Social Work Spotlight - Episode 58: Deanne

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

In this episode I speak with Deanne, who has dedicated her career of over 30 years as a social worker to responding to inter-personal violence through her work in a range of organisational contexts, including statutory and therapeutic responses to child abuse and neglect, sexual assault and domestic violence. In recent years in independent practice and working in University schools of social work, Deanne has been educating and supporting social workers and students to respond to inter-personal, workplace and institutional violence and developing models of practice that integrate critical, post-structural, feminist and trauma-informed theories with the foundational ethics of social justice.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Response based practice:https://www.responsebasedpractice.com/ (Allan Wade, Linda Coates, Cathy Richardson)https://vikkireynolds.ca/  (Vikki Reynolds)https://www.insightexchange.net/  (Domestic Violence Service management)Narrative Therapyhttps://dulwichcentre.com.au/https://www.johnellabird.nz/This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rk4uJuGniR8jOjt3V2P269026hLMF919T2v5PYeY2jQ/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, Yasmaine McKee Wright, and today's guest is Deanne. Deanne has dedicated her career of over 30 years as a social worker to responding to interpersonal violence through her work in a range of organizational contexts, including statutory and therapeutic responses to child abuse and neglect, sexual assault, and domestic violence. In recent years in independent practice and working in your work, University Schools of Social Work. Deanne has been educating and supporting social workers and students to respond to

interpersonal, workplace and institutional violence and developing models of practice that integrate critical, post-structural, feminist and trauma-informed theories with the foundational ethics of social justice. Thank you so much, Deanne, for coming on to the podcast. Really happy to have you here and speak about your experience in social work so far. Thank you, Yasmin. I'm really happy to be here. I always ask first, what brought you into social work?

When did you get started and why were you interested in social work as a career? Okay, so I finished high school in the early 80s, and at that point in time, I knew I wanted to work with people. The main options available for women at that point who wanted to go into working with people were either, well, you could go into nursing, and you can go into those kind of areas or you could go into teaching or social work.

And at the time, there was an oversupply of teachers and an under supply of social workers. So I went down the social work path. And of course, at that point in time, being in the early 80s, tertiary education was free. And that was, of course, thanks to the Gough Whitlam government that brought that in in 1974. So I was one of the beneficiaries of that education policy.

And, you know, I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney to a working class family and probably wouldn't have been able to access a tertiary education if it hadn't been for that policy. So I'm really always very grateful to Goff and the team for that. So, yeah, I went to the University of New South Wales and did my undergrad degree from from 1981 to 1985, graduated 86. So that was my bachelor's degree and then I went back in the early 2000s and did a Masters of Social Policy and Planning. I had actually started out wanting to do a kind of a management degree because I was in management roles at that time, but I found that

the degree I'd started through Charles Sturt University had too many comments kind of subjects and I just couldn't just couldn't find an alignment with my values and things I was interested in. So that's why I swapped to the policy-related masters and really was interested in policies relating to women because I was working in services that were responding to forms of interpersonal violence at the time in New South Wales Health. So that was of more interest to me at that time. And was it specifically in relation to your work that you felt there could be changed? made in the policy? What was your passion around that? Yeah, look, I started working in, my first, very first social work job was as a hospital social worker. So I pretty soon went into working

in child protection. So at the children's hospital, when it was still at Camperdown, before it moved out to Westmead, that's how long ago that was, because that was like in the mid-80s. And I knew that I wanted to work with children and families and then was also drawn to to working with children who'd been abused and neglected. So that kind of got me interested in, and from what I was experiencing in those early days, having my eyes really open to some of the gendered violence that was going on,

because domestic violence was often the context for children being abused and neglected. And at that point in time, the domestic violence policies were very separate to the sexual assault policies and also to the child protection. policies. And I could very early on in my career see how related and how correlated forms of abuse and neglect were in families. But I could see at the policy level that that wasn't happening.

There wasn't that integration, particularly in New South Wales Health. And then my next job after that, I went and did a little stint. I did the old working holiday thing, went to Europe for a couple of years and did some social service social work in London, which was a great experience. Came back to Australia and started working in sexual assault counselling services in the western suburbs of Sydney. Did that for a couple of years. Then moved up to the Blue Mountains and ended up working in a small non-government organisation doing child protection counselling and I did that for a few years. So yeah, I've always worked in those spaces, services respond. to forms of violence.

And for most of that for New South Wales Health, although I have also worked in non-Govs. So I've worked in the mountains for that small community-based non-government for six years. But also for Bonados, I've worked for one of the children's family centres for a couple of years as a program manager. And I've even done a couple of years

working in statutory child protection in New South Wales for the organisation formerly known as family, community services now known as communities injustice. So I did a stint as a casework specialist there for a couple of years in, when was that? I've lost track after 35 years of roles. It's kind of I forget sometimes the order of them. But that was, you know, after working, most of the services I was in were doing therapeutic responses, offering counselling services and education and consultation. So to move into that statutory space, I'd always had a lot of questions about, well, why do they do what they do?

And why don't they do what I think they ought to be doing, et cetera? So it was really a useful experience to go and have that lived experience of working in that space. And it answered all of my questions and then some. How did you find it working in another country? Did you find in terms of accreditation that the process was fairly similar? Yeah, look, I didn't have any problems at all. The UK at the time, and I guess we're talking the late 80s, and I don't think much has changed, always welcome Australian social workers.

They've got very good reputation, you know, having access to high quality education, and also just generally being hard workers. I think that was the reputation we had then, and I don't think that's changed much. So that was fascinating, particularly working in England and in London, with that the class system that is similar but different to here. So, and then finding myself positioned within a class structure as an Antipodean. That was interesting.

Seeing where I was placed, you know, which was somewhere between the Scots and the, and the Welsh, somewhere down the pecking order in the office hierarchy. I'm also keen to hear about. the difference working for government and non-government and specifically with your policy background, do you find as though there was capacity, that your capacity was different in those two roles in terms of influencing policy action guidelines, those sorts of things? Oh yeah, 100%. I mean, the beauty and the gift of working in the non-government space is that there's usually fewer policy restrictions, which lends itself to be, you can be creative and you can innovate. And you can innovate,

without all the bureaucratic red tape, as long as you've got the support of a manager. When you're working in a bureaucracy, when you're working for government, you know, there's generally policies and procedure for just about everything. So I think it's a two-edged sword because sometimes, particularly if you're working in child protection services responding to violence, the policies and procedures and everything sort of thought about and teased out to that extent in terms of policy gives you a lot of safety. for practice. And I think that's the difference. While you mightn't have as much scope for innovation and

creativity, when you're an early in-career practitioner, I guess having the safety of policy and procedure, everything sort of spelled out for you can be reassuring and good guidance. But I think, as I said, yeah, the downside of that is, you know, if you are someone who likes to be creative and innovative in your work, it can feel limiting and frustrating sometimes because If you're working in government in bureaucracy, you've generally got to get approval from various layers in the organisation, and that can take some time. And maybe everybody isn't thinking that what you want to do is as important as other things that people want to do. So it can be frustrating.

But that's the main difference I've found between working in non-gov versus government. And I've heard so many not even younger social workers, even very experienced social workers say that they've got real. imposter syndrome. And I feel like if you've got clear expectations as to what's expected of you, I know people will feel as though they have a little bit more, as you said, in terms of guidance and in terms of being able to reflect on what they're doing as being exactly what's expected of them, and then they can be more creative once they feel like they've got a handle on it. Yeah. And look, I think the key to everything is high quality supervision. And I guess that was in more recent years where I've moved to in my career,

once I decided I would best serve my profession, best serve the community, vulnerable people we work for, I would be better off serving in supporting, supervising and teaching social workers coming through. So that's what I've been doing in the last few years, is moved into that space. But I've also got about half of my time, I have an independent clinical supervision practice. So I'm providing supervision to arrange. of people that are working for government and also in non-government services. So mostly social workers, but there are other professionals also in the mix.

Just anybody who is interested in doing supervision that comes from a very purposefully an intentional foundation of social justice, which is not found in all forms of traditional supervision. And what I offer is a sort of a reflective space. And so that's largely what I'm doing with my time these days. So, yeah, more of that shouldering up, supporting of others that are on the front line. Okay. Every now and again, I get an opportunity to do a bit of frontline work,

a bit of counselling here and there just to, you know, to keep my skills up. And I still do enjoy that work. But I think the kind of supervision I offer is, got a lot of therapeutic benefits, even though that's not the purpose for what we're talking about. I think sometimes that's how people experience it. I can see sort of a clear progression then from the clinical work through to management, through to training, especially with all that experience responding to interpersonal violence. But I wonder if there was sort of a catalyst for that move,

that transition from clinical work and management work. through to supervision, or did you just see it as a natural progression to your practice? It seems to have been a natural progression. I mean, I started out doing, you know, being a counsellor or a social worker, you know, sort of grade one social worker in health, in the hospital system and then in community health. And then, you know, you just progress up the, you stick around long enough, you stick at it long enough, and you get asked to act up. And then you end up acting up. And before you know it, there's someone above you that needs to go on holidays or leaves and there's a break in recruitment and so you end up acting up

in that role. And it's just if you stick around for long enough and you show any kind of aptitude for being reasonably well organised and reliable and people think you've got credibility, then you tend to be offered those opportunities, which I took up for various reasons. Maybe it was ambition, maybe there's often, it was just no one else would do it. No one else was interested in taking up the responsibility. So I ended up being that person. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm an oldest child and, you know, I'm someone who has shoulder a lot of responsibility in their life and it's something that I, that's familiar to me. So stepping into those kind of roles felt like I could do it. It needed to be done. And so I did.

And yeah, and I guess in health particularly, I think I got up to level five and was acting in level seven roles by the time I was at the end of that part of my career. And the problem is that I always like to be close enough to the ground as a manager. I still, I think that for me it's where the real work is. And I really wasn't getting a lot of job satisfaction out of just spending my time in endless meetings. and answering emails. I really, I like a lot of variety in my work, and I like working with people. So whether that's with clients or with my team,

and as a manager, I always had an open door policy. So, you know, people needed to debrief. They needed advice and support. I very rarely had my door closed. If I had a deadline for a report I needed to write or, you know, something like that, I would have a closed door. But it was, you know, more off pretty rare,

like people would find me. approachable and come in and I would always prioritise them because I know how hard the work is. So, you know, it's really necessary, particularly in services responding to interpersonal violence because, you know, the work itself is hard, the complexities of people's lives, the layers of trauma, the systemic trauma, the interagency, potential for there to be conflict, misunderstandings. Yeah, it's very high unless you're really attending. to, you know, the possibilities for things to go wrong. And so that's what you find yourself doing as a manager working in that space

is you kind of almost got to anticipate where the bushfires might start. Yeah, and be prepared to put them out. And then, you know, run along with your hose and hope you can put them out before they join up and there's a conflagration to do. So that's what I found a lot, being a manager in a bureaucracy, what it was about. Yeah, the email can probably wait while you're fighting fires. So that was always my priority was put out the fires because once they're out of control, the computer's not going to be there anyway.

It's right. And people get hurt, right? I mean, that's the one thing. You know, I've always, as an ethical bottom line is do no harm. And, you know, if there's an opportunity to prevent people getting harmed, you know, I've always kind of prioritised my time that way. And I think that's really important that leaders do. you know, managers not so much, but leaders certainly do that.

And I've always tried to be a, not just a manager, but be a leader. I've always enjoyed those kind of roles. How was that process then for you, though, making that decision to move out of a level five slash seven in a health environment to, you know, taking that big step out on your own as a private practitioner? Well, I had started moving into doing some teaching, you know, like funny enough. I've ended up doing teaching at the end of my career. You know, I had that sliding door moment, teaching or social work.

And now I'm doing both at the end of my career, which is pretty cool. Throughout my career, I've done little stints of teaching here and there, like quite a bit for Western Sydney University. I've done some for ACAP in the city. And then a few years back, I was invited with a couple of colleagues to develop a course that fourth year, social work degree, advanced practice skills in social justice therapies. And so that kind of put me in touch with the social work school at Wollongong. And I had networks, you know, people within the

team there from all sorts of other places, including health. And so, yeah, I ended up in the teaching space. And I've always also had a practice of, a small practice of private supervision and clients. So I was kind of gradually stepping into it anyway. And then, you know, I just found there was a period where things got difficult in my workplace. And I thought, you know what, I've been around for too long. And I think I've had enough of being hurt in the workplace. So I want to do my own thing. So just kind of took the steps. And then it sort of has grown over the last few years. But it's about networking. I'm saying this to my students all the time. Can't impress on early career practitioners. Your networks are everything. And people that I have worked alongside over the years,

we keep intersecting with each other's working lives and our roles. And this has happened over time. And only every job I think I've ever been offered anywhere has come through a connection with someone, you know, it's social work in particular. I mean, networking, networking, networking. And, you know, they don't just happen. It's a skill set. So I do try my best to convey that to my students and my supervisees. The social work isn't a career that you can have longevity in solo, which, I mean, I believe

that, I don't know, people probably argue with me that have been in private practice forever and a day would say, oh, no, it's fine. But I know for me, I need a sense of solidarity. and I need to collaborate. That's my natural working. Sounds like those networks were really paramount when you developed the practice further and you said you've gotten hurt in your previous roles.

So the most important thing was making sure that you put up boundaries so that you couldn't get hurt again or that you were at least safeguarding yourself as best as possible. What other support did you require at that time? Look, I just really took my... away. I went to Bali for a few weeks and I really just reconnected with myself and my sense of purpose and what I need after this many years in the field, you know, like what I need to do to fill up my bucket and to, you know, really get a sense of this is who I ought to be serving right now. And it just

became really clear to me that this was the direction I wanted to move in. And I have it look back. It's been fantastic. So I really enjoy teaching and I really enjoy supervising and I enjoy bringing people together, which I do in various ways, including this retreat that I just facilitated. Just last weekend, taking a group of social workers away for a weekend of connection and replenishment and restoration.

So that's been lovely too. They've all been people. I've got connections with currently and also from the past that sort of bringing them all together for the weekend was a very beautiful thing to do. I think I remember Mim Fox and Liz Murphy talking about the retreat. Is that the same way? Yeah, I did a social work stories podcast episode on. I actually was talking about my supervision practice, the way I do supervision. And I think it was towards one at the end of the episode, I started to talk about the retreat. Because I just think with social work, as I said,

said, it's not a, you can't do it alone. And so the more you bring people together and find common ground, it's a much more hopeful place. Yeah. And part of the taking the retreat, we went to the Snowy Valley, Snowy Ballies, plural, of course, which was decimated by the bushfires a couple of years ago. And it's a really unique place in terms of how the land and the country's regenerating and coming back to life and we were able to get access to some of the workers that have been working in mental health recovery

and helping the community come back to life. Yeah, it was just at the perfect place to be having these conversations about, you know, we've had fires, we've had floods, we've had pandemic, everybody's exhausted, everybody feels depleted, everybody feels pretty hopeless,

particularly with our current political climate, federally and a state level, people more than ever need to be able to find hope somewhere in all of that. And so, yeah, you've got to get together, you've got to tell your stories, you've got to focus on how you're responding to problems, not just the impacts of problems. I get very inspired by the work of Vicki Reynolds and what she writes about hope. And I think, yeah, we are.

particularly as social workers, you know, we have an ethical obligation to keep bringing the hope because we do have privilege. The majority of us are white. We're middle class professionals. We've got, you know, we study how to work systems and advocate and that's our knowledge base. And that's so it really is a privilege that we have and we have the capacity to make changes to systems and structures and the things that are causing oppression and injustice. I feel strongly that that's why we have to keep striving to do those things. Yeah, I can't even imagine the work that must have gone into preparing a retreat like that, but is that something you're hoping to replicate? Oh, yeah. Look, it was, it was a lot of work. I had some really good support from my friend. We actually met at

first year, first year uni. So we've been colleagues and good friends for 30 odd years, and she was the one that was doing the work down in Tumbarumba. She was based at Tumbrauma in the Snowy Valley. And so she was the connector with all the, you know, the local community. And we were able to invite a couple of the Ngarago elders to do a welcome to country. She knew all the local people from the local yoga teacher to the people who run the vineyard down the road. So she was able to connect us all up with all of those things. Yeah. Wine and yoga at the same time.

Not at the same time. No, there are on different days, the wine and the yoga. That's pretty incredible. Yeah. But we will do them again. I guess it is a lot of energy and effort. So originally I was going to take a group to Bali, but that was the year that the pandemic happened.

Yeah. So Bali is still on the cards. Bali still might happen. Maybe next year. Maybe. Otherwise, yeah, I probably look for to do it again somewhere in New South Wales. Although someone did suggest Tasmania, you know, the Fresenet Peninsula. that'd be a good one too.

So I don't know. Having wine at wine glass bay? Yes. Wine at wine glass bay. Yes. We could do that. How would you advertise that? How do people find out about it?

Well, you know, a lot of it was word of mouth. I did put, I think, an ad through LinkedIn, but I didn't really want it to be huge. I really preferred that I had some kind of connection with everybody that came just to make sure there was a good fit with people. And it just always helps that somebody kind of holds the relative. relationships, has that knowing of people and what's going on with their stories, like particularly work stories and personal stories.

So I think that was one thing I learned from the retreat, how important that was, that somebody had that knowledge to be able to hold it together. And the program was fairly loose. Like, I mean, I had some structure, but there was plenty of space for people. If you just wanted to stay in bed, if you just wanted to go and sit under a tree with a book, you just wanted to check out for a while on your own, there was space to do that. And that was really important for people, I think. Everybody's tired. Yeah. Yeah, we've been so busy looking after everyone else, so you haven't had time to focus on ourselves. Indeed, that's right.

Given that you have had this breadth of experience over a large period of time, what changes have you seen over the last 30 years in social work, either in the way it's practiced or the way it's perceived in the community in general or in within allied health, within the medical fields, and where do you see that progressing over time? Oh, that's a number of big questions or two. I should have broken it down. That's okay. What have I seen over time? Look, I mean, just to give you an example, when I did my undergrad degree, there were two universities offering social work and maybe 100, 150 max students per year were graduating. Now I don't know how many social work courses there are, but so many more than that. And so, you know, we have so many more

people graduating as social workers. So I think there's been a huge growth in the profession. And I think that's, I think it's a two-edged sword really, you know, with that growth then comes, okay, our association has become more centralised and corporatised, which is a bit sad, I think. But it also means that we've got greater presence generally in various work contexts. There's more of us. And I think people in organisations know what social workers do and know what we're capable of. Although I still do supervised students where they're being placed in organisations where there aren't social workers and there ought to be, you know, and you can see there's definitely a place for social workers,

but they're not being utilised. The other thing I've noticed over time, I remember in the early 80s, I think it was on the way, you know, the kind of on the tail end of the second wave of feminism, you know, like we were fairly radicalized and very much having feminist mindsets when I started out in my career. But I've noticed over time, that we've become psycholonised and that we look to psychology for our knowledge base and our

skill base. And I think that's a pity. And I think we need to, but I have noticed a swing back now being involved in social work education that critical theory and feminism, queer theory, intersectionality is being taught in the bachelor's degrees and the master's degree as foundational theory. And I'm really encouraged by that because I see, you know, the psycholonisation of social work has taken us away from some of our code of ethics, particularly the social justice aspect and understanding politics.

And I don't mean bipartisan, big P politics. I mean just power, understanding power. Yeah, and systems. And systems, how that, and structures. and we've become a little like psychology, it's about the individual, it's about, you know, and I found that working in interpersonal violence response space, you know, trauma-informed care lens itself to a large extent in, you know, focusing on the neuroscience, on the brain, on the mind.

I mean, I know that trauma-informed approaches do at least ask the question, what happened to you, not just what's wrong with you, but I think we need to extend. that question to, you know, under what social, political, cultural context, did this happen to you? And the people around you that informed the way they brought you up or whatever it might be. Yeah, and the way people responded to you when you were harmed, when you were, when you were subjected to the abuse. What happened with the social responders, whether that was within your networks, your family, and then within the service systems. You know, how did people respond to that?

And this is all vital social work knowledge. You know, that is what we're good at is seeing the systemic and the relational and the political. And so, yeah, I am encouraged that I think there has been a swing back to teaching that and helping people remember those roots. What is it then about social work that makes it unique from your perspective? why would other professions benefit from your social work style of supervision? You said you're getting all sorts of other professionals coming to see you.

Yeah, again, I think it's part of the end-stage capitalism. Is that, you know, of course, neoliberalism lends itself to the individual and people engaging in comparison thinking and in being in competition with each other. And, you know, we've seen how. how much harm can be done when that is the basis on which people relate to each other and understand the world. So, yeah, I think what social work does is brings in a relational, systemic understanding, and as I said, a political understanding, an analysis of power.

We're experts at the greys, which I don't think many professions are. The latest request I've had for supervision has come from lawyers. A lot of what they do lends itself to black and white thinking, but they're working in very grey areas. So, you know, that's been interesting. And I've always had allied health professionals like nurses and OTs and offering supervision to allied health. But yeah, getting into law has been interesting.

And, you know, in an informal way, I mean, I used to work alongside police when I was a senior health clinician for the JCPRP in Western Sydney, working alongside police day to day, a lot of the time, I think what I was doing was supervision with a lot of the police, because they don't need any of that, right? They've just got to suck up all the stress and the, you know, the horrors of everything they're witnessing. But I know that some of the conversations I had with some of the police

were those kind of not a therapeutic intention, but they certainly were a therapeutic holding and offering a reflective space. And, you know, I don't think they were getting that from their organisation. So it just, it was just happened to happen. But you can see how much it's needed. Absolutely. You know? Even if I cast my mind back to working in an emergency and ICU and just even paramedics

or police, as you said, who come in and have seen something absolutely traumatic out on the road or whatever it might be. And yeah, you do find yourself as sort of accidental counselor in that situation and just trying to hold them together enough to do that job, which is not your job, but it's essential. You know, your heart reaches out to them. They're doing the hard stuff so that you can do the other stuff. Absolutely.

And, you know, and social workers know how to create safe spaces for people to be in when they're distressed, when they've been traumatized. You know, we know what's necessary. So whether that's in an ED, whether that's. you know, with someone who's been subjected to a crime, you know, whatever it is, whatever the crisis, we know how to make those safe spaces. And, yeah, we know how to hold people. And we've got the courage to do it too because it does take a, you have to be able to be

present, fully present for people, and you have to be really courageous to go into areas that other people don't want to go into. It sounds as though this transition has been incredibly rewarding for you. What's been the hardest thing? What's the most challenging thing about working for yourself? Oh, look, in the context of the pandemic, it's been a lot of my work has been on Zoom. So I think I've done my best to accommodate.

That's the communication available. Yeah, it's got some benefits because you can record, right? You can record conversations and that's kind of handy. And teaching online is a whole world of pain. in itself and also I really had to skill up pretty quickly. And of course there was no guidance on how do you teach online? Nobody taught me. I had to learn it myself.

I had to teach myself. But with colleagues, you know, we muddled through together. Those of us who could did and we muddled through together. Yeah, the challenge of the pandemic, the isolation that's gone along with that, you know, doing a role and having a profession that is very much about connection and working with others. I think the pandemic has a layer of difficulty there. Yeah, that's the main thing, I think.

Otherwise, what I'm really loving is the freedom. I've got to say, that's the main thing I'm enjoying, is the freedom to take on pieces of work when I've got the resources to do it. I've got the time to do it. I've got energy for it. I've got enthusiasm for it. You know, I'll take on that project. I'll say no to this one.

Same with requests for supervision, you know, if I don't think there's a good fit between what I offer and what the supervisor is wanting, I'll just be very clear. No, I don't do that kind of supervision. Here's some people who I think you might offer that kind of supervision. I've never been very good at saying no, but I've gotten a lot better.

You have to get better at saying no when you're in independent practice. You definitely have to be able to know what to say yes and no too. And yeah, I can only work that at a time. You're really interesting what you've said about the challenging bit. You've been attempting to go into an area of practice where you are hopefully more connected to people. You don't have the sort of bureaucratic nonsense to deal with.

And then because of the pandemic, you've been thrown into this situation where you're more disconnected from people. That's, yeah, really interesting note and challenging. Yes. Are there any resources that you would recommend people check out if they're interested in any of what you've mentioned? I'm thinking even starting with the Hetty Superguide to Supervision, Allied Health Supervision. I've done the training course, the training program myself, which was fantastic.

But there's that Allied Health Supervision Handbook or even just some of the therapeutic approaches that you've mentioned. Yeah. You've talked about strength-based and I'm hearing a lot of anti-oppressive. in what you're saying. Well, I mean, my main influences at the moment theoretically and therapeutically are narrative therapy, which I've always been interested in and been studying since the early 90s and response-based practice in more recent years. So yeah, Vicki Reynolds, Linda Coates, Alan Wade, Kathy Richardson, the people whose work inspires me lately. So Vicki Reynolds has got, she's got a website. She gives so much away for free.

You don't have to pay for anything. That's her. She calls it copy left, not copyright, in terms of how generous she is in sharing her things. And she travels so much all the way from Canada, obviously, when there aren't pandemics happening. When there aren't her pandemic, she's been here a few times and she does, she does travel around. And yeah, response-based practice. So they've got a website, the Centre for Response-Based Practice. That's another resource. Also, it would be remiss of me if I didn't acknowledge my own clinical supervisor, Janella Bird from New Zealand, who has been in practice alongside David Epston for many years. But she's been very inspirational to me over the years in the way that

she combines some of the aspects of narrative ideas with post-structuralism and with feminism, but really strong feminist orientation as well. And so she's very supportive of me and my work these days. Yeah. And I'd have to honour and acknowledge all of the supervisors I've had over the years that have helped shape me, walked alongside me in my journey and offered me their wisdom and they're shouldering up. So, yeah, I'd have to, there'd be a long list of supervisors over the years.

Yeah, but I can put some of those resources in the show notes for people to go off and have a look when they've got time. Yeah. I've also heard you refer to this concept. of social justice doing. I'm hoping you can unpack that a little bit for me. Again, I've pinched that from Vicki Reynolds. So I guess it's any acts, you know, any actions we take. I prefer a language of talking about actions and actors rather than interventions or treatments or because that's doing something to someone. I like the idea of that we are acting and we're

doing something, but we're really clear about what our intention is. and what our purposes and what value and ethics sits underneath it. And it's always, for me, whatever it is, has got social justice as a foundation. So whether it's supervision, whether it's teaching, whether it's counseling, whether it's management, it's the main lens. And of course, anti-oppressive practice claims to do that, although, as Vicki would say, you know, anti-opressive practice is a pretty low bar to set.

at the very least we shouldn't oppress anyone right do no mum what we need to be actually doing is being activists taking action taking action for change taking action on you know using our privilege for those who are oppressed and marginalised and being subjected to the inequities in systems you know that's the sort of action we should be taking whenever we can which takes courage really. And resources. And it takes supervision to be able to reflect on what you're doing because you might think that something is just run of the mill. I do it every day. But for the person that you're supporting, it might be incredibly courageous and make a big difference. Absolutely. And I mean, you mentioned imposter syndrome before. And I mean, a lot of early career practitioners I work with in

supervision will tell me that. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. And imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome. I kind of put it, I kind of think about it the same way as the whole burnout narrative as well. I'll ask people, you know, well, what invitations are you getting to believing yourself to be an imposter? You know, where are they coming from? Where are these invitations coming from? Who's issuing these invitations or, and then that kind of will bring forward stories, which generally will uncover something that's to do with a systemic issue or problem that doesn't matter who you were. you know, you couldn't make much of a difference to that on your own.

You need an advocate as well. You know, you need support to do these things. So, yeah, I kind of, some of the more advanced practitioners that come for supervision might come with a belief that they're burnt out. But again, I draw on Vicki Reynolds' writings around the burnout is really an indication of how brightly your flame for social justice was burning and was exonerated. and was extinguished by those systemic and structural inequities, injustices, oppression.

So I kind of like those ideas as well. Yeah, I love a good social work metaphor. Indeed. We're full of metaphors. We do like a metaphor. There have been so many opportunities for you to be able to develop that deep professional satisfaction and inspiration from the people, your networks, the people that you're supporting.

I just think it's fantastic hearing about what you've been through to get to this point. Is there anything else that you wanted to speak with me about, about your practice or about the process of getting to where you are that might help other people? Only if you want to stick around in social work, always reach out. When you are being invited into things like imposter syndrome story or burnout story, is that seek out a really good supervisor, seek out support, reach out, and don't believe the story that it's about you, that you're the problem. Resist that story.

Like you would on behalf of a client. Yeah. Like you would advocate on behalf of a client for that reason. Do it for yourself as well. As Vicky would say, you know, we are all indispensable. You know, like when we leave organisations, when we have to quit, because the job is too much as being asked of us. You know, we take all that wisdom and knowledge with us

and our energy and our passion. We take it all with us, our creativity. And every time the organisation loses out, but ultimately clients lose out. And I see those, you know, I'm bearing witness to that tragedy again and again and again. So, you know, there are ways to, you know, reach out before, when you see the red light flashing on the dash,

go and get a service. don't keep pushing through. Yeah, yeah, such good advice. I think so many people, not just yourself, are grateful for Goff Whitlam and what he's done, especially to our profession. As you said, there are so many people that wouldn't have been able to study,

my parents included, but really just thankful that there weren't many other helping professions that you had the opportunity to go into because it's led you to this point and so many other people have benefited from your work over the years. But I especially, I think my takeaway is just that importance of taking time to regenerate and find hope in the work that you're doing and find meaning in your purpose in that setting and just in the profession in general.

I think it's not often enough that we take that opportunity to step back and go, no, we have a lot to offer and being creative around how we can best apply that. Yeah. And what is your work? why that's the thing just to sort of, you know, always kind of do that reflecting on your values. And they change over time. So, you know, for you right now, what values are you holding? And are you acting on every day. These are often things we talk about in supervision. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for the time that you've spent with me today. I think it's absolutely

wonderful what you've done and what you're doing now. And I hope other people get just as much out of it as I have. and I'm sure you'd be happy if people wanted to reach out and know more about you. I can put your details in the show notes as well. Yeah, sure. Yeah, but really just thank you again for your energy that you've brought and for sharing a little bit of your practice wisdom and professional background. It's meant a lot. Thank you.

No, thanks. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Dianne, please visit my anchor page at anchor.com. slash social work Spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Muhammad, a Bangladeshi Australian who migrated from Bangladesh in 2011.

Mohammed is passionate about and committed to working with people with disability and mental health concerns, aiming to ensure social justice and human rights in all aspects of a person's life. Currently, Mohammed works as a support coordinator for the Department of Human Services, helping to provide information, support and advocacy for people to access the NDIS. 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.