nurses were very ill at ease with them and thought it wasn't appropriate that they were there, that their needs were too great for the nurses to adequately deal with. But some of the problems were quite game playing. Particularly say in a ward, like a cancer ward, the nurses had to work very hard anyway.

So I tried to be empathetic with the nurses, but I tried to make up for what they didn't want to deal with. And sometimes that's forms or just assisting someone with the process. Sometimes it was pleading that the patients stay a bit longer in a packed ward, you know, with pressures from the economic rashness around the place, about how long they stayed due to their personal, social circumstances. Yeah.

So I made myself a bit unpopular there. I tried to listen to the other points of view. And I guess the knowledge that people were benefiting from your intervention, even though other people might not always see it that way, that was probably what kept you going? Yes, indeed, yes. And was there something for you, outside of work that helped you inside of work, like things that you used to decompress?

My love of music, my love of jazz, my love of theatre, my love of art, yeah, and friends, contact with friends, yeah, that certainly was very rich. So having the ability to separate those two aspects of your life? I was surprised how well I could do that actually. I was very surprised. I was very, very involved during the day. like when I was teaching I was over involved like I used to worry at night partly because I was so ill-trained and I learned that that really wasn't a good idea

and so I think I got the point that if you lived the job and brought the problems home it really wasn't even doing the subject of your worry any good either yeah I think I would have gone mad if I hadn't done that and I did have a pretty rich life outside anyway Given that you've had the opportunity to work in social work fields for an extended period of time, have you seen any changes in the profession in that time and the way that we do things? Oh, yes. Well, I felt hungry to work at St Vincent's because I could see social work was taken seriously there and I could see that having a chance to practice well, people were learning to practice better and with more sophistication. I felt a bit of a troglodyte in some ways because I could see that people are sophisticated,

they need sophisticated and their lives are complex and they needed more sophisticated solutions than, you know, let me help you get cleaning at home, let me help you, etc., etc. Yeah, given the chance, social worker can do an extraordinary amount of good for people. But, yeah, it was very frustrating not having much of a chance to practice. it openly. Do you think there'll be much change over the next, say, 10, 20 years? Do you think we can develop the profession further? I think social work has to to keep up with the way people live and the dilemmas that people have. And I think it can because, well, I could see how much better social work was being practiced in St Vincent's than that it was allowed to be

in the private hospital. I mean, yeah, some Vincent's was. virtually a Catholic hospital. But when social work's allowed to be practiced as it can be, it can be absolutely brilliant and literally a lifesaver. So yeah, I have a great deal of hope for the potential for social work. You mentioned with cases such as the motor neurone disease having a real feeling of helplessness. I'm curious to see your perspective on the role of social work with the current health crisis and COVID-19 and how we can make a difference. Let me see. In dealing with the actual illness,

well, if it were terminal, social work has a long history of walking beside people who are terminal and does it brilliantly. And as for the stress caused in families, well, social work has a long history of working with families. It's there in the training. And also with, what is it, apprehended grief. Is that the work?

I think it is. Anticipatory Greek. That's the word. Sorry, anticipatory. And social work also has a long history of helping people to adapt to change. Yeah, I think social work is very well equipped to deal with COVID-19. Is there another kind of social work that you would have liked to have tried if you had more time or more opportunity?

Well, yes, community mental health is what I would have absolutely loved. because the short chance I had with it, the idea of home visits and listening to people and seeing them in their environment, I had incredibly satisfying communication with one woman who was afraid that rats were gnawing at her phone lines just by getting her to, by role-playing, she ended up laughing at her own phobia.

It was extraordinary. And the man who had post-traumatic stress disorder, I had an amazing breakthrough with him through a proper set of really proper, well- aimed questionnaire talking through his feelings. I had a similar success with a patient at the Marta. Yeah, I would have loved to have delved into proper counselling, mental health I would have loved, yeah.

And you mentioned people in prison systems? Yes, but more in a teaching capacity. I do see that I'm capable of getting over involved and that's why I haven't gone to the prisons although I did go to the prisons with the Quakers before I did social work actually. You may have heard of the Quakers' Alternative to Violence Project whereby I hope it's still happening

that they're allowed into prisons and I went into a number of prisons where you go in for three days and sort of 10 to 4, you work with prisoners and help them explore or facilitate them exploring the origins of their own violence and you help them talk to people by listening to them. It's a wonderful structured program that does heaps for prisoners' morale. I think I need a structure within which to work.

It's very tempting. I wouldn't trust myself not to get too involved. Now what I am doing is visiting when I'm allowed back. I'll be go back to visiting a man who's been a very brilliant music critic who has dementia in a nursing home. I'm visiting him once a week and getting other people to visit him to visit him to remind him of his own brilliance and who he is. And I'm quite happy to do that.

That's such a wonderful thing to do. Yes, I didn't recognise it, however worthwhile it is, until I knew somebody and saw the breakdown of their intelligence. Like he was an outstanding music critic. He's written three books. And he put quite a few young jazz, Australian jazz musicians on the map with his writing. I'm concerned this break in being able to visit him, the effect it's going to have on him.

But I've organised that someone ring him every day. He knows him. I need to remind him who he is. He's gone back to writing, trying to write again, which is surprising. And is that something you do independently or is that through an organisation? Independently, yeah, independently. I just saw him at a loss one day. I met him with his daughter and wondered why he'd been such a bore when I met him locally,

talking all about himself and he was going to die. Then I met him with his daughter and he said, oh, I've got dementia and relieved as many people are when they give a name to what's been the problem. Then I saw him, and then his daughter went back to Brisbane, and I saw him completely at a loss in the Broadway centre as to what he had to do next, and I thought, it's time to step in.

His daughter and I found him a very, very good nursing home. There are good nursing homes, and we found him a very good one, and we visit him, well, when we can, and now that we can't, we ring him. It's interesting that even in retirement, you can never quite stop being a social worker. Well, I feel so grateful that I have such a rich life myself. I feel I owe society something to give back.

Yeah, I have something to offer, so I offer that. It gives me a fair bit of satisfaction, yeah. And it sounds like you've been able to use your education background in terms of creating connections with people by stories. Yes. It's almost a Christian. idea. I had some terrible nuns who taught me, but I had some inspiring ones. And one of them really got through to me the idea of facilitating a person becoming the best version of themselves they

could be, polishing the brass is something I really like to do. The other thing that's very satisfying in my retired life is to, I spend far too much time on Facebook. One of the reasons I do is to keep abreast of opinions and stuff. Some people can do it. the Reader's Digest of Learning. In some ways it is, but in some ways it's not. And I've reconnected with people I taught 50 years ago. And it's very, very satisfying to talk to them about what we were all experiencing in the bad old days of teaching

when there were class wars between teachers and students. It really was. And so I'm writing my memoirs of what it was like to teach very poor. distressed children in Green Valley 50 years ago and they are talking about it and I'm writing about it. I've been writing about it for five years now and that's very satisfying. That's something that is very satisfying, making that connection with and seeing how they've coped with a terrible education and marvelling at how they've survived and not only survived but blossomed. One of my favourite students became a social worker against all odds.

You know, went back to school age 30s. Another one who was a nightmare to teach at the time. He has become an extremely good nurse. I can tell from the way she speaks. Another one is quite a renowned sound artist. He was a fabulous student. And some of them tragically have died. One of them committed suicide whom I was very concerned about at the time. So it's amazing to fire their lives as well. When do you think you might be able to publish that? I don't know whether I will, but I'm putting it out there to people who are interested in what I'm doing. I'm finding it quite interesting how the children of some of my old friends are encouraging friendship and very interested in what I'm doing. So the moment I'm I'm running some of my work

past the son of my first university friend. He's quite a very good writer. He's an ex-journalist himself. So I'm getting frank feedback. Funny how the younger they are, the more frank they are, which is refreshing. So it sounds like that's keeping you busy. Yeah, it's quite enriching. Yeah, I really do like a mixture of generations.

I like communicating with a mixture of generations. Is there anywhere else you would point people to if they were interested in knowing more about health, social work, or any of the other things that you've mentioned? There are probably two that you're very familiar with. One is Yalom's the gift of therapy, and another one that the excellent psych nurse back at the Community Mental Health Centre recommended she was brilliant on borderline personality disorder.

She gave a wonderful talk about it. Anyway, she recommended Richard S. Shah series of psychotherapy and counselling. But I mean, they're probably way out of date, but their books that inspired me, that was all I can say. That's wonderful. And are there any organisations

that you're particularly fond of or any movies or any videos that you've seen that you think other people would benefit from? One of the talks that I was impressed with when I benefited from the group sessions in the social work department was the Salvation Army's concern with slavery in Australia, but I found them too, it was too overlaid them with religion for me,

but I do respect the fact that they are concerned to do something and draw attention to slavery. It's surprisingly right in Australia in the building, hospitality, beauty, supposedly clothing industries in Australia. That concern me greatly. Well, I guess then you've got all those flow-on effects of those businesses shutting down now, so those people would have no work. Exactly. Facebook is very handy because it does draw attention to the people who are missing out on this supposed rescue that the government's doing. I'm passionate about refugees, asylum seekers, racism. The lives that people don't have mainstream sexuality are improving greatly.

But yeah, discrimination is something that I'm passionate about. I'm of the age group, like in my 70s, the people who'd suffered dreadfully. For example, I discovered that a very dear friend who's a year older than me was actually entrapped by a policeman when he was 14. Can you imagine that? So who would have been 14 in the 50s?

And who would have been believed? and what did that do to his self-image? There are a lot of friends of mine who are marred for discrimination in that way, sexuality, yeah. That's probably in terms of history, maybe it's not documented as much, but there's a lot of support that social work could provide in that space. Of course, yes. Is there anything else before we wrap up that you wanted to maybe mention in terms of your experience or for people in general who are,

hoping to get into this career? Yes, just a caution. A friend of mine has worked in the inner city with distressed families and was very concerned that when a social worker is quite young and comes from a comfortable family, they set far too high standards for whether other families are working and that could well be why so many Aboriginal children are being taken. away from their families. And this woman has gone and sat with the families and, you know, help calm them down and so on. And sometimes in very, you know, to her bizarre situations,

if somebody's going to go into working with children as a social worker, can they be very respectful of children's needs to stay with their families as much as, you know, potentially possible and not take a goody-to-shoes attitude towards families without looking very hard and being very respectful of other ways of being. And I think it's so important that they have enough support and good supervision, especially at a young age.

Yes, well, both the families and the social workers, yes, nearly that support. It's alarming and bizarre as a new person in a profession not to have enough support and to find out the rules by breaking them. Yeah, social workers do need a lot of support and do need to feel they can be honest with their supervisors to get proper guidance

and need to have the skills they have acknowledged, the particular skills and bent and intuition that they have acknowledged, I think is important. And to be trusted to do good work. Yes, yes. You came across that quite a bit where you were doing fantastic work, but you were met with barriers.

Yes, yes. I remember a worker at Campbell House when I made a mistake when I was doing welfare work. I did that before social work. And he saw that I made a mistake. And he saw that I was indulging a patient far too much. He said, but you had to have the dignity of making that mistake to learn. And I thought that was an most incredibly compassionate thing to say to me.

And I've never forgotten it. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Barbara, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlightpodcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show.

Next episode's guest is Rosanna, who has a. over 30 years of working in the disability, health and welfare sectors with a strong commitment in human rights and currently working as a coordinator at Lifetime Care and Support at ICare. She has worked in a number of agencies providing either direct client work for Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney, adult guardianship for the Office of the Public Guardian, disability-related advice for the New South Wales trustee and guardian, and as a branch manager for the New South Wales Home Care Service. I release a new episode every two weeks.

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