Social Work Spotlight - Episode 65: Nicoletta

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

In this episode I speak with Nicoletta, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychological Studies, a Certificate IV in Mental Health, and a Masters Degree in Social Work. Nicoletta currently works as a Recovery Case Worker at Mission Australia, in the area of adult mental health recovery. She is also an Academic tutor at Western Sydney University, teaching the Masters of Social Work and other related social work courses.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:A21 (organisation aiming to abolish human trafficking) - https://www.a21.org/Wesley Mission LifeForce (suiceide prevention services) - https://www.wesleymission.org.au/find-a-service/mental-health-and-hospitals/suicide-prevention/wesley-lifeforce/Mission Australia - https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/Hearing Voices Group (Hearing Voices Network) - https://www.hearing-voices.org/hearing-voices-groups/Headspace National Youth Mental Health Foundation - https://headspace.org.au/All In the Mind podcast (BBC Radio) - https://open.spotify.com/show/5RWKykRm6KXHEDYJsp9G0NAll In the Mind podcast (ABC Radio) - https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemindABC iView online Mental Health videos - https://iview.abc.net.au/collection/2259This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bkTgZ9GAn8PsXXJhm7BBjO7efKTCceZDXTv-SVJFPbU/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 Nicoletta, who holds a bachelor's degree in psychological studies, a certificate for in mental health, and a master's degree in social work. Nicoletta has experience working with adults who have severe mental health illnesses and with the Wesley Mission Life Force Department, completing research in the area of suicide prevention, intervention and postvention. Nicoletta currently works as a recovery case worker at Mission Australia in the area of adult mental health recovery. She is also an academic tutor at Western Sydney University teaching the Masters of Social Work and other related social work courses. Hi Nicoletta, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Lovely to meet with you. Likewise, lovely to meet you. Can I ask first when you started as a social worker and what brought you to the profession?

Of course. I guess. from the very beginning. So just throughout childhood and my upbringing, I was always very fascinated by human behavior. I found myself investing a lot of time watching psychological films, particularly crime. And I was interested in the motivation and emotion behind behavior, identifying what drives people to do what they do. I started my Bachelor of Psychology shortly after finishing high school, and I really enjoyed it. Alongside this, I was living in a neighborhood which was predominantly characterized by a lot of social housing estates and so there i had met a lot of individuals who were experiencing many different types of challenges being i guess

flora socioeconomic conditions mental health drug and alcohol misuse some crime as well so i found myself becoming quite passionate about understanding their experiences their needs and their wants as well as their relationship with different authorities and so this coupled with with my own experiences in dealing with institutions such as facts and centering, for example, I became quite passionate about understanding the institutions and the structures, power relationships, policy and practice as well. And so I finished off with my bachelor and I then decided to pursue a certificate for in mental health, which was actually offered alongside my degree. And so I was completing that of the evening actually as I was finishing the bachelor and I started doing a

placement in mental health that as well as doing some social work electives so social action something I was quite passionate about and I then began I guess volunteering as a mentor in a high school at the time where I worked with youth off the streets on some homelessness projects working around grief and loss. And then I decided to pursue my master's degree in social work. And the rest is history. Yeah. I'm curious, as a young person growing up in that environment where there was a lot of

disadvantage, how did you understand that? How did you interpret it without having that framework of social work or that lens of social work that you would have had later on in your training? So at the time I considered my then neighbours to be troublesome. My lens was very much deficit-based. You could say judgmental, that the person was inherently the problem. And through being curious and inquisitive asking a lot of questions that were not often asked, the focal point was beginning to shift and expand to seeing the bigger picture or a more so structural level.

So I started looking into, you know, things around community development, building parks or having, you know, centres for young people that they can go and spend time and do things that they enjoy. And I had noticed that there was definitely that conflict between communication, you know, but it was more so, well, there's something that's wrong here that we're not understanding. And so what do we need to put in place that will make a difference? That's what I was thinking at the time. Yeah, amazing. And while you were completing the certificate, did you say you had a placement as part of that? Yes. And where was that placement? That placement is at my now current employment, which is Mission Australia. Okay.

So Mission Australia are a non-government organisation that provide various different services. My service in particular was adult mental health recovery. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what did you anticipate? completing that additional training on top of your psychology degree was going to offer you. Initially, the certificate four was offered to psychology students in order to develop the practical understanding and the skills that would be involved in casework because at the time, I guess, towards the end of my Bachelor of Psychology, which is what also led me into social work,

was that the relationship between theory and practice was not very well understood. And so I wanted to develop an understanding practically of what it might look like in the field. And so I chose to do that alongside my degree so I can develop those skills. Okay. And at what point were you then passionate about taking that extra step and going back and studying when you'd already been working in the field? So social action was the subject that actually ignited my passion to continue working with vulnerable communities. The subject involved coming together to tackle issues and to support one another in creating social change through various means of advocacy.

So I had completed a project on an organisation known as A21, which is an organisation that works to fight human trafficking globally. And then this included attending a silent walk in solidarity, as well as raising funds which myself and a classmate had later donated to the organisation. I can actually recall on a particular incident that happened within the subject that also contributed to my pursuit in social change, and that was when a group of students based their project on animal cruelty, and their social action resulted in accidental damage of property within the university grounds. And this matter was then escalated as the affected party.

was part of the legal department at uni. And so I guess that experience to me shed light onto the very fact that whilst we can enact social change, we sometimes do so within the confines of social order. And so social action seemed more important to me than ever in that you can develop the skills in communication, networking and persuasion to be progressive and to produce socially impactful change. Okay, so you finished your psychology, you finished your certificate, you had all that experience behind you, what were then your social work placements and how were you able to build on the experience that you already had? As I had completed the first placement in mental health recovery

through my certificate, I then went on to do my masters of social work. And my first placement there was a placement in the suicide prevention, intervention and post-advention. So I did that with an organisation, Wesley Mission, which is again a non-government organisation, part of a department known as life force. The work that I did specifically was around the research aspect, working with older people who were living in independent living units. Many was around identifying the protective factors against suicide. Again, linking the theory component to practice, the placement reflected heavily on the research processes that we learned throughout the Masters, as we adopted a lot of quantitative research and qualitative to try and generate rich and announced accounts of our participants

lived experiences, and also considering heavily ethical processes. We were also utilizing a program known as SPSS which I was familiar with from my undergrad. I was also able to develop specific skills around suicide prevention, identifying warning signs and triggers, which I reflect on heavily in my current role, as well as the importance of mandatory reporting and developing safety and action plans. And so it was really, it was an eye-opening experience, to say the least, But it again really sparked my passion into understanding the motive behind behavior and then putting things in place to try and improve the situation. But I found that working in mental health, so both my place and were mental health

specific. My second placement was, again, in my now employment place in a different area within Mission Australia, again, in mental health recovery. and I found as though my degree in psychology as well as my degree in social work and the certificate sort of intertwined provided me with the right amount of knowledge and skills that I needed for the role. Perfect. So you would have gone into your first role outside of study with so much confidence, I imagine just thinking everything that I've done up until this point has led me to where I am now and I know what I'm doing and I know what's expected of me.

I think that's very much an assumption. I believe you develop an understanding of a lot of things that you hadn't anticipated prior to doing the role. And the greatest acknowledgement is that you're working with individuals from different walks of life, with unique experiences and challenges, trauma backgrounds, support networks, needs and wants. and so each approach is individual and personalized and it involves building a really good level of rapport. One of my placements was supporting a group of older men to develop another program

and I remember going into it thinking who am I to kind of come up with these ideas and involve these men in something that is so foreign to me, how am I going to relate? You know, what is my positionality here? did you find that came up as a concern or an issue for you? How did you grapple with that? Absolutely.

It was definitely a challenge initially. Working particularly in adult mental health, and I am young, I found that I did receive a lot of lashback initially. So again, another assumption was that help would be wanted with open arms. But I did receive a lot of comments around, well, you're very young. you know, you don't know what I'm going through. You haven't experienced what I've experienced. And so that put a lot of things into perspective.

It made me realize the importance, again, of theory, relaying to the person, validating their experiences, but also allowing them to be the expert of their own narratives, of their own experiences, and reminding them that you don't know what they're going through, but you would like them to explain to you what they're going through. So you can have a better understanding of how you can help. Yeah. So it was having those, you know, detailed conversations around, I'm here for you, and I'd like you to help me understand further so we can work collaboratively to changing the circumstances. Yeah, perfect. How does that then bleed into what you're doing now? What's your

current role and what would a typical day look like for you? I understand you've got not just one role, you've got a few things on the side. Yeah. So my long-term role is a social worker. My role title specifically is a recovery case worker. And again, it's for a community support living program that is run through Mission Australia. And our role essentially is to provide mental health recovery services that are recovery-oriented psychosocial supports to people who are aged 16 years and over who are experiencing severe and persistent mental health illnesses. And so these illnesses vary. Quite commonly, it's schizophrenia.

There could be some personality disorders as well as mood disorders. And we work in collaboration with New South Wales Health to support the transition to community living through direct support and case coordination. Because it is adopting a recovery framework, we have the overall aim to reduce hospital admissions, recidivism and homelessness. And so our tasks throughout the day vary, depending on our consumers' needs. But we do various activities, which could be around capacity building,

linking our consumers to education, employment, vocational training, tenancy management support. So for some consumers who have been in long-term hospitalisations or incarceration, sometimes they require support around tendency management or developing life skills, as well as participation in social community access and recreational activities also, to build those connections within the community that are very much important to each and every one of us. We also provide peer support groups.

We do work alongside lived experience workers, tying into what we were speaking about, so that offers that really personalised approach. and again, we work not only with the mental health, but holistically to encapsure sort of the physical health as well. Yeah, and so that's my first role. My second role is an academic shooter at Western Sydney. So currently I am teaching the social work practice methods unit for the masters of social work, and I will be continuing to teach the social work in the Australian context unit in the following semester. Wow, you know, just on top of your regular load.

How did you step into that? I'm really curious as to how someone who is newer in their career, but obviously with a huge amount of passion and enthusiasm for what they're doing, how do you make that jump into academia? Obviously, it's on a level where you're probably not lecturing, but you're really supporting someone's understanding of the content that's presented throughout the course. What did that look like for you? Academia is something that I'm extremely passionate about.

I really enjoyed university when I was going and I was quite sad to have left, which is a very odd experience for many. I initially was phoned to complete a PowerPoint presentation for a social work careers expert when I was contacted by an old professor via LinkedIn. And initially I didn't know whether I wanted to do that, but I agreed to the opportunity thinking that it would be a challenge, a personal challenge. And I tend to, when I do feel quite challenged, I tend to take the opportunity without question. And it's sort of a bit of exposure therapy for me in a sense.

And so I jumped into the opportunity and I had prepared for that and I found that I had really enjoyed it. And then not long after I received a call from. one of my professors when I was studying the Masters of Social Work, who I then offered me the position to teach, which I was extremely excited about, and so I took the chance, yeah. Yeah, and I would assume that that continues to strengthen your understanding

of some of those theoretical components and how they relate to your own practice. Absolutely. So a lot of the theoretical components and practice models that we learn that academic space, such as the strength-based model, ecological systems theory, anti-oppressive practice, theories, say, around resilience and empowerment, for example, are use in our day-to-day practice and are in line with recovery principles, which involves promoting a culture or language of hope and optimism. And recovery, you know, is being the person first and holistic, and it involves social inclusion. And so we rely on these models to allow us to identify our consumers inherent

strengths, their resources, their resilience, and to understand their environment as well as their current supports that exist on all levels. So academia provides us with ways of managing, safety, self-determination, dignity of risk and also maximising our consumers' choices. which is what our role is essentially about. And most importantly, I believe that critical reflection is a really essential skill that I have learnt and continue to learn within this space. And it is the process of identifying

and questioning and assessing our knowledge and our assumptions, the way that we perceive events or incidents, beliefs, feelings, or our actions which ultimately allow us to enhance our practice by working with our consumers to set goals using what we've learnt and our last experiences to inform our future actions and as well as consider the implications of our thinking. And it also helps us, you know, stay protected against things

such as compassion, fatigue and burnout, for example, which are quite common in the field. And so going back to university, really it brought forward a lot of those passions and a lot of the reasons for why I'm doing what I do now. It grounded me and through that critical reflection process, a lot from our students as well, because we are constantly learning.

It reminded us what are the skills that we need? Are we working in our client's best interest? Are we working to provide a holistic approach or are we working on goals that we believe are important as opposed to what the client would like to achieve? So it's really great to, I guess, have a refresher and a reminder, but also to develop additional learning and understanding, you know, from the students in the course too, and to develop different perspectives with working with our consumers.

Our experiences in the field inform how the curriculum is run. Through the use of examples and real life, social work scenarios, students are then able to develop some of the critical skills that are needed for when they do enter the field. We are able to provide up-to-date resources and information around diverse policies and practices. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so important for the universities

to have people like yourselves who are still in practice and on the ground to be able to inform how the curriculum is run. I know in other places there can be a sense that the same things are taught and it's not being updated, it's not in line with what's practically being completed from other social workers. So yeah, I just think it's really important that you've got that opportunity to feedback into what's being taught and how people are preparing for getting out there and becoming a professional social worker. I know that you've done other training as well. You've done the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health First Aid.

before I saw that, I didn't actually know that that was a thing that existed. So I've done the mental health first aid. I knew that there was youth mental health first aid. How is it different in terms of maybe how it was developed or how it's taught? I think that the key component or differences with the course is that it is an approach that provides a tailored support towards First Nations people who are developing or experiencing mental health challenges and or a crisis. And it is based on evidence of experts who do identify as First Nations peoples themselves.

And it involves essentially providing the strategies for working with the community that are culturally appropriate. So around developing that awareness and understanding whilst being sensitive and being considerate of the language as well as the challenges and trauma, particularly intergenerational trauma, that these communities have faced and continue to face. And so the content involves a focus around the social and emotional well-being of First Nations people and mental health within these communities, and how mental health has been culturally and historically addressed and how it might be perceived,

as it is perceived differently among different communities. I can recall on a few experiences, personal experiences that I had whilst working, I assumed that by addressing an individual of Aboriginal background by their first name, would have been fine and a sign of respect. However, it was considered disrespectful. And I hadn't known that at the time, and that had severed my relationship and rapport that I had built. So I think it's really important to have the knowledge around how to work with people from a different lens, a cultural lens.

And our trainer, again, was of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background as well. So they provided, I guess, us with understanding different vocabulary that is used as well. And so it was a very personalised approach. And just so relevant to the work that you're doing, I can imagine there's a high-referralry. representation of First Nations people in those disadvantaged communities that you're working with. Yes, absolutely. We are very fortunate to have some fantastic workers on the team who are highly passionate and interested in this area. So we are constantly trying to upskill and to develop our understanding of not only training, but also the community resources that are available.

so we can better support our consumers. Yeah. With your role not being classed as a social work role as recovery caseworker, are there other people that you work with with a similar role from different backgrounds? Yes, absolutely. So we have a variety of different workers who have different backgrounds, so whether that be psychiatry, psychology, social work, different types of therapy. And we also have counselling as well.

so I guess they're all interrelated. That's within sort of the internal part. Externally, we work with a lot of different providers to work collaboratively, so that could be occupational therapists, case managers, a psychiatrist, again, physiotherapists. And so, again, because we do work collaboratively and we work holistically, we aim to work with people from different areas to provide that multidisciplinary approach. Are there times when your colleagues have asked you for your input because of your social work background? Has it been obvious at certain points of your career where you've realised that there is actually

a very different set of skills or knowledge that you bring to the role? Yes, absolutely. In my particular organisation, we all have similar training backgrounds in the social sciences. However, I consider one of my core strengths to be critically reflective, which was a skill I had developed through the master's degree. In particular, it was also a skill developed quite early on in a unit from my undergrad, which was known as introduction to logical thinking, which allowed us to formulate an understanding of issues, learning skills around analyzing, reasoning and problem solving, which is highly relevant to. to the current role as we're doing just that when we are analyzing each client case that we're presented with. Yeah. I assume there's a lot of work as well that needs to be done with external organisations and agencies that you probably got police, health, DCJ, education.

How can you work collaboratively with those organisations and departments? So we do work collaboratively with many different organisations, and we do that through communicating within a three-month block. We send each other updates around how it is. We also conduct case conferences quite regularly where we sit down with the consumer and ensure that we are meeting the needs and we're all on the same page on how to support. I think it's really fantastic that we have the ability to engage. with different services because it allows us to gain an understanding of the areas of the

consumers, you know, life that we may not necessarily be able to support with. And so working collaboratively allows us to have that understanding, but it also comes with its own challenges as well. Sometimes working from a different lens can be conflicting because there are different views on the consumer's well-being and what their needs are. And so, for example, working collaboratively with New South Wales Health, health follow what is known as the biomedical approach. And so they have quite an emphasis around medication and the psychiatry behind our consumers, whereas we are adopting a recovery-oriented practice framework.

and so we work alongside the psycho, we work with the social as well. So we believe in the importance of integration back into the community and, you know, building those really strong connections and relationships with people. Do you have many consumers who are supported with NDIS funding? We do, yes. Okay, so you've got an opportunity then to, I guess, understand how their planning processes work and how do you find the consumers that are supported under the NDIS model and the ones who are not who are, say, part of regular health systems and the Medicare services, do you find there's a

difference in outcomes or opportunities for them? So before I speak about some of the challenges, yes, I do believe that the NTIS has played a significant role with a lot of our consumers who experience psychiatric and psychosocial disabilities. And they've done so in many different ways. Our consumers have conditions which present their own unique challenges. And so I have worked with quite a few consumers who were able to access an NDIS package and funding was allocated to particular categories of support. And those included assistance with daily living, social community participation, employment and transport, as well as the coordination of these supports. I have worked alongside consumers who have experienced high levels of anxiety or had social disorders

or trauma associated with accessing medical systems, which impacted on their ability to attend appointments. And so the NDIIS was really helpful in supporting these consumers to attend specialist appointments with, say, psychiatrists or psychologists and other health professionals and services, as well as inpatient mental health facilities and public and private hospital patient care. And working with individuals who experience persisting auditory hallucination, for example, which is a common symptom experienced by consumers living with schizophrenia. They can find this experience particularly daunting. And often remain socially isolated. Having that support to access the community can reassure them

safety and security. It could also be support with funding, you know, assistive technology and accessing noise-canceling headphones that could protect against environments that may trigger negative emotions. Another example I can think of is around support for people who may live with a personality disorder. For instance, dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personalities, could involve symptoms such as repeated and excessive gaps in memory during day-to-day events. And so having NDIS support present around social and community participation is crucial. Aside from this is the teaching of life skills in general to allow our consumers to improve and maintain their functional ability with the ultimate

goal of increasing their independence. I find that NTIAS has only recently begun to recognise mental health as a condition, I guess, worth covering or conditions that impact a person's daily living as significantly as physical health issues. And so working alongside the NTIAS to provide support is quite interesting, but it's very intensive too. When we work alongside a long time, alongside the NDIS, one challenge of doing so is, again, that we work from a recovery framework. So a lot of our work is very strength-based. It's around identifying the consumers inherit strengths and resources and resilience, and then developing solutions on how we can, you know, improve their situation or lead them

down a path of recovery and essentially well-being. Whereas NDIS like to know the deficits. They focus more so on a deficit model and in that way they then discover, I guess, the areas of funding that they can allocate, whether that be to capacity building or to transport specifically. And so we work alongside them and there are services that are provided to them based on their needs or their funding. and so at times one of the conflicts that we can often have is that the direct support is not mental health informed and so as opposed to building on those strengths or for example showing a consumer how they may improve their skills to clean their house it's more so a service that has been done for the consumer right can be really challenging for the type of work that we do

I was speaking with Danny a few episodes ago. She actually runs her own business called The Divergent Edge, and she's supporting people, many of whom are adults getting a later in-life diagnosis of ADHD, and she was telling me that that diagnosis alone is not sufficient to push them across to being eligible for the NDIS, but often people with ADHD will then have other conditions that exist alongside of that. So have there been some conditions where you really see that someone could be supported under the NDIS model, but they just haven't met that eligibility criteria?

Absolutely. The majority of our consumers are experiencing severe mental health illnesses, and these illnesses have been seen to impact their life in some significant way, whether that be to find, you know, the motivation to wake up in the morning, to have the motivation to be able to do the activities that we do so effortlessly throughout the day, to be able to communicate, to be able to function on a level that they'd like to. Aside from that person who might be experiencing schizophrenia may suffer from auditory hallucinations. And so living with that condition and living with those symptoms,

symptoms can be quite daunting. And so having that support that the NDIS could potentially offer would be really helpful. You know, having a person who is supporting them in their day-to-day activities who might support them in areas where they feel threatened or, you know, unsafe. For example, a shopping centre where there are large crowds of people, that would be really beneficial for, you know, a consumer who might be considered well enough, you know, or too well to be receiving the services. Yeah. Or even people who, let's say they need assistance with scheduling or even making phone calls, just an advocate or representative when something that needs to happen is just a bit too overwhelming. I can really see the benefit of having

support workers in that environment. Other than different people, that you work with having different views on how to approach consumers and problems, what else do you find challenging about your role? What's really hard? One of the challenges that I found specifically working alongside my consumers was, I guess, a separation of goals and whose goals are we meeting essentially. So coming from a psychology background and a lot of research viewed goals as being goals once they were tangible. So working within again that recovery framework, a goal can be something as simple as being able to make that step out of bed in the morning or being able to step outside of the house

or just being able to call a friend in times of need. So I think for me personally it was a challenge, taking that step back and saying, well, although I can identify that there are so many incredible opportunities and so many inherit capacities here that my consumer could achieve, I need to remind myself that we're working with the consumer at being the expert. So we need to take that step back and we need to allow them to see the process and allow them to identify what their needs are and what they're going. goals are and what is important to them and what is meaningful, you know, and to celebrate those successes, you know, whether big or small. Do you find that having that exposure to people with

criminal activity or unpredictable behaviour is challenging? Yes, we do work with a lot of complex consumers and it is quite challenging, particularly, you know, the unpredictability of behaviour and just uncertain of what may happen or how that person might be feeling towards you at the time. I'm very fortunate to have an organisation that is quite supportive, and so supervision and debriefing is something that, you know, characterises a big part of our role. But I am very transparent. I try to assess my consumers on the day, and we discuss how they're feeling, and we discuss how they are. and if it was the case that they were a little bit elevated or they had a bad night or inability to

sleep or hadn't taken medication, then we would then assess the situation and perhaps reschedule or, you know, talk about what ways we can work safely. Okay, so if you're feeling unsafe at any point, it sounds as though you've got those mechanisms to step back, reassess, reschedule if you need to, and you've got your backing. from your organisation to say, yep, that's an appropriate way to handle this. Absolutely. And aside from the safety aspect of it is that working towards something while there is unpredictable behaviour is a little bit challenging because at times you could work with someone

who might be, say, very motivated to work towards a goal. And so you work 10 steps forward and then that person may experience something or have some trauma or have a memory of something that may have occurred, which then takes our work back quite significantly. So just dealing with, you know, the fact that some days might look good and some days might not look so good can be a little bit tricky to balance at times. Yeah, I can imagine for me the most difficult part would be that unpredictability of what am I coming into in the morning and leaving at the end of the day thinking, have I done enough?

And am I doing enough to support someone because I only see a small snapshot of their life at that point? How do you grapple with that? How do you switch off, I guess? We're very fortunate to have a lot of structure through our organisation where we have a lot of forms and assessment tools that allow us to document progress. And so documenting progress as well as the risk, risk assessments, health and well-being assessments. We have assessments that allow us to develop goals, utilizing smart processes, to try and identify what the consumer wants to achieve, how they will achieve that, and with who.

And so having that structure there allows us to then bring that forward to our consumer and then set our visits based on that. And so we allocate a time to our visit on working on a particular task, and we may then allocate a different time to working on something else. So again, there is that unpredictability because every visit or every interaction that we have with our consumers will vary based on what needs to be achieved or worked on during that session. Yeah. It's so good that it's so structured though because it provides you and the consumer with a bit of certainty going into the interaction. What do you love most? What is the thing that, you know, helps you get up in the morning and function in the way that you want to? Just giving our consumers the opportunity

to live fulfilled and meaningful lives. So being people in their lives who instill hope and optimism as well as future scope, which is often lost. I enjoy seeing my consumers has achieved goals that seemed so attainable and out of reach. And it is essentially that equal opportunity. Yeah. So you've really got an opportunity to build that relationship, get to know someone over time. And I assume then that there's also, they're not frequent flyers necessarily, but there would be people that would come in and out of the casework program depending on their needs. So you'd have the opportunity to follow people up further down the track and see how they're progressing. Absolutely. So we are a short-term intervention. So we do work with people specifically

in that period of their transition from either hospital or, say, again, incarceration. And so we're there for, I would say, a minimum of about three months, but then that could vary based on the progress that's made. There may be consumers who are extremely independent, who are able to develop the skills to manage and cope with their condition, who gladly and happily sort of transition out of the program to either other support services or just independently into the community. You just made me realise I'm not sure if, is there any element of your work that's compulsory or are all your consumers voluntary? Not all consumers are voluntary, so there may be some involuntary consumers who are sectioned and who are under what we call a community treatment order,

that is a legal order stating that the consumer needs to work with us in order to meet those requirements. And so our support there may be around, again, the psychosocial support, but also predominantly around medication, so ensuring that our consumers are taking their medication as directed, And so our role could be specifically around that or it could be in support of, say, a legal hearing that the consumer might have. And so, again, that can be quite challenging when there isn't a willingness to engage in the service necessarily. But we are a voluntary service too. And so we do put in measures in place to ensure that, you know,

we are working with that consumer. but of course if they are unwilling to engage after a certain period of time, then we do work towards a plan to exit from the service. That makes sense, yeah. What changes have you seen or have you heard about in this area of work over time, whether it's perhaps ways that we can support people with severe mental illnesses or debilitating antisocial behaviours, structural social inequities. I can imagine there's been a lot of work done in the last even five, ten years,

but how has that progressed from your perspective? There have been many changes in the field. I think the biggest for me, aside from the obvious, you know, increases in funding, is that societal attitudes are shifting. So there is a greater understanding, awareness and acceptance of mental health challenges and the support that is offered to manage these. I believe a big part of this cultural shift is due to those who have lived experiences of mental health. Childhood trauma, particularly, are becoming more confident to speak up

and also safeguarding measures such as teachers in schools and parents are able to, perhaps look out for early warning signs of abuse, which we're focusing again on preventative measures may and make a difference to the number of adult mental health related cases that there are now. And technology has made a large difference also, so not only in bringing these challenges to the forefront, but also in terms of our level of correspondence with other services and establishing that strong link. if there was a way that I could advocate for all of our consumers to be able to access some type of NDIS funded services, I definitely would recommend it. Yeah.

Do you feel like there's an element of a Band-Aid solution, though, in that funding? Because a lot of the funding would then be provided to someone once they've already hit that crisis point. Do you think that there's more or enough being done to support people to not get to that point? So I think, and whilst this is an improvement, the sector would highly benefit from support services that focus on primary and secondary prevention and early intervention rather than on maintenance. And we are seeing a lot of services that are educating our communities so that we can identify these early warning signs and put coping mechanisms or treatments in place during the onset

of these challenges. And although our service is based on short-term intervention, and we do see consumers who are at this maintenance state, but we also see consumers who have had early onset of symptoms that unfortunately had escalated to some form of a break or a first episode of psychosis that led them to our care. Yeah. Are there any projects or programs that you get to work on?

I'm wondering even with your research background, Is there something that you can do in addition to your casework role? So one of the projects I was actively involved in was the Hearing Voices Group that was run internally through our organisation by myself and my colleagues. At the time, I was finishing my integrated project for my Masters course, which was based on these groups. So the Hearing Voices groups are essentially based on self-help ethos. They begin as worker-led and become consumer-led.

The groups don't aim to replace already existing medical treatments, but rather what they do is they provide that additional support system into people's lives. And the purpose is to provide safe spaces for our consumers to share their experiences around voice hearing with one another. And then to develop the coping mechanisms to identify what works and what happens, doesn't work so well and to ultimately feel a sense of belonging. It provides that opportunity to also challenge some of the stigma and negative stereotypes that do exist and the groups have been known to have many benefits such as to increase confidence and self-esteem, the ability to identify and understand their experiences,

at times could be distressing and most importantly to normalise some of these experiences and to not feel alone. I think kudos to whoever came up with that title though. That's a really clever title for a project has so many meanings. Were there recommendations that came out of your research project then that might develop into something further down the track? I think it was again reiterating the importance of the social connection. Often, consumers who are hearing voices and are hospitalized are often advised to suppress the voices. And by doing so, there isn't much of an opportunity to have that flow on discussion that demonstrated to be really, really important in learning how to cope.

You know, so I guess the bigger picture is to not eradicate the voices, but more so to find ways of living and managing the voices. within daily life essentially. Yeah, so it's a great piece then to inform practice and the people working with people who are hearing voices to feel confident to take a step back and engage them in that process. Are there any other areas of social work that interest you?

I'm thinking you've worked predominantly in NGOs and community. Would you like to go further into academia or any other area of social work? I would definitely like to head, down the path of academia, considering potentially doing my PhD, if that was an opportunity to go rise, I'm also quite interested in youth work, as well as that working, you know, with driven or justice as well. So those are two areas that I'm particularly passionate about. Perfect. You've got plenty of time. Are there any resources that you'd recommend people to

check out on. You mentioned the recovery-oriented practice framework. You've done work around grief and loss. And yeah, I'm just curious if there are any resources, whether it's, it could be an article, it could be a website, it could be a podcast, whatever accessibility in terms of being able to inform people around the sort of stuff that you're grappling with. Absolutely. So Headspace is a non-for-profit organisation for youth mental health. They have a website where they actually provide the top 10 mental health apps and a description around what these apps provide essentially. Headspace themselves have an app which is called Meditate and Relax,

which is also quite useful for a lot of our consumers. Also, it's All In The Mind is a podcast that is currently airing that is quite fantastic and all in the mind from ABC Radio. Again, another podcast. ABC I View Online also have a lot of episodes around mental health experiences too and recovery. So utilizing different tools, different types of therapies, art therapies is quite common too. So I would definitely recommend those resources. Brilliant.

Yeah, I can pop those links in the show notes. just so that people can go off and do their own reading or listening. Is there anything else before we finish up that you wanted to talk about in relation to your work or your social work experience? It's been a great experience. I've really very much enjoyed it and I'm very happy and very grateful to be where I am. I'm continuously learning and not only developing professionally, developing personally, having a wider understanding

and different perspective and outlook on life. And I think that is really important that we start considering and putting ourselves in the perspectives and lives of others, you know, in order to best support one another because we all require support at some point in our life, you know, through whatever form it is. And we rely on our relationships,

we rely on services to provide us with that. And so in a very similar way, we can relate. I think it's so important to come back to that, even if you're not working as a social worker, just as a human being. But I love that you've been so focused from the get-go on driving social change, right, from your upbringing, and then you've developed on your mental health training that you've had. You've taken the opportunities that were offered to you,

and you've got your foot in both doors, which is really cool. You've got that link between theory and practice and taken up additional learning to inform your practice. I think it's important that you've got those really robust practices to safeguard yourself and your consumers to meet their goals. And I think you've come at it from that framework of recovery as opposed to the biomedical model. So you're looking at biopsychosocial and incorporating all aspects of that person's

context and what they want to be achieving, even if their goals might not match someone else's. So reaching for that advocacy role is so important in mental health where people often lose their voices. So I think it's incredible work that you're doing and I look forward to seeing where it takes you. Thanks so much for your time, Nicoletta. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask any of either myself or Nicoletta, 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 Claire, who, in addition to completing her social work studies, also has a degree in Indigenous studies. Claire started her work in child protection with Indigenous families and then progressed to community and impatient mental health and has personal and professional experiences working closely with mental health,

now working with people experiencing acute illness. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this next episode is available. See you next time.