Social Work Spotlight - Episode 54: Taylah

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

In this episode I speak with Taylah, an early career social worker in Mental Health for the South Western Sydney Community.  She studied a double degree of Social Work and Social Research and Policy majoring in Politics and International Relations while engaging in differing voluntary roles including the Youth Advisory Committee at headspace, engaged in advocacy work with Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney, and was employed as an NDIS Support Worker in the Inner West.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Let’s Talk About Children training - https://emergingminds.com.au/online-course/lets-talk-children/Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (COPMI) - https://www.copmi.net.au/Family Recovery - https://www.copmi.net.au/images/pdf/Research/gems-edition23.pdfTop Blokes Foundation - https://www.topblokes.org.au/Overview and objectives of the Mental Health Act - https://mhrm.mhcc.org.au/chapters/4-nsw-mental-health-law-and-processes/4a-overview-and-objectives-of-the-mental-health-act-2007/headspace (National Youth Mental Health Foundation) - https://headspace.org.au/This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/12b8K65K8_cSdQrIK3r0qOqHaaB0TfR4BhDrEMnhs-qA/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, Jasmine McKee Wright, and today's guest is Taylor, an early career social worker in mental health for the Southwestern Sydney community. She studied a double degree of social work and social research and policy, majoring in politics and international relations while engaging in different voluntary roles, including the Youth Advisory Committee at Headspace, engaged in advocacy work with supporting, asylum seeker Sydney and was employed as an NDIS support worker in the inner west. These roles and experiences as well as social work theories of radical and anti-oppressive social work inform Taylor's social work practice.

Thank you so much Taylor for coming onto the podcast. I'm really happy to have you here and excited to talk to you about your journey so far. Thanks so much for having me. Can I ask firstly when you started as a social worker and what drew you to the profession in the first place. Yeah, for sure. So I started studying social work in 2016. That was my first year at uni. And once I graduated from social work, I started in mental health first. That was at the beginning of 2021. And I was lucky enough to get a job at the place that I was on placement at. So that was great. It made the entrance into social work a lot smoother for me. But yeah, I guess what

drew me to social work in the beginning was just the ability to work in a profession that was sort of a catalyst for social change. I think that for me, something that I really value is that social work can sort of like undermine those capitalistic structures and like the class structures that we have in our society can really sort of address that inequality and reduce suffering. And I think something that I've always valued and something that has sort of driven me in my life is to kind of make my corner of the world a little bit of a better place. And I think social work really enables me to do that, especially because social work gives you the ability to be directed by your core values, which is so awesome and it's really rare to find a profession that allows you to do those things.

And I think just in general, being able to equip people to, recognize that they're inherently worthwhile and that they have inherent rights and dignity just as existing as a human being, they have those things inherently. So yeah, being able to do those things is really what drew me to the profession. Yeah, amazing. Did you know much about social work before you started studying? Not really, actually. I was sort of sure that I was going to be doing law. So I kind of only, at the last minute, change my degree. In high school, I was sort of always drawn to legal studies. But I honestly, reflecting back on it now, I think it was because in legal studies, we did have like a lot of

conversations about systemic inequality and social change and things like that. And I think that's actually at the core of it what drew me to legal studies. And so kind of naturally, I was like, yeah, I'm going to go into law. And then I went to, I think it was like the open day at UNSW, you, which is where I did social work. And I sat in on the social work lecture and found that like super awesome. And my sister was actually with me at the time. And she was saying afterwards, she was like, I didn't see your face light up in any of the other lectures except for the social work lecture. And she was like, I think you should listen to that. And that's kind of what I remember as being like the catalyst for me going into social work instead of law. Yeah. It's so

interesting you talk about the action component there because I thought I wanted to be a lawyer as well and I did my year 10 work experience was at a law firm and I literally spent two weeks copying things and taking things to other offices and I just thought I don't see any social change here. I don't see people advocating and everyone I see is kind of miserable or they're doing the same thing every day. I feel like they're not making any difference and yeah it was really interesting. seeing that, but obviously that's just one component of it. And as you develop further and you kind of find a niche or an area of interest, you can feel like you can make a little bit more of a difference. But yeah, for me, I think I wanted that more practical side of things where I could

take action. And yeah, I think social work speaks really strongly to that. Yeah, for sure. And interestingly, my partner now, he's a lawyer. And he actually did, like you said, like he found that niche. And And he works in human rights law, which he absolutely loves working with like asylum seekers and refugees and stuff. So it's actually really great because we can bounce ideas off each other a lot. And some of the asylum seekers that he sees in detention centres, because I work in Bankstown and we're close to Billowwood Detention Centre, I actually like know the same people. So we kind of cross over a little bit, which has been interesting. Yeah. And what a great way to enrich your own practice.

have those sorts of conversations on a regular basis. Definitely. Yeah. That's so good. You also studied social research and policy and specifically international relations. How did you come to that and how do you feel that's informed, affected the way that you're practicing? Yeah. Well, the reason that I chose to do social research and policy and specifically politics and international relations was because of my interest in politics, I guess. I had like a really keen interest in Australian politics specifically. And I thought that the addition of understanding policy, what the latest like social research was, how like international relations affect like Australian policy. I thought it was the important background to have, I guess, and a good compliment to social work, which I find now as well. Like, I think something that I

valued a lot going into social work was critical social work and radical social work and those sort of theories that are borrowing from like Marxism and feminism and anti-racism and things like that and focusing on social justice rather than just like sort of the individualised issues. So yeah I found that policy and IR really gave me like a good idea of the kind of political features that like come with mental health issues and socioeconomic issues and things like that. Yeah. And you've done some volunteering as well at supporting asylum seekers Sydney. Is that an ongoing thing or is that sort of sporadic? Yeah, I haven't volunteered there since the beginning of COVID. It has become a lot more difficult to actually get into a detention center now. Yeah. So that was more of like a,

I used to do it on a fortnightly basis prior to that. And I think, it was really enriching for me, like as a student of social work, to meet asylum seekers and refugees and kind of understand how unique their issues are. Yeah. And what was your capacity? Like, what did you feel you could do? Was it mostly just talking to people hearing their stories? Was there any advocacy support that you could provide? Yeah, yeah, definitely. It was mostly for me, like as a young social worker, I was mostly doing, talking and hearing their stories and things like that but then there was also like the ability for me to advocate for something like them to be able to like use phones in the detention centre so that they could contact their family

overseas or wow you don't think about that sort of thing yeah yeah these like really small well they seem small but they're kind of like those little things that you don't really think about and i feel like that's a lot of what social work is kind of like trying to fit into these like my new areas and like wear all these different hats and like try and be like a clinician that is able to to address these things yeah but yeah I was able to help some of them with like support letters for like visa applications and things like that but yeah it was quite hard like and quite confronting as well as like a as a new social worker or a social work student because a lot of like the people that I met like had such just traumatic stories and then they're

were sort of locked up within these worlds and it really did feel like a prison honestly. Yeah, it was a pretty awesome experience though and I'm really glad like I got to meet some of the people that I did there. And you completed a placement supporting children of parents with a mental illness. What was that like as a baby social worker that would have been confronting as well? Yeah, definitely. It was more, I guess I got to take more like an observer stance with my first placement because it was indirect practice.

So we were doing like a lot of capacity building of services to respond to children or families where there was mental illness within the family and be able to, we did some consultation with families, but it wasn't, I don't think the team had the capacity and the funding to do a lot of direct social work with the families. Yeah. But we did, we ran like a three-day group for kids who were from. families where there was mental illness being experienced, which was super cool. Like the kids were just so awesome and super resilient. And we basically just focused on like coping skills and mindfulness

skills and we did some yoga with them. And like it was just like a cool little three day retreat for the kids, which was super cool. Yeah. That's really, really awesome. How do you think the placement experience challenged your expectations of what social work might be coming into it? Yeah. Interesting. I think going into it, I thought there would be a lot more like into my first placement at least. I thought there would be like a lot more client facing work. Like I think that's just what I expected going in. And I didn't really like I just kind of thought, oh yeah, all these services have the capacity to respond to children and you know, like you kind of know everything about your clients and that kind of thing. So I think it challenged my view of, of like social workers. And

And multidisciplinary teams, like, having the capacity to respond to those situations. I think sometimes, like, we're so busy focusing on the client that we don't focus on the client within their system, which is kind of what you learn in uni. So when I was at uni, learning about, you know, systems theory and, you know, asking the client all these specific questions pertaining to the systems around them, like, I didn't really, I guess, didn't realize the reality that a lot of these services are really, like, overrun, underfunded, and maybe sort of let that part of it slide sometimes. So it was interesting being on the side of capacity building and seeing these services,

like get back to that standard of remembering that there are children in these families and that their needs also need to be met. And that's part of your role as the mental health clinician for that individual person is responding to the needs of their children. Yeah. And did you feel, when you mentioned letting things slid, lied. Did you feel as though as a student, you didn't have a huge amount of power or capacity in that situation to stop and say, hey, I'm noticing this thing. I guess it's a theme, but did you feel powerless to do anything about that as a student? Or do you think it was more the system in general people were just feeling like it's not worth fighting? Yeah, I think it was more

also me feeling powerless as a student. I mean, I was able to really reflect on these things with my supervisor and my supervisor would then sort of implement like my feedback into the training seminars and things that we did with other services, which was really cool because I felt like that powerlessness at first, but then I was able to kind of impact even in like the smallest of ways, like how my supervisor would conduct her trainings and things like that. And we did like a, I don't know if you've heard of the let's talk. No. Training, it's kind of like, let's talk about children.

And, like, I got to, like, present a little bit of that training seminar. So that was really cool. And, yeah, I think now in my practice, I'm a lot more aware of the needs of the children and the families that, you know, I work with, which it seems like such a simple thing. But when you kind of have a client that's struggling with something, you kind of see it as an individualized issue. And you kind of have to step back and refer. on it and see it as more of like a systemic issue, which I think that I really got out of that.

That's kind of what I really got out of that placement. Yeah, wow. And how did that then inform where you went to from there? How did you then sort of harness all that energy and passion that you clearly had at that point into what was to become a career? Well, it was interesting when I started my second placement, somehow I got lucky enough to do both of my placements in New South Wales Health, which gave me like a lot of experience within that system.

And then for my second New South Wales Health placement, I was very much like, oh, so like, you know, have you heard of this program? At that time it was called Cotney, children of parents with a mental illness. Now it's called Family Focused Recovery. So I was kind of like, yeah, how do you guys, like in my little placement interview,

like, how do you guys, you know, address children of parents with mental illness and things like that? Like, I was really cognizant of it when I started my second placement. and my supervisors were amazing and they were sort of able to to show me like how that fits in a mental health context, which was cool. Yeah. And so what are you doing now? What's your current role?

And if there is such thing as a typical day, what are your current tasks? What are the sort of things you might be doing day to day? Yeah. So I work at Bankstown Community Mental Health in the early intervention for psychosis team. I've actually just moved over to that team from the assertive outreach team. So within the assertive outreach team, it was more focusing on quite chronic mental health presentations. We had a bit of a smaller caseload to account for how complex some of the presentations were and how acute they were and sort of how much time needed to be devoted to care coordination for those people.

So moving over to early intervention for psychosis, it was more, early intervention for psychosis is a two-year program. Some people stay a little bit longer. Some people stay for less than two years, depending on, you know, their readiness to sort of get back out into the community and that kind of thing. Yeah. So, yeah, typically I normally try to see maybe three clients in a day. Some days I get three weekends. translations and some days like I see more than three. But given at the moment, we only have two clinicians in our team, shouldering like I think a caseload of 40-something clients, so quite intense. But yeah, I'll kind of come in in the morning.

We normally, like, we'll have like a morning meeting. We will just sort of like touch base, get up to speed with like what's been going on with our consumers. and then usually I will try and see like my first client before 12 o'clock. I usually will focus on the most like pressing issue for them at the moment. I do like a lot of like NDIS applications and that kind of thing. Sometimes I do like a counselling session. It's kind of yeah. There's never really a typical day.

I'm always kind of doing different things in a day. But yeah, I think that's what the cool part about social work is, is that you can really, like, branch out into so many different areas. Yeah, and sometimes I'm doing, like, carer support as well. Like, I currently have the consumer that's in hospital. So I'm, you know, ensuring that mom and I touch base at least, like, three or four times a week to see how she's going with that. With some clients, I'm helping with psychoeducation,

helping them better understand like their diagnosis and what the medication is and why they're taking the medication and why it's so important to continue their sessions with me as well as taking their medication and that kind of thing. And yeah, the good thing is that I work in like a really multidisciplinary environment as well. So while my team is just two social workers at the moment, we do have some psychiatrists that work in our team, teams that we liaise with all day, every day in the same office with like occupational therapists, nurses, that kind of thing. So yeah, it's really like a mixed bag for a day. Yeah, wow.

It's very diverse and very interesting. It sounds like those are very complementary roles, though, the multidisciplinary team. Do you get the impression that there's a big social work voice or a presence? Is that well respected and understood? Yeah, I think quite uniquely within the Bankstown Community Mental Health. service quite dominated by social workers, which is pretty awesome. Yeah, it's pretty awesome to be around so many social workers, like senior social workers and like junior social workers and people who have been there for like, I have a colleague

that's been a social worker at the same service for like 40 years. Wow. What a great opportunity to learn. Definitely. And hearing from his experience of how the service has changed and how the approach to recovery has changed is really interesting. So yeah, I've always felt like in my service there's a huge, huge social work voice, which is super awesome because it's quite rare. Honestly, yeah, I've been quite lucky. Yeah. And can you explain to me? You mentioned care coordination earlier. Yeah. I'm interested from your perspective how social work and care coordination or case management might be a good fit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I kind of struggled with that as well for a little bit because I was kind of like, well, I'm interested in, you know, social justice and social change and, you know, I feel like I'm focusing more on like the individual, I suppose. But I kind of have been able to reconcile that with focusing on that client as part of their community and how they can like affect change within their community as well. In the Bankstown area, I work with a lot of Middle Eastern background.

clients and I'm Middle East and myself. So it's been really interesting to kind of affect change in thoughts and feelings about mental illness within the Middle Eastern community in Bankstown. Yeah, so I've kind of been able to like reconcile it a little bit and kind of work with my particular clients to see themselves as a resource for recovery themselves. And I think some of my favorite things about my role is sort of working with community organizations and other services in the area to like create a pool of resources to refer to, which is really cool. And yeah, I think the richness in diversity of the area as well makes it one that's like really worth working in. Yeah, I think there are some drawbacks like in terms of the sort of more like institutional context of the

mental health system and like those expectations to maintain some sort of like capitalist social order by like getting your clients back into work or back into study and that's seen as the main goal. So I find it like hard to reconcile sometimes setting goals with my clients because it's kind of my clients will say oh I like I really want to get back into work or I really want to get back into study, but just them being able to like recover from like an admission to hospital or something like that is like a huge achievement in and of itself that's not really recognized enough. So kind of like doing that individualized work has been really interesting and I'm like constantly having to reflect about like how it's affecting change on a community level as well.

Yeah. Do you speak another language? I speak a terrible amount of Arabic. I wish I spoke more and I'm like trying to work on it a lot more as well just to you know relate to my consumers and their families on like an even deeper level. Do you find from either a language perspective then or a cultural perspective it can be easier or harder working within that environment? I actually always feel a lot of comfort when I'm like welcomed into like a Lebanese home. It feels like I'm in my comfort zone a little bit. So I mean that's just me. I can imagine that it would be hard given that I actually did like a thesis in my last year of uni in my honours year on Middle East and North African attitudes towards mental illness and help seeking.

So I've seen that a lot in my practice. So I can see why it would be difficult for some people to, I guess, kind of revisit that cultural stigma that there is around mental illness within that community. But I actually find it like quite uniquely challenging. and, you know, over the year to two years that I'm working with the consumer and their families, like to see their attitudes kind of change and, you know, evolve over that time is really interesting. And yeah, even if, like, there's, like, a lot of resistance, you can kind of see, like, the love and empathy they have for, especially from like a parental perspective, the love and empathy they have for their child, sort of outshine everything else,

which is, like, super, super amazing to see. really inspiring as well. And it sounds like you can be part of that destigmatization of mental illness because you can reassure people that I understand from a cultural perspective, this can be really difficult and there can be a lot of shame involved, but there are resources, there are people that speak your language, there are people that are being through a similar scenario and it's okay and let's deal with it together. I think that's really powerful that I guess you don't really think about unless you're part of that culture or part of that language and understanding. Yeah, definitely. And like, you know, the use of, like, I found, like, the use of interpreters,

like, so valuable in my practice, especially I find because I work with young people, like, a lot of the younger people, at least so far in my experience, have all been able to speak, like, English as their first language, but, you know, working with parents and, and wanting to make the process of, you know, their child being in the mental health system easier for those parents that maybe do have a language barrier. The use of interpreters is so important. And like, I really encourage, like, any new social workers to not be afraid to use an interpreter and to really, you know, ask their seniors and ask their supervisors what the best way to go about it is. So it just, it makes the family feel so much more included in the process and that you're not

kind of ignoring their input because you can't speak the language. And, you know, even though I can understand and speak a little bit of Arabic, I don't want to like rely on my own interpretation. of that language to like inform what I think they're saying to me. Sure. So yeah, I really, I really value using interpreters. And even though it's not an obvious intention of the work, by involving interpreters in that, I think you're probably upskilling them to a certain degree

by bringing them into that conversation and helping them to understand and destigmatize themselves for their background and their community, that, yes, I know about these programs and I've heard about these people and people do recover. I think that's important as well. That's so true. Just a secondary benefit.

Yeah, I've actually never thought about it that way. That's an awesome caveat actually. Yeah. And the early intervention aspect of the program is that because you're supporting people when they first get a diagnosis or can it be when someone has recovered and then has new issues pop up? How does that work? Yeah, well, we've actually. become a lot more flexible. Our team has been transitioning to more of a broad, youth-based team. So

it used to kind of just be focusing on young people who are experiencing their first episodes of psychosis. But we've broadened that scope a little bit to account for maybe second episodes or if the consumer is recovered from their episode of psychosis but then develops like symptoms of anxiety or PTSD based on the experience that they had with psychosis and hospitalization and that kind of thing. So I have seen like some consumers actually come back after they've been discharged from the service and after their psychotic symptoms have been resolved. They will represent because they are aware of their warning signs, which is like really awesome because we do like a lot of like warning signs identification and stuff. So it's been cool to see those people

represent because they've been able to identify like, you know, I have been feeling a little bit more paranoid lately or I've been feeling anxious lately. And it's been like uniquely challenging as well to encourage that person to see relapse as part of the recovery process as well. So it's kind of, yeah, it's really interesting how the team has kind of formed into like a little bit more of a flexible arrangement, I suppose, because a lot of the clients are super like a brave, honestly, to like, represent to the centre and seek help. It's awesome to see them brave, that really difficult period where they may or may not be relapsing into another episode of psychosis. Yeah. Yeah. That must be, especially that first diagnosis must be a really

scary time, not just for the person who's being diagnosed, but also their family members. in terms of just feeling powerless or not understanding the system, not understanding what the supports look like, you would have to have a really good understanding of what the treatments are, even though you wouldn't be giving people advice around medications or certain treatment options, but you would have to know about them. You'd have to have those networks and resources.

I think that's a really good skill set and really good knowledge-based that you could take to any other form of social work. If you weren't doing this mental health work, both of your placements and now your work is in health and you've had the legal background to some degree, is there anything else, any other type of social work that you've heard about and thought, I really like the sound of that. I want to give it a try. Yeah, definitely. Given that I have a social research and policy degree as well, I think eventually, like, I'd really love to get into like policy development, whether that's council-based or state-based or like federally based. I think that we need like a lot more people in a policy seat, especially like statewide and federally that have a background in social work and that have

worked in communities because I think they have such a much more unique understanding of the community and we have so many politicians at the moment that are have a background of like business or law or commerce and things like that, which is like totally valuable within their own right. But I think that like a community-based focus is kind of what's missing from a lot of policy development. So yeah, I think eventually like I'd really like to get into policy and politics to some degree, I suppose, as well. And yeah, I think that would give me the ability to really like challenge the system of like capitalism a lot more, which would be really awesome. Yeah. What would you say is the most difficult part of the work you're doing? You've mentioned

the institution and the expectations that people have. And I can imagine also supporting people to identify goals or set goals for themselves when you know that either it might not be totally achievable or there might not be the mechanisms in place to support them to achieve that. What else is really hard for you that people might not have thought of? Yeah. I think a paradoxical implication of social work is like challenging. social injustice, but then also within a care coordination role within the mental health system,

you're sort of, you're kind of having to be cognizant that the work you do can have an impact in maintaining that function of society that kind of implicates people's worth as connected to the value or the input that they're putting into society, you know, whether they have a job or like how much tax they're paying, how much money they're making, that kind of thing. So that's probably something that's difficult for me to reconcile, which is why I think I'd love to use the experience of working in the community to inform more of like a policy-based role. I think another thing that I find a little bit difficult is I find that there is some unwillingness

within the mental health system to recognize drug use and drug addiction as like a mental health issue. Right. an addiction as a mental health issue. A lot of the people that I have worked with and am working with, there is also drug use involved in their presentations, which makes it more complex, but I think people are quite keen to separate the two, like a mental health and a drug issue. But yeah, I think it's important to see addiction as a mental health issue, because to its core, it is an issue of socioeconomic status and psychoeducation and that kind of thing. And more often than not, I imagine it's an indicator of trauma to some degree.

Totally, totally, yeah, absolutely. And there's also like, you know, an element of, like, a person is trying to address their already resistant mental health issues by self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. So, yeah, I think the two are always, like, really intertwined in that the area. is quite intersectional, but that the mental health system kind of will separate the two into like drug and alcohol and mental health. Yeah, so I think those systems need to like a better speak to each other. I think also there's such a huge polarization in fields of addiction or even any substance use. That line between use and abuse is so fine. And even like I was

surprised to hear if there was something I read that was saying what the act was. actual definition of binge drinking was. And it was so minor. It was something like having more than three drinks in one sitting is considered binge drinking. And you think the number of, the population of Australia that would do that on a regular basis probably once or twice a week, everyone is binge drinking, you know, like, so people won't then turn that lens on themselves and think, okay, if that's something I'm doing as well, how does that kind of fit with my judgment of other people? Yeah, yeah.

On one hand, it's problematic people's view and judgment and viewing someone as different or othering someone. But on the other hand, I think some of these definitions are problematic because all of a sudden you've pathologized something that potentially is quite normal. Absolutely. I was actually, funnily enough, was speaking to a consumer about this today. And we were talking about how he's like a social drinker. And he became like a little bit wary of saying too much about his social drinking with me.

And we kind of like had a conversation about how anybody working with him can't have the expectation that he will never touch drugs and will never touch alcohol. And it's funny because I think our society kind of demonises. drinkers when we have such a huge drinking culture in Australia and it's so like alcohol is so celebrated in our society and you know getting drunk on you know January 26th is like a thing that everybody does but then when someone may have an issue with alcohol it becomes outcast issue yeah it's quite alienating yeah yeah absolutely and I don't think we as a society do enough to recognize what the role of that celebration of alcohol has on drug addiction and alcohol addiction. Given that the work you're doing is very heavy, it's very complicated and difficult,

what support do you need to be able to maintain your motivation or your interest in this kind of work? I have found having animals in my life, having pets to come home to is awesome because they're just such beautiful and loving and non-judgmental creatures. So, you know, being able to like walk my dog or, you know, pat my my kittens or something like that is something like so simple but so human. And that's been really helpful for me. And I also, I have an awesome senior social worker as my supervisor. So I have like regular supervision with her and I'm very bad at like structuring my supervision

sessions, but it's kind of nice to just seek some advice and hear from someone that I, you know, admire in the field and for her to help me reflect on my practice as well. So, yeah, that's been also really helpful. Sounds like you've had some really amazing role models along the way. Yeah, yeah, definitely. My supervisors, like, from placement were really awesome and the people that I've met in my role, in the senior social workers that I've met in my role, have all been, like, super unique and super awesome. And my oldest sister as well, she's a psychologist. So it's sort of both in, like, the helping profession. And given that, you know, she's a psychologist and I'm a social worker, we both have, like, a lot of different, I guess, approaches to mental health. So it's

been good to, like, reflect with her as well and feel really safe to do that. Yeah. What do you think you love most about the work you're doing, what gives you energy? I think being able to have a conversation with a consumer where we sort of discuss their inherent, like, strengths and their inherent, like, worth as a human untethered by the capital gains that they make or the capital function that they serve and that kind of thing. I think that's the most rewarding for me. And seeing my consumers say, like, that really resonated with me or, like, Just those so small things, like I find that that kind of spurs me on and really, like, boost my confidence as a clinician. But, yeah, I think that's the most important thing to me is that each of my consumers know that they are worthy as a human being before they are, you know, anything else.

And they're worthy because they exist. So many of my consumers will kind of judge their self-worth based on the level of study that they've attained or the jobs that they have or that kind of thing. So, yeah, being able to challenge that perception is really cool for me. That's so beautiful. And if I go back to my comment before about goal setting, you've brought up a really good term, which is strengths, right? So in social work, we do a lot of work around strengths. And I think a person's ability to set goals is definitely a huge strength. And I think some of that relies on a system or a space, which you're providing as an individual and as a service, for someone to set their own goals instead of, of someone saying, well, within the confines of what we can do and the structure of the system here, here's what your goals might look like because this is what's achievable. But really, your goal should be written down in your words. This is a person-centered approach. And even if those goals aren't achievable, does it really matter? I want you to have the opportunity

to identify and voice your goals. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And even like the act of working towards your goal, even if it is, you know, something that's like, you know, super understanding, Like I want to be the Prime Minister of Australia or something like that, which isn't super unattainable, but like really, not really at all, but like something sort of that kind of that huge, I guess, backwards goal setting and working from that goal and figuring out what the core value is at the center of that goal. And then like helping to find like little like smaller goals that will help to like reach that peak and seeing the consumer kind of discover more things about themselves and figuring out what it is that really like wants to make them the prime. Minister of Australia and, you know, harnessing that goal and that strength and to kind of achieve more things is really awesome. Yeah. You mentioned you have a colleague who's been in the field for 40 odd years. What have they told you about the changes in either social work or in mental health over that period? And how does that sort of influence your desire to make change? Yeah, I think there's been like a huge change specifically in the district that I work in and that colleague has worked in for that many years.

There's been like a huge shift from like a more medicalized approach of just sort of hospitalization, medication, readmission, change in medication. That is still very present in the mental health system. But I think there has been like a language shift, even like within the team. Like instead of case management team, it's become like early intervention for psychosis or assertive outreach, like that kind of thing. So there's been like a huge language shift. And now in my district specifically there's a huge focus on recovery oriented practice and strengths. And we have like a strengths implementation manager who will do like reflective supervision with clinicians to see how they're able to better implement strengths practice. into their practice regardless of like their background. So we have like occupational therapist doing

strengths and nurses doing strengths work. And I would love to say that the psychiatrist is doing strengths work to some of them do, which is awesome. Yeah. So I think he mostly talks about the shift from that medicalized model into more of like a strengths focused, recovery focused journey. Are there any other programs or projects that you're working on? on at the moment? At the moment, I'm really interested in potentially publishing my thesis that I worked on in 2020. Yeah, I think it would be awesome to flesh that thesis out a little bit more and potentially publish it. I would also really be interested in implementing a course for the young males that are part of our service. So there's this really awesome men's charity

called the Toploaks Foundation and they do eight-week course and it's like once a week mentors who have an experience of mental illness will either via Zoom or in person, they'll conduct like a seminar and each seminar will be based on like a different topic of well-being and mental health and I think it would be awesome to implement that in some way within the district where the consumers of my service and the consumers of other services within the districts can take part in that and can learn a little bit more from people who have had an experience of mental illness. I think that would be really cool. So there are the two things I'm kind of like focused on at the moment. Yeah. And are those groups happening elsewhere within

Sydney that you're aware of? Are there sort of other facilitators that you can draw from in terms of their knowledge? Yeah, definitely. Even just visiting like the top bloke's website, you're able to sort of like find out what's going on in your area and whether there are like seminars that are available. I think you can also contact like peer workers that work for them and sort of like hear from their experiences of mental illness and what worked for them in their recovery, which is cool. Yeah, wow. Yeah. If anyone was interested in this area of social work, are there any other resources anywhere else you direct them? Yeah. I think something that I didn't realize until my last year of university when I was doing my thesis was how valuable like the university library is just for like

anything that you're kind of interested in any sort of like therapies you're interested in your university library is like indispensable and the librarians are amazing yeah absolutely it's kind of overwhelming but they'll tell you exactly where to look yeah totally totally and if you have like an online portal just like typing in some keywords and you're reading some of like the popular literature that comes up I think for me as well, reading into something like anti-capitalist literature or like Marxist literature or feminist literature has been really helpful for me in like formulating ideas about my practice. And yeah, I think there's a lot of like health directory websites now, which I found really helpful, especially like working with carers and things like that, using those websites to kind of like navigate

how many services there are and the difference between, you know, community services and government services and things like that. Yeah, just like surfing the internet is really valuable in finding those services. And there are a few other approaches that you've mentioned like the trauma-informed work and group facilitation or group leadership and the let's talk about children program. I think it would be helpful if people even, if they're interested in mental health, even just to go and look up the mental health act and scheduling and what that means and what it means to be voluntary or involuntary. Totally.

Because you can easily go down a bit of a rabbit hole and just reflect on why social work might be good to have in this area and how that might have come about. You've also done some training in applied suicide intervention skills. Can you tell us about how you found out about that and who does that? Yeah, so interestingly enough, I actually did that through my work with Headspace as a youth advisory council member. So luckily enough, it's usually quite an expensive course, but I was able to do that through volunteering with Headspace, which was really awesome. And I think as like a young social worker starting out, it can be really overwhelming to think like, I need to have experience. You know, I need to do some paid work in, you know, support work or something like.

that, but even like volunteering at the detention center and, you know, volunteering with headspace, just doing those like little volunteer things here and there can really like help you connect to other people and making those connections with like clinicians and people that are like dotted throughout Sydney that can kind of like connect you to other people and can connect you to these like training courses and things like that. And even like utilizing your tutors and your lecturers at uni and, you know, asking them for resources, I think like building up your little collection of resources and connections is really valuable when starting out as a social worker. Yeah. Before we started recording, you were talking about preparing for this interview and the opportunity to reflect on your practice and the knowledge that you've developed in such a short amount of time.

what is really shining through for me is it's so lovely that the people you're supporting have been able to develop inside and feeling comfortable returning to the service, which says a great deal about your ability to influence change in that area. I guess both personally and professionally, because that's a big deal. And really encouraging people to see the value at the center of the goal, which you mentioned earlier. So yes, it's a scary. time in people's lives and especially for caregivers or family members of people who are

experiencing early psychosis and knowing what this means for me ongoing and how am I going to continue knowing that there's this thing that might limit my ability to engage or to live a meaningful life. I think it's such an important area of social work and I think it takes a special kind of someone to want to dedicate their practice to it. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell people about the work that you're doing or what you get out of it or even what it's taught you working in this sort of space? Yeah, I guess as a social worker, I think we get into it wanting to challenge social injustice and to, you know, assist people to recognize themselves as part of a wider context and helping people to connect with the things that they may

have, you know, lost connection with when they were, you know, in a period of trauma or being unwell. I think it's really nice to play a part in someone's recovery, even if it's kind of a really tiny part and you feel like you're not doing much as a clinician because I've kind of struggled with feeling like, what am I actually doing for this person? Like, am I actually supporting them? am I actually like affecting any kind of change? And I kind of, I try and always like remind myself that even just being like someone that can listen to that person and can encourage that person and play a part in encouraging them to reconnect with the things that they may have lost in that time and encouraging them to

identify their early warning signs as well as their strengths and that kind of thing. Like even if you just do like that little amount, even though it's not a little amount, even though it's not a little amount, but even if you can do that, like you're still affecting like a lot of change in that person's life. So, yeah, I think just always reminding yourself that, you know, you're there to help, I guess, to help that person in any way that you can help them and to trust that they will guide you in that process as well and not try to push too much too soon.

That's so important that often it's the person you're supporting who is guiding you. they're the expert in the situation. Yeah. And they might just need that little bit of guidance. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I see you as such an inspiration not only to early career social workers, but also those with loads of experience who just maybe need to remember that you can make an impact through even small changes.

So being creative, being open to new ways of learning or new ways of practicing. Yeah. I think we can learn a lot from that. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you for the opportunity. I've really loved chatting with you. Thank you for taking the time. Thanks. It's been awesome to chat with you as well. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either

myself or Taylor, 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 Undarmor, a case manager working in youth crisis accommodation. Originally from Mongolia, Uni has developed her passion for supporting children and young people from traumatic and disadvantaged backgrounds to improve their circumstances and build their quality of life

through love and understanding. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notify when this next episode is available. See you next time.