Social Work Spotlight - Episode 63: Emily

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

In this episode I speak with Emily, an early career social worker who after getting a job at The Fact Tree Youth Service following her first social work placement, completing her second placement at a private hospital in Lismore, and a stint as a MERIT Clinician, Emily is currently working as a caseworker at Phoenix House Youth Services in Crows Nest.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Phoenix House Sydney - https://www.phoenixhouse.org.au/Dovetail, clinical advice and practice support to workers/services engaging with young people affected by alcohol and other drugs - https://www.dovetail.org.au/Insight, Centre for alcohol and other drug training and workforce development - https://insight.qld.edu.au/Therapies and Communication Approaches (Dementia Australia) including reminiscence therapy - https://www.dementia.org.au/national/support-and-services/carers/therapies-and-communication-approachesNews article on John Merrick’s work and his book (True Stories from the Morgue) - https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/forensic-counsellor-john-merrick-tells-of-20-years-working-behind-the-scenes-at-sydneys-morgue/news-story/f0614f8d59feee540a39088e25673ea7This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/16kNJO8aUwo0bu7Jki6MoU79PLWpYPqd4sTXEkHNGLR4/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Hi and welcome to social work spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode. I'm your host, Yasmin McKee Wright, and today's guest is Emily, an early career social worker who fell into the profession after attending a social work expo in high school. After getting a job at the fact tree youth service following her first social work placement, completing her second placement at a private hospital in Lismore, and a stint as a merit clinician, and Emily is currently working as a caseworker at Phoenix House Youth Services in Crowsnest. Thank you so much, Emily, for coming on to the podcast. Really happy to have you here to talk about your experience in social work. Thanks for having me. I always start with when did you begin as a social worker and what brought you to the profession?

So I, all through growing up, was going to be a teacher. I had it in my head that I was going to be a teacher. That was what I was going to do. and it wasn't until I got into my second last year of high school where social work even occurred to me as a field that I might go into and I went to a school that wasn't that social work wasn't really a potential career path really discussed it was quite an academic school and so law and engineering and medicine and those sort of paths were more discussed and it just happened that a career advisor mentioned that Westmead Hospital was running a social work expo day.

I just, for some reason, I can't remember now, I just put my hand up for it and said, I'm interested to go. Yeah. Because I think at that point for me, my understanding of social work and what a social worker did was very much based around, I think at that point, facts. So families and community services now, DCJ. So I think in my head, that's very much what a social worker did. It was all in child protection.

And so I was like, oh, I'll go and have a look. I'll see what else there might be. And so they ran this social work day and they introduced us to a range of different things that social workers could do. And I took one day and I was sold. And I was like, this is it. This is for me. This is what I want to do.

So I then had to figure out how to get into it and where I could study and that sort of things. I ended up studying at UNSW and I did a combined degree with criminology, which was so interesting and I really, really enjoyed my degree. And sort of just along the way, it just kept solidifying for me that I'd chosen the right path, the right career. Yeah. So in terms of like when I started working in social work, my first placement for my degree, I got placed at a youth service in Redfern, a little bit unsure and very, very nervous. I went and did this placement and it was brilliant. I had a great time.

I had great supervisors and, I mean, it was a little bit trial by fire because it was a very small service and it was very hands-on and no matter what position you were in the organisation, you were in working with the kids every day. And so I got to experience a lot of different facets of social work in one go. And my supervisor at the time was very open to me meeting other agencies and going on all this training. And so I came out of it like, yes, 100% this is what I want to do. And I was very lucky that my supervisor and the organisation had enjoyed having me there. And so they offered to keep me on as an employee.

after the first placement. So, yeah, I went in and did some casual work for them, which was sort of a mix of mostly supervision of their drop-in center, but a little bit of casework mixed in there as needed. And only a few months after I started officially as an employee, their two caseworkers went on maternity leave. Oh, wow. So I ended up sort of being one of their only staff

that could fill in as a caseworker until they could hire more. So I, yeah, was still studying and taking on this caseworker role as much as I could around uni days. And, yeah, instead of sort of scaring me off, it just reminded me that this is exactly what I wanted to do. So it sort of just worked really, really well. Wow, what a great experience. What subjects did you take in high school?

I'm just thinking, like, do you feel as though even though you weren't 100% or the direction, did some of those subjects help you when you got to uni? They helped with my criminology degree for sure. Yeah. So I did, what did I do in high school? I did three units of English, two units of maths against my choice. That was a subject that my parents encouraged me to keep in case I decided to change my career path at some point.

Uh-huh. And going to STEM. Yeah, never happened, shockingly. And then I did every, all the histories I could find. and then I did legal studies and I finished my legal studies exam in the HSA and said, I'm never doing that again. And then started criminology and I didn't get too far away from that. So yeah, I didn't really necessarily do any subjects that were particularly in this area.

So yeah, it was very sort of accidental, I think, that I fell into it. Yeah. I can imagine though, well, myself having done legal studies as well, well thinking, yeah, I'm going to be a lawyer as well. I think the benefit of the legal studies has been report writing, communicating, researching to a large degree and also understanding how certain policies or procedures have been informed by research and by experience. So, you know, if you really need to find a connection, I think it's there.

but criminology would have been incredibly interesting at uni as well. Did you find much of a way to tie that into the social work as you were going? Yeah, I found the two degrees worked really well together because one of the things that aside from just the understanding of criminal behavior and prevention and that sort of stuff, one of the really practical aspects that was very useful was the way that UNSW does that degree, it has a lot of social research and policy subjects built into it.

So I was getting a lot of exposure to how to do research, how to critique research, but also just subjects around social policy issues and how to engage in those discussions and how to be a conscious contributor and combining that with social work. It just fit really nicely. And so there was a cohort of us that did the double degree together

And the way that double degree works, we sort of separated from our original social work cohort because they went on placement before us. But there was this sort of core group of us who then stuck together for the remainder of the degree. And when we on the social work side got to a research and policy subject from the social work side, we had already got all this extra experience. And so we sort of took to it a little bit quicker than those who had just done the social work side. So practically it was a bit of an advantage. But it was just also a really fascinating degree. And I think having done it, it's become really useful in my practice as well. Was there any practical component with the criminology degree as well?

No. So entirely theory-based very much, I sort of consider it for myself a knowledge degree. And I know some of my friends who did just a criminology degree did have a little difficulty figuring out where to go with it. So a lot of them went back and did additional study to just further their careers. Okay. I know that you did some work then as a research assistant at the uni. What sort of things were you working on?

That sounds really interesting to me. Yeah. It was a very brief period of research assistant. So I had, as part of the degree, honors is built into it. And so I had done my thesis as part of the degree. And my supervisor for my thesis must have seen. something in my work that she liked. And so she had offered me to be her research assistant. And her name's Elizabeth Hernandez. And she is one of our leading researchers on children in out-of-home

care. And so she was working on a research project at the time. And it just had asked if I would want to be her assistant. And it was a very, it was only a six-week stint because it was a very project-specific role. But I got to do some research for her and write a literature review for one of her projects so it was actually quite fascinating work amazing and where was your second placement given that you still kind of had that casual work at the youth center so I did a rule placement for my second one I chose to do a placement based in Lismore and so I was placed at a hospital in Lismore and I had gone into my placements for the degree saying I know I don't want to do hospital work I was sure that I would not enjoy it and I didn't want to do it.

And when my field educator called me and said, this is the place that we've got for you in Lismore, the town you said you'd like to be placed, we can't guarantee we'll get another one in the town. So if you'd like to go, it's best that you take this. And I was a little bit dubious, but I really wanted to go to Lismore for placement because I have quite a lot of family out there. So it was a nice, nice comfortable place to be. And it ended up being a really interesting experience. I was placed in a private hospital. There was one social worker for the entire hospital who worked three days a week. And so it was a very, it was a very good placement for my final placement in that. It really challenged me to be an independent worker

and to become confident in my own abilities as a social worker instead of having to rely on my supervisor being there all the time to give me guidance. Yeah, because you would have been there at least one day a week by yourself, right? Yes, I had two days a week without a supervisor on site. There was myself and another student that were on placement together and so we were supporting each other and we had the support of the nursing staff and the allied health staff as well. But yeah, it really gave me an opportunity to test my skills and my knowledge that I'd learned over the course of the degree and really put it into practice and acknowledge that I did have these skills and I had learned these things and did have a rough idea of how to use them.

I can imagine that would have been much more difficult if it was your first placement. You know, everything's very new. You probably don't have anywhere near the same confidence to actually carry out things on your own. So good and bad, but it sounds like everything you've done so far, it's just being, as you said, trial by fire, you've just been thrown in the deep end. Yeah, and I think for me that's probably worked really well. I learn best by doing and by being able to talk things out. So to be given the opportunities to sort of just give things a go with the support of supervisors,

but to just kind of get in and give it a shot and trust that I have taken in enough knowledge and learned enough along the way to know roughly how. to do it, but also to have the ability to reflect and go, okay, that didn't work. Let's try something different. Yeah. And after completing a placement in health, were you still very much of the opinion? I don't want to work in health? Yes. I came out of that and I was like, it was a good experience and I got to do some very different things to my first placement. It was a very, varied placement in that I was now working with mostly an adult client group, whereas previously I'd worked only with youth, but then at the same time, this hospital also has a nursing home

and a childcare centre, so I was also based in those two as well. My supervisor was very much into counselling, and so she had us run reminiscence therapy groups in the nursing home, and I'd never done anything with that before, so I got a bit of experience, or a bit of experience, a bit of a taster around how to do reminiscence therapy, and I was challenged to use some creativity in how to run group sessions with people in the nursing home. So really varied, lots of experience, which was wonderful. But I still came out the other end and went,

still don't want to work in a hospital. Yeah. So where were you looking first when you finally finished? I came back and kept going at the youth center for a while. unfortunately when I came back from my placement I still had to finish my thesis and so I couldn't commit to more days of work I just didn't have the time to do it and they were looking for full-time workers at the time they hired another previous student who was very very good at her job so I was thrilled for her to get it so when I finished my thesis and was ready to look for full-time work unfortunately they didn't have any space for me and so I started looking around and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. go into, I knew I really enjoyed youth work, but I was very conscious that I wanted something that was more casework, because when I'd come back from placement, my role at the youth center, because of the staffing, had become more so just based around drop-in. And I sort of found myself

feeling like that was a couple of steps back. Like, I had done all this study and I was ready to get my hands dirty in the social work part of it. So I wanted to get in and do some more casework or counselling sort of work. And so I was looking and I was very conscious of youth work roles and whether they were going to be social work or just supervision roles. And I applied for a range of different things. And then I found a job for a drug and alcohol counselor, although I think it was, I actually don't even know if it was advertised specifically the drug and alcohol counselor, but for a

program based in a local court. I saw this ad and I thought, this is my two degrees perfectly. Both of my degrees combined and let's see how it goes. And so I ended up getting a job as a merit clinician. So the magistrate's early referral into treatment program. Yeah. And how was that coming out of uni into what I imagine would have been a very challenging role? Overwhelming.

Probably is a good word. And I took the role, which I'm fairly sure it was just advertised as merit clinician. And as a lot of social work roles are, it's advertised as essential criteria as a degree in psychology, social work, community services, a range of different degrees. And so I started the role. And on my first day, it became very clear that the role was counselling and less casework. And I'd done some counselling subjects in my degree. but I hadn't planned on being a counsellor.

So I was pretty overwhelmed to start with because I was very unsure I was able to do the job. Thankfully, I was actually in an office with another social worker who's a very good friend now and she gave me a bunch of resources and a bunch of guidance on how to do the counselling sessions and how to structure them and what frameworks to work from and the team I was working with were really good at giving me opportunities to learn,

which was really lovely. So my first ever client I sort of feel kind of bad for because he was a little bit of my guinea pig in figuring out my counselling style and how I utilize frameworks in my sessions. And it sort of just took it took a couple of months, but I sort of found myself feeling a bit more comfortable in that space. Yeah. And are you able to explain the program for anyone who's not familiar with Merit? Absolutely. So the magistrate's early referral into treatment program is a program that's based in

the local court for people with current offenses that are being heard. And the idea behind the program is it's to try and address any substance or alcohol issues that might be contributing to people's criminal activity. And so it is a 12-week voluntary program in which you can, while your matters are still being hurt in the court, you can receive drug and alcohol counseling over the 12 weeks with a merit clinician and they provide report back to the court about your progress. While on the program, they can help you to access detox, rehab, opium replacement therapy, and at the end of the 12-week program, there's a final report to submit and back to the the court and while it doesn't necessarily guarantee you a great outcome at court, it obviously

does look more favourable to the court if you're able to make some progress while on the program. Yeah. And I imagine having had the experience in the hospital and supporting discharges and knowing that your work is finite, that would have helped you to, I guess, work within a timeframe and be really clear on this is the time that I have with you and this is the support I can provide in that time. Yeah, it did. And it's, I think one of the things I sort of struggled with initially in that role is when I would have clients that weren't making progress, basically, I would see clients come in and we talk about their drug use and we talk about how we might be able to address it and where we could go with it and strategies to try and improve it. And then they'd come in the next week and nothing

had changed. I would have clients where they would tell me everything was wonderful and then we'd see a note in their files and they'd overdosed and they were in hospital. And then they'd overdosed and they were in hospital and I know I found that to be quite frustrating early on because I wasn't used to this sort of work and hadn't quite wrapped my head around that people need to be ready to change and that change is an always linear and the process. And I remember one of my team leader saying to us that if all we give the people on this program is a good experience of accessing support, even if they make no progress on their actual drug use, it means when they are ready to make progress, they will feel more comfortable reaching

out for support. And once I sort of heard that and processed that I was like, there's so much less pressure to get a result, like a clear, measurable result of reduced drug use. Like, yes, that's wonderful and that's what we're aiming for. but if all I can get out of this because of where this person is up to in their journey is a positive experience of accessing help and support, then I am still doing my job well. That's really good advice to have at an early point in your career.

So many people I speak with talk about the fact that often people who get into social work are problem solvers and where people who want to go in there and affect change. And when we can't see that happening in front of us, it is really challenging. Did you have some good support at the time around how to kind of reckon with that in your own practice? I did. I thankfully was in a very supportive team. And yes, the one of the, the girl that I shared my office with is another social worker. And she had an extra 12 months experience on me. And so she had sort of gone. through that process of realizing and reckoning with our desire for more change than what we're seeing. And so she was really great to sort of debrief with after sessions and share my frustrations

and help me recognize that I'm, you know, I was trying to enforce my expectations on them versus meeting them where they're at. And so that was really lovely. And we also had an external supervisor who came in and would talk us through. If we were having struggles with a particular a client, they'd help us through that situation and help us recognize, you know, where we could go with it if the expectations we were putting on it was simply our own or whether there was other things at play. So thankfully, in terms of support for my practice, there was quite a lot. Yeah, wonderful. And what then led to the point where you're at now? I sort of reached a point with the job at Merritt where, while I loved the work, didn't necessarily

love the structure of working for health because merit is part of the Department of Health. And so I'd sort of come into the merit role going, I've just been at this youth service. It's very relaxed. It's very sort of flexible. Everyone gets in and does this work. And so I'd sort of taken the job going, I think I'm ready for some structure. I think I'm ready to have a bit clearer like, this is what happens. This is the process.

This is how everything works. And so then when I sort of worked going through merit, I sort of found myself going, I think I've gone a little too far the other way. I think I went from not enough structure to too much structure. And so I started to look around to see what else was going. And there's always lots of social work jobs going. And I sort of found myself thinking, I've been doing this for a little while now. I feel like I can afford to be a little bit picky about where I want to go.

I know I still really want to work in youth. And I'd been looking around for a little while and saw this job ad for a case worker at a youth service called Phoenix House. I'd never heard of it, didn't know anything about it, and looked up what it involved. And they talked about how Phoenix House is, you know, this youth service that does case management support, but also has this emphasis on education and working with kids. who are disengaged from the school system. Having done my thesis in educational outcomes for kids in care, I was sort of like, this is something I'm particularly interested.

I'm quite interested in keeping kids engaged in some form of education to help their outcomes in later life. And I thought it was a very unlikely area to find. And then I saw this job. And so I put myself forward for it and went into an interview and the things they were saying about what, their aims were and what they were trying to do for the young people that came through their door just really sort of resonated with what I wanted to do.

So there was a real synergy then. Yeah. Lovely. And how long have you been at Phoenix House now? I am about to hit 18 months at Phoenix House. So I am about to be equal with how long I was at merit. I'm hoping to surpass that. June, July will be 18 months.

Yeah, brilliant. And what does your role entail? What does a normal day look like for you? So a normal day as a caseworker is very different every day. Yeah. But so I have client appointments most days. They sort of vary from an hour to two hours depending on the needs of what we're working on. A lot of my work with my client group at the moment is based around education and employment.

So whether that's advocating for kids who are still attending school, finding alternative education pathways for kids who have disengaged, advocating for extra support at TAFE or uni. We also do some housing work. So I've got a few young people on my caseload at the moment that I'm supporting to access transitional accommodation and programs that assist them to get into private rental. So a bit of that. And then we have a couple of programs that we run at the youth service.

And so it's not facilitating them because our educator of facilitating those, but sort of just being around and using that as this sort of informal way to continue building and developing the relationships with the young people that come through. Yeah, sounds like there's a big focus on early intervention, which is great. Yeah, very much so. We have conversations sometimes when referrals come through to us, and we sort of have that comment on, oh, if only we got to them earlier, like we could have stopped this from happening, but now we've just got to deal with it because that's where it is.

So, yeah, we've definitely been making. an effort, particularly in the recent few months, to reach out to those stakeholders who will be, who are often the people who refer to us, so the local schools, the local mental health services, the ones that we do get quite a few referrals on to just go, just touching base, letting you know where he are, trying to be quite proactive and trying to talk about where we might come in even earlier than where we have been in the past to try and mitigate any sort of further issues coming up. Yeah, great. And what's the range of ages that your service supports?

So we support 12 to 24 and within that, whereas youth specific service, however, we do offer some support to say that parents that are around because obviously kids don't exist in a vacuum and what happens at home influences what they come to us for. So we don't specifically offer support to parents, but it happens anyway. Yeah, I guess it's part of the system, right? Yeah. Yeah. And do you have many other social workers that you're working with, or is it all very interdisciplinary? So on the case management team, it's actually all social workers.

Okay. But one of the things that the organisation has been pretty clear about is hiring qualified social workers. So there's myself and another actually one, sorry, had her last day yesterday. So they were three, myself and two other fully qualified social workers on the team. And then our manager who's actually on, has been on leave, and I've been filling in for the last month is social work equivalent from the UK. So, yeah. And what do you think it is about social work as a profession that lends itself well to that role?

I think one of the biggest things that we bring to this particular sort of role is this idea of empowering our client so that they can deal with things for themselves. I was sort of chatting to one about, we've got a counselling student as well at the moment at our organization and we were having this conversation about long-term work and is there a benefit to long-term work and we were sort of having this discussion where she was saying that oh for a counseling perspective long-term therapy or long-term relationships can be really good because you know people are being vulnerable that opening up to you you need that trust and we were sort of comparing the social work and I was saying to her that my sort of ultimate goal for myself

in this sort of role is I aim to make myself redundant in these kids lives. I want to work with them to reach their goals, to help them identify their own skills and learn new skills and strengths and get to a point where they no longer need me, but also have the knowledge and confidence to reach out for help if they needed in the future. And so I think the social work practice, the social work profession, I think, lends itself really well to that because so much of what we do is about trying to empower the people we work with to access and acknowledge and build on their

own skills and strengths not to come in and try and solve it for them. Yeah, that's right. And I imagine your background in criminology would lend itself well to this area. Is there a lot of overlap with alcohol and other drug use or maybe the criminal justice system within your population? Alcohol and other drugs definitely. That comes up quite a bit. In terms of the criminal justice system, I haven't actually had too many clients come through who have any matters before the court or actually that much release involvement in this particular role. In my previous youth work role, yes, definitely, there was quite a lot of interaction with the criminal justice system, actually in both the previous one.

So it has been really useful in that. But it also, in this one, it comes in through the drug and alcohol work, but also through the idea of prevention and the criminal judicial theories and knowing that there's reasons why people commit crime and it's not simply that they are bad people. If we're going to sort of reduce rates of recidivism and rates of crime, then we need to be addressing the social factors that are leading to that. And do you get an opportunity to do much research now in this community role?

Not as much anymore. I've sort of moved away from research for the moment. I think part of me would love to go back to it in the future, mostly because I just enjoy the learning aspect of it. I just enjoy reading and learning. The other part of me remembers how much pain I caused myself having to write my thesis. So the researching part, sure, the writing out the research. much less so.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I just remember from my community days, a lot of the work is just justifying what you're doing every day and being able to explain that in a way that makes sense to the funding bodies. It sounds like you're not having to be responsible for some of that, though, which is really positive. In terms of the funding stuff, my sort of role in that regard is a lot more around data entry stuff.

So I do a lot of compiling statistics in terms of so we can present them back to our funding bodies and talk about the range of young people we're working with, how many we're seeing, how are we meeting our targets? So I do a lot more of that side of stuff for this role. Yeah, yeah. And what support do you need within the role? It's great that you've got a good, what would you say a gaggle of social workers. I don't know what the collective noun is. But how does that help you and what other supports do you need to keep motivated? I find even outside just our casework team, we have a really good team at the organisation. So as well as the social workers, we've also got trained teachers, we've got trained counselors,

we've got some admin and operation staff. But everyone at the organisation is just very supportive and very collaborative. And one of the things that my boss and I were talking about the other day is that culture in the workplace for our organisation is so important because we are such a small team. And so we all fit in and support each other. And there's lots of debriefing, which is one of the biggest things for me is I need to be able to talk things out with someone. So we get a lot of informal debriefing, just other staff. But then we have our supervision sessions with our manager to really go into the nitty gritty of sort of what's been going on and how we're handling it and where do we need additional support.

And the organisation is also very supportive of us accessing external supervision for that extra layer. of supervision. So between sort of all of that and just the ability to sort of come home and debrief a bit with family is sort of doing well to keep me in check, I think. Yeah. And what are you finding is the most challenging part of the role so far? Good question. I think probably in the last few months there's been a lot of change in the organisation, which in the non-government area is fairly standard. It's usually lots of turnover. So that's been a big sort of upheaval. So obviously staff leave and then we have to manage their caseloads and they're gone.

And so at one point I think I was managing 20 something clients in one go, which was quite an immense caseload. But thankfully when the new manager came in, they were very proactive about working to get our caseloads down and get us back into a manageable level. So that was really quite wonderful to be supported in that way. I'd say probably one of the biggest challenges, and I've encountered it in, I think, probably all the roles so far, is that having to justify our work or having to quantify our work to fit into boxes for funding. One of the discussions we have regularly in terms of our funding targets is to meet our funding target, we have to basically do short-term work with lots of clients.

Yeah. It's how we have to do it. And that doesn't always work for everyone. And not everyone can be a short-term client. And so that I think has been probably the most frustrating point for me across all three positions is that having to justify what you do and why you do it and why it's important to people who don't necessarily share your understanding.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's that disconnect between expectations. of funding bodies and what you know is going to be effective on the ground. Yeah, very much so. And just having to quantify and having to turn a human experience into a number is not an easy thing to reconcile. Yeah, yeah. Have you found it either positive or negative or maybe a combination of both being a young social

or a young professional going into some of these fields where you're working with people who are potentially the same age as you. How has that sat with you in terms of your positionality? I think early on, particularly when I picked up the role out of placement, I think I struggled a lot with that in that I was very close in age to some of the people I was working with. And I must say, I was very conscious in that first role to never tell the kids how old I was. because I was very very conscious of blurring boundaries and having them see me as just one of the kids and not having that sense of authority,

not in the sense that I want them to, you have to listen to me because I'm older and that sort of thing. But when trying to manage a drop-in space for them to not see me as someone that they need to listen to if I'm trying to, you know, prevent something risky from happening, was something I was very conscious of. So I made a point, particularly in that first role, to not tell them my age. And how that worked for me is that they just assumed I was the same age as the other workers. And so it worked really well because it sort of prevented that,

well, I felt it prevented that blurring of relationships because they just saw me as a worker. And so in this role, I find now that I'm a bit older, I feel like I'm having to be less about it in the sense that I am now older than the clientele that I'm working with, which is nice to actually be older than them. But I find myself sort of feeling less like, how am I able to help you when I am also one of you? Yeah. So, yeah, having that little bit of extra age in this role sort of has helped remove that

worry that I'm not, I don't have enough life experience. or just enough professional experience because I'm still going through it with you. And it's such a common thing with social workers and, I mean, a thing that at least I see is that often the client is not at all worried about that. We're kind of putting that on ourselves and really reflective to the detriment of, you know, our own selves and our own expectations of what we can do and what we can't. But yeah, it's good that you've been able to step back from that and think, okay, I do have this extra level of experience and I can position myself as such while still being, I guess, approachable and seeming as though I'm not too disconnected from you. Yes, the kids still laugh at me when I tell them I'm trying to be hip and with it.

I still get a chuckle at this point. Yeah. What do you love most about the work you're doing at the moment? I love the interaction. I love being able to talk to and get to know these kids and get to know what they're interested in and what they're passionate about. And some of the conversations that I have with these young people are just so interesting and so fascinating.

And I sort of come home from my workday sort of needing a minute to recharge that social battery because I spent all day talking. But that's what I love about it. I love being trusted to be part of someone's life. And I think that's one of the things that I found in, when I went on my first placement, I found this like social work quote somewhere that was like, never forget it's a privilege to be allowed into someone's life. Yeah. That's sort of what I've held on to going throughout this profession is that these kids trust me.

And they open their life and let me into it. And that's something that I'm very great. grateful that they allow me to do. And I learned so much just by talking to them about them, about how they view things, about how society exists for them, and then they help me reflect on myself. And yeah, I love that. And to be able to assist them to get to where they want to go in life is just the best part of the job. Amazing. It sounds like you've really found your calling. I like to think so. Yeah. And I think you've really hit the nail on the head when you said being trusted because so many of these young people

probably feel disconnected from their families or their educators and you're a safe space, you're a safe person to come to. So it's great that they can have those conversations when they might feel like there's no one else they can bring these things up with. It's a big responsibility as well. But it sounds as though you've got the support around you, if anything does come up to be able to address it appropriately. Yeah, for me it's also that it's being that safe person. It's being that consistent person for a lot of them. Being someone that they know is there, whether they are actively engaged in the service

or, you know, they have disengaged and they might have been away for a while. But it's just to know that they're, whether, you know, it's myself or someone else in my role, that there is a consistent support there for them if they need it. Yeah. Have you seen many changes over time, not you personally, but behind? your colleagues have told you about changes in the way that services or supports are delivered or even available or early intervention approaches or even how mental health is stigmatized or just any trends in either could be youth homelessness or mental health.

I think from having some of conversations with the people I've worked with and along the way, we've definitely seen mental health become more prominent. and we're noticing particularly in the young people coming through now, it is so debilitating for so many of them. And while we are talking about it more, which is wonderful, there's still so many barriers to accessing services for mental health support, be it big wait lists, expensive costs, session limits, age limits for session, people only working Monday to Friday, like there's so many barriers and we've got you know young people coming through who are so busy and have so many pressures on them and their mental health is still suffering and they're saying to us we need help can you please help us but we can only talk to you between these hours on these days and we as a service can't always meet those requests and it's sort of where you know have had discussions recently about where where do these young people go if a lot of the services they need only operate, say, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5,

and they need us at 7 o'clock. Yeah. So, yeah, that's sort of something we're seeing coming up quite a bit more, unfortunately, with our young people. It sounds like there may be scope, though, to connect with some after-hour services and work collaboratively, but it's about, again, helping the person to develop trust with that relationship. Are there any other areas of social work that interest you if you are not doing what you're doing now? I am fascinated by social work in the morgue.

I had a tutor at uni who did her placement at the morgue in Gleave, and she would talk to us about it, and then I stumbled across a book, I think it's called Stories from the Morg or Tales from the Morg, and it's written by one of the lead social workers. at the Sydney morgue and he tells stories of cases he's come across and the work he's done and he talks about the toll it takes on him and is fascinating yeah and just the role that you play in that position to support bereaved families and support them through the process of coroner's court is just fascinating work yeah even beautiful little things like taking castings of

hands and yeah every time i hear someone talk about their work in that space so it gives me chills but also you know so wonderful that there is that sort of support there when people need it most yeah absolutely i'm not sure i'm not sure whether i see myself working in that area yet but just the whole idea of it i'm just i'm always so curious and i have a friend who's who works in the morgue and so i'm always interested to talk to her and find out how her works and go and and how she manages her role. Yeah, so good to have someone that you know that does that and you can kind of almost live vicariously through them

and imagine what it would be like for you. Yeah. Kind of a try before you buy sort of scheme. Yeah. Are there any other projects or programs that you're working on at the moment with your service? We've just sort of relaunched our living skills and employment skills programs.

So they're some of the core work that we do. And we've just got these two new brilliant educators in who are very passionate about it. And they've been putting together these really wonderful programs. And so we've just got them up and running again. And we have a couple of other sort of more social-based, but also life skills and employment skills programs that are in the works at the moment. Like we've got a podcast that our youth run that unfortunately went on hiatus during COVID, but we're in the process of relaunching it.

And so, yeah, we've got a few different things in the work at the moment. We're in a very big period at the moment now that restrictions are easing to just sort of get everything back up and running. And if you've just gone through a restructure as well, you probably just want to hit the ground running and then see where the pieces land.

Yes, and thankfully we've got a boss and a management team who are very much like, we don't mind if you fail, just give it a shot, we'll regroup, we'll see what, what we can pick up and run with and then modify and off you go. Amazing. Are they a social worker by chance? Not a social worker.

Their background is in teaching and then in the business world. So they started as a teacher and then transitioned into business. Yeah, okay. That's a really good combination. Yeah. If people wanted to know more about those programs, where would you direct them? We do have a website. So I believe it's just phoenixhouseuservices.com.

or you can just Google us and call the office. We're always happy to have a chat on the phone and tell people about what we've got going on. Our website's being updated. So it'll be up to date with all our correct information and all our programs and we've got flyers and all these sorts of things. So yeah, either of those. But we always love a chat if you want to call the office and ask us about them directly.

Amazing. And are there any other good resources that you would recommend to other, other social workers or potential social workers who are interested in the kind of frameworks or approaches that you use? One of the things I think I found for myself when I was newly starting out, or one of the services or resources is a website called Dovetail. It's a drug and alcohol service based in Queensland for young people. They also have an adult's equivalent called Insight. And they have a lot of really useful drug and alcohol tools, but they also have some brief training on like motivational interviewing and they've got like a student placement toolkit

and all these really interesting resources but they also run webinars weekly with lots of interesting topics so I found for myself starting out I was sort of religiously watching and reading what they were putting out because it just gave me so much extra information that was so interesting and useful for what I was doing yeah I just think it's so important what you were saying about maintaining boundaries and preventing blurring of relationships in order to be able to really be a good advocate and provide those pathways for young people who are most at disadvantage. But also what I'm hearing is just encouraging people to obtain as much experience while they can while they're studying because that's been so helpful for you in determining what

you do want to do. For instance, I think you used your placement as an opportunity to change or reaffirm your interests. So it's a really good chance to, without a huge amount of pressure, just be able to try something and give it a go without having to know everything straight away. And yeah, I think your agency is doing a lot in terms of networking and referral pathways for people and empowering clients to work through problems where support isn't available. So yeah, just wonderful work.

doing an incredible experience and yeah hopefully you'll be inspiring the next generation to do a little bit more of what you're up to and if people want to get in contact it sounds like you're all is very much so yeah thank you again emily for this experience and the opportunity to talk to you about what you're doing i think it's incredibly worthwhile and important well thank you for reaching out i was quite honored that you asked me to be on this thank you again Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Emily, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm slash social work spotlight.

You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Cassandra. who has worked both in the UK and Australia in diverse areas of case management

in the care system with young people, in domestic violence services, therapeutic rehabilitation, palliative care and mental health. Cassandra now runs a private practice supporting people with high levels of anxiety as well as ADHD, depression and suicidality. 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. Thank you.