Social Work Spotlight - Episode 8: Astrid

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

In this episode, Astrid and I discuss her more than 31 years of experience predominantly working for the Commonwealth Department of Human Services including in 18 Centrelink offices both in Victoria and New South Wales. Astrid recounts her other roles within Centrelink such as Job Capacity Assessor and an eight-month stint as a Case Manager in the aftermath of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire disaster. In addition to being a social worker, Astrid is also a rehabilitation counsellor and has a strong interest in assisting injured people to return to work.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Commonwealth Department of Human Services, encompassing Centrelink, Medicare and the Child Support Agency – https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/Commonwealth Department of Veterans’ Affairs – https://www.dva.gov.au/Vocational rehabilitation (providers of occupational and workplace rehabilitation) –https://www.arpa.org.au/Rehabilitation counselling – https://www.asorc.org.au/aboutus/about-rehabilitation-counsellors2009 Victorian Bushfires – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfiresMaslow’s hierarchy of needs – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needsRob Gordon, Psychologist (ABC 7.30 Report) – https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/trauma-for-bushfire-survivors-can-last-a-very-long/11698456Apartheid in South Africa – https://www.history.com/topics/africa/apartheidAustralian Association of Social Workers – https://www.aasw.asn.au/This episode's transcript can be viewed here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HdJsmFzXbhM98TNNglBFfXoHi0SkYt9I/view?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Hi and welcome to social work spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession in each episode. I'm your host, Yasmeen McKee Wright, and today's guest is Astrid. Astrid is a social worker with more than 31 years of experience, predominantly working for the Commonwealth Department of Human Services. After completing her social work degree in 1988, she commenced her career as a counselor at Penrith Women's Health Center, later securing a permanent social work position with the Department of Social Security, now Centrelink. Astrid has worked in 18 Centrelink offices both in Victoria and New South Wales, mostly supporting customers face-to-face and more recently within a call centre environment. Astrid has also performed other roles within Centrelink, such as Job Capacity Assessor

and an eight-month stint as a case manager in the aftermath of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire disaster. She has performed suicide risk assessments within a small national team of social workers in the child support agency. Astrid completed a graduate diploma in rehabilitation counselling in 2018, as she wanted to gain a qualification in assisting injured people to return to work. She has also worked for Mission Australia and an employment service provider doing job capacity assessments and vocational rehabilitation. Astrid has just recently moved back to Cape Town, South Africa, to pursue her love of counselling and training on a pro bono and consultancy basis. She continues to have very strong links in Australia as her three adult children reside in Sydney.

I've been a social worker for 31 years now. I was a school teacher for a very, very short period of time here in South Africa. I did a Bachelor of Arts where I majored in sociology, nutrition and textiles and design. And I spent two years before we came over to Australia just teaching home economics and needlework. So when we came over to Australia in 1985, my husband and I, I did a six-month stint in a Catholic girls college. And I said to my husband, I really, really feel that there was something more that I wanted to do. for the community, I thought that social work was the best way to go about that. And my parents were actually both school teachers, and they worked in very low socio-economic areas.

And while I was growing up, we were also exposed to the environment that my parents chose to provide education in, you know, whereas they could teach in middle class, areas, schools and so forth, my parents chose to work with underprivileged communities. I always thought, oh, you know, my mom is doing this, but isn't there more that we could do for the community? And I think social work was just the best avenue to go into. And I've never ever looked back. Sounds like it's in your DNA. It is in my DNA.

I've actually got a brother who, he worked in a very underprivileged area in Cape Town as well. He had a chemist there, he's a pharmacist. and I still swear that he's the best pharmacist I've ever known and he also used to provide medication to people who couldn't afford to pay for it and he's such a humanitarian even today it's just the way we grew up always looking out for people who needed more I always tell my husband I will fight for people who don't have a voice and I've always felt that that was my calling that I would stand up for the underdog

and if I can think in essence what social work really is, is about speaking for people who don't have a voice. I think especially having worked for a place like Centrelink, you really get a feel for the systems that people have to work within, but also internal systems, being able to just respect that everyone has their place and this is what you bring to the table, this is what I bring,

and trying to be able to respectfully nut that out and say, you know, what can I do to enable you? to feel more confident in those interactions. And that's something I think that we develop in our theoretical approaches, but also in our practical of what does a social worker do. Are they looking at an individual role or are they looking at the system as a whole? Oh, yeah. And I think that's why Centrelink has, over the years,

I mean, I started in Social Security. May have been a little bit before your time, yes, me. But I started in Social Security. And of course it became Centrelink many years later on. But that's the value that social workers have given to Centrelink and, you know, them expanding their services over the years because they know they need social workers. Didn't matter which government was in power, they always saw the benefit of having social workers within the organisation. Having said that, I did a couple of months in DVA just before I went over to do rehab counselling. but I worked for almost 18 months in the child support agency as well with Department of Human Services.

I was seconded over to child support and just the benefits they saw, you know, talking to some of the vulnerable clients of the department was seen as a benefit there, you know, suicide risk assessments, social workers. There was about 10 or 12 of us who did that job nationally for child support. So we sat within child support agency, but even just having us there as a support for staff, not only with the clients on the phone, but also supporting staff in that whole system, they saw the value in that. And I think the three months that I did at DVA, that was the same thing as well,

where they've brought social workers in to come and assist with some of their vulnerable veterans, which is a very different co-operative. hoard once again of clientele very much untapped and I think DVA is working very hard to assist that group of veterans but social workers just do amazing things and um very proud of being a social worker although I've sort of dabbled in other things in between I've been overseas as well so I've sort of left Centrelink and gone to work in doing government work but in other areas as well like Bok rehab for instance. I think working with unemployed people in Centrelink for so many years,

there was sort of like always in the back of my mind, I always used to think, I'm talking to this person now and abusing substances at the moment, but hey, what if he or she overcame that? They'd be able to work because they've given me this little bit of a background of what they used to do before, what would happen if they could actually get back to work. And work has always been on my mind, even though I've worked with unemployed people most of my social work career. I think that sort of like graduated me back to this whole work thing where I then thought, okay, if I did some extra study in rehab counselling, that would sort of give me a bit of a platform

to work with those people. As Centrelinkist. changed as well. So did service delivery within Centrelink too. They were sort of moving towards more the model of very little face-to-face, but more on the phone stuff. So I think for the past couple of years, I've been working in call centres mainly for Centrelinks. But I mean, phone work is something that you can reach everybody on a phone. And was there an aspect of the face-to-face that you missed in that setting where you were in the call? Center? I miss the face-to-face very much. I can understand the logic about, you know, you can reach people in remote areas. In the job I used to do within Centrelink, in participation in particular,

I used to have about 99% indigenous clients every day on the phone and I simply enjoyed that. But it just showed you that with phone, you can actually reach more people. As a social worker, it's our job to fit in and make sure that we make sure that we make the best out of what our workplace can offer. In participation, the social workers were talking to clients about what were stopping them from meeting the participation requirements. So could be homelessness, vulnerability with substance abuse, health issues, mental health issues and so forth. So you'd spend a bit of time with them just talking through, okay, so you didn't go to your provider last week and they put in a participation report and, you know, what was that all about,

you know, and then you hear what they have to say and you talk through the different issues. And this particular job was mainly to provide a recommendation or input into how the participation team in Centrelink was going to deal with this client. So you could say, yeah, you know, they had a personal crisis on that day or they actually been evicted and they'll need maybe a couple of weeks just to find another place to stay. Could you please consider having, you know, given them a month or from looking for work? And then we very, very quickly have to type up a little report to give to the participation centrelink person who's actually the delegate who makes a decision on whether to apply, you know,

a penalty or a non-payment period and so forth. So social work is very crucial in that space. You know, it's always good when they don't apply the penalty because it means that, you know, they've accepted what you've had to say. They've accepted your assessment. And it comes down to the fact that in Centrelink, they've got a huge respect for social work and the job, you know, that we do, be it face to face on the phone. I think with the Veterans Affairs thing, that was sort of a very separate job that I applied for. They were looking at how social workers could be employed and to assist with their clients. So there's been a lot more emphasis on looking after vulnerable veterans.

I actually moonlighted doing some other things within Centrelink, which weren't exactly social work. With job capacity assessment, used to assess clients for disability pension, also to see whether they needed an exemption, maybe for a year or two, from looking for work as well. So that came with that job. But with every job within Centrelink, there's a different set of reporting.

So you actually have to learn very quickly about how to report on certain things. Yeah, like I love dabbling in a lot of stuff. I love training as well. So when it comes to who wants to train people in domestic violence or who wants to train people in, you know, resilience or sleep, I will always want to do that because it's always something a bit different. what you do every day. And were there any other social workers working with you or were you the only one in the team? Okay, so within Centrelink, if you've worked in a customer service center, there's at least one social worker in every customer service center.

So depending on the size of it, you'd have one social worker would usually then, you know, be supervised by someone, you know, we've got teams. So depending on the size of the actual center, you'd have. either have one or two social workers working within that centre. But like when you're working in a team, like in participation, like I mentioned, there'd be groups of social workers in call centres around Australia and you also work in clusters as well. So you might be two people sitting in an office on the phone, but you'd also be working as

part of a team of maybe two social workers in another office on the phone and two social workers in another office in a phone and you'd be a team. So even the way you think about teams, we had to change that way of thinking as well. Always bearing in mind that you also have to look at your ethics as a social worker and, you know, what you think is right for the client. I can imagine Centrelink and even, you know, back in the day, social services would have been a great place for a student placement. And you've had quite a few students in your time.

What do you think they would have gotten out of that? Were there any projects that they could work on? Or was it more just getting used to the system and the structure and understanding where they fit in that? When I was working in Sydney, it would be very, very practical. Where you really have to see whether, A, they can work with clients, whether they were good with clients, whether they could actually sit and have a chat with someone about their circumstances.

How they dealt with staff is a very important thing as well. Because I think, yes, mean, if you're a social worker and you're working in an environment, we have to work with other staff members who are not social workers, you really have to get a lot of them on board. You have to be able to communicate with people you're working around who are working around you, not only to support them, but for them to see the value of your work. If a student came on board and they couldn't even say hi or goodbye to the staff, then there'd really be a huge red flag there already, get them to see a few clients, see how they work on the phone with a client.

Even if they're not a good analyser at first, and that's what you usually assume that they'd learn on the job after they've done a couple of placements, but you'd really want to hone in on the basics, which would be communication. There was one student in particular. I don't know what happened. she had a very bad student placement with child protection and I don't know, that affected her a lot and they weren't sure how she was going to go with her final placement. But she came through with flying colors. She just grew in the placement.

It was just unbelievable. Staff loved her. She was so good with clients. And you have to start where they are because they're your little clients, aren't they? You really have to work on, you know, what these strengths are and see where the gaps are and work on that. So yeah, love working with students. I think that's your responsibility to have students and mentor students. I miss that in the latter part. I think the communication you're mentioning goes so many ways because what they would have missed out on having just a call

center experience would have been even just the basic sitting down with a client or a customer and filling out a form. And that written communication and social workers ability, to really articulate succinctly what they need to say and what are the most important parts. You've only got so much space. Some of the questions can be a little confusing or there's sometimes duplication there. And it's not meant to catch someone out. It's just meant to provide them with an opportunity to really say, what is the issue here and what do I need?

But I think a student placement where they have an opportunity to sit down with someone and reflect or repeat. what someone has said in a written form would have been so valuable for them really powerful to gain their confidence. There's also a component, Yasmin, of a client being quite happy to be involved in a student's learning, like, you know, how you'd introduce them to the students and say, look, would it be okay with you if Yasmin, you know, helped you fill out your form with you? or she rang a few agencies on your behalf.

Just let her know what you need and, you know, what you've done before you came here today. Would you be happy to have a chat with Yasmin about that? And, you know, some clients, or most of the clients in my experience, were so happy to be part of the students learning. The student would say, oh, you know, such and such rang me this afternoon again, gave me this feedback about how they went with that agency. and that's how the students build confidence as well, talking on the phone with somebody that they saw two days ago.

And this client was happy to chat to them or call them back. You know, just the enthusiasm that you'd get from some students. And I remember the old days with Social Security and before we were so IT literate, just after we had PCs, we could do like pamphlets and so forth. Part of their learning would usually be, you know, ringing agencies just to find out whether their... contact details were still the same and whether their referral details were still the same

and they change the document accordingly. We work with difficult clients and with difficult agencies. Yeah, I think you would have some of the most difficult conversations, challenging conversations with people. That's true. Yeah, I agree. If you think about over a span of 31 years as a social worker, I think I've dealt with the worst, I'd say. You deal with. You deal with. with the worst and you deal with the best, best clients, lovely people, you know. It's one of the best social work jobs you could ever do because you get so much exposure to everyone. It's interesting when you think that no one coming to you necessarily wants to come to you. No. That's kind of an interesting spin on it. So they're all having to come to you and

they're in your hands. Yes. And it sounds like you're just trying to give them the best possible experience. Exactly. And people would often, when I'd say to them that I've worked in Centrelink or Social Security, people will say like, how do you manage to do that? How did you manage to work in such a horrible place for such a long time? And I'd say actually, it's one of the best places I have ever worked in has been Centrelink. And now, of course, it's the Department of Human Services, which encompasses Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support Agency. I've managed to work in two of those and the best environment to work in as well.

And look, as you were saying, in most of our social work jobs, it's involuntary. As a social worker, you have to make that experience, the best experience that you can for that client so that they can say, I've worked with a social worker at Centrelink and they were so helpful. they help me or they link me up with this person or they work with another group of workers

in other agencies to get me this house or to get me onto this program. And speaking of adding skills, perhaps you can explain if people aren't aware what a rehab counsellor does and how you kind of came to that additional study. There was a period of time when in 2005 the whole family came back to South Africa for a year, and I had resigned from Centrelink and then we go back to Australia. I was out of work for, say, six months where I was settling, you know, getting kids back off to school and husband went back off to work. And then I was dabbling in a little bit of,

I did a bit of work with someone I worked with before and he was working in private practice with his partner. On their books, they had a few psychology referrals and then they had a few psychology referrals and then they had a few social work referrals and he asked me if I'd sort of moonlight as a sole trader doing a bit of social work for them. So I started off like that and then I did that for a couple of weeks and then he calls me again and he says to me, Astrid, I think I may have a job for you, but it's with an employment services provider. You know, they're working with some Commonwealth Rehab service clients. They now needed to re-engage some of the clients. They now needed to re-engage some of the

It would be perfect for you having worked in Centrelink to re-engage some of those clients for them. These were people who had health issues and some disability issues and they were supposed to get those people back to work. So I said, look, that's fine. I'll see what I can do and yeah, I'll be happy to do that. And then I worked in a small team of health professionals and each one of us had a group of clients. We had to try and re-engage. I really enjoyed doing that. And I was working through their disabilities and their health issues, looking at, you know, what their prospects were.

And I was sort of doing something that I really always wanted to do because having worked with unemployed people in centering Social Security all along, I've always wondered what it would be like for these clients, for some of them, if they overcame their whatever issues they had where the work would be, I mean, work's always good for anyone. So here I was in a position where I was sitting with people who weren't exactly being chased to go and look for work or anything. I was just supposed to sit with them and work through their issues and then look at work

prospects for them. And I really enjoyed that. I did that for almost a year and then I got a job back at Centrelink again. But that feeling and that mindset always stayed with me that I could actually sit with a client, maybe get them some training, work with them with the healthy shoes, and train them even, you know, how to look for work. And I thought that if ever I had an opportunity to go back to university, I would go and do rehab counselling. So in 2018, I went back to uni.

it was a face-to-face class. I worked part-time and I did a full face-to-face course in rehab counseling at Sydney uni. So, you know, there you learn about insurance and you learn about eye care. Because there you really learn about vocational rehab and disabilities. And then 50% of your training is again going back to basic about counseling and how you engage people and how you motivate people and how to help them overcome their barriers in terms of work and their health. So yes, I went back and did a grad dip in that. That sort of

steered me towards that area. Just using those skills even as a social worker can also assist. So you can use your skills interchangeably and that's what I like about the two things that I've got going at the moment. I've actually seen that you've done some disaster relief back here in Australia as well and I'm just curious to see from a social work perspective how that all was and what skills you brought to that. Oh my gosh. That was the 2009 bushfires. I think I worked eight months as a case manager within the bushfires for that disaster. There was a group of probably about 50 social workers from all specters of Commonwealth. And I think we each had about eight clients.

I had one family and then I had a couple of individual clients and so forth. Trauma is a very, very different thing. And I think this morning before I woke up was thinking about a couple that was referred to me. When I started working with them, they were very, very aloof about getting assistance from anywhere. and I'd actually organised a home visit with them in the initial stages. They'd just had a baby and of course their house burned down. I was never allowed to be alone with her. I often wondered whether there were any issues with domestic violence there.

In the end, I ended up having an email communication just with him. I never ever got to talk to his wife again. She was very quiet and very aloof and you said, look, just call us when they're there's anything new, but other than that, we don't want any further input from yourself. And I often wondered what was going on there in terms of their whole dynamic, because usually in all the other clients, they were really happy to have input. I mean, the more input I had, they just enjoyed it. But what it brought to me was that when the bushfires came through, people had so many different situations that they were in, in their relationships. It wasn't just

about a property that had burned down. There was one guy whose marriage was almost on the rocks when the house got burned down and he was going through a lot of depression. He was actually a builder and he built his house from scratch and the house had burned down to the ground. He suspected that his wife was unfaithful to him

by the time that the fires came through. So we were sort of working through all of that and I really had to hone in on just the essence of what people actually need. needed and then working my way from there. So it comes back again to start where the client is, right? So you're looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But a lot of people, you know, there was a lot of things that people had and what they got. Some people were better off than others. Some people had insurance and were living in, you know, rented accommodation already. There were some people

who never had insurance or were living with other people. But in his case, he was depressed. in the very beginning, but then in the end, he was actually living with a friend of his, and he started doing things on his friend's house that needed maintenance, because his friend had a full-time job and working outside, and he was starting to fix his friend's house up, and he was living in his friend's garage. And then there was another lady that worked up in Darwin. She had lost her daughter and three grandchildren in the fires. So her daughter her lived in Melbourne and I was doing bereavement counseling with this lady for the months that I was a case manager.

Again, it came to the point where she was coming down to have the memorial service for a daughter. You know, you have to look at, okay, I'm a social worker here. How far do you move into this client space? And she said to me, I know, Astrid, you think you may not think that I want you at the funeral, but I want you to be there. You know, you just don't know the depth of how your relationship with people become so important to them. She was so grateful for me coming and my daughter went with me to the funeral and she said to me, Mom, that lady really, really, you know, you could see that you really helped her.

And I said, you know, I didn't know what I could do for this woman in the beginning. I was just given this lady's name and I was told that her and her husband had lost their daughter and three grandchildren in the five. and I thought, what could I do with her? What could I do? You know, as I was saying, there was a range of things that was presented to me and everyone was different. When I came from the bushfire case management, we really had to be sort of debrief for a while and we also got a lot of benefit from the professionals like the psychologist, Dr. Rob Gordon, he was sort of like the master of disasters at the time. We learned a lot from him as well. And we've got to be a lot. a lot, a lot of training in bereavement and from him was a lot about the different stages of

disaster recovery. So we came out of that whole episode, much better social work, as I'd say. Wherever we came from, whichever part of the Commonwealth we worked in, we actually just learned so much from that experience as well and we learned so much about how to deal with different people. It was a good experience and something that I always think I did well. I think that all the clients that are assisted, they all went away okay. That's the best you can do, isn't it, as a social worker? I think it went down to a state level after that where the disaster was then managed by the state government in Victoria. So we handed over whatever clients we had to state government social workers in child protection, Department of Human Services.

But there wasn't much I needed to hand over. We pretty much, once we were coming to an end, most of our clients said no, they're okay with everything. You mentioned that there were some psychologists that you had the opportunity to work closely with, but I'm wondering what sort of support you had and how you looked after yourself in that space where you were busy looking after other people who were going through a disaster recovery. I think the way they did it was really good.

Although it went out and we had our clients, we had team leaders who worked with us on the ground. And they were social workers as well. And these were people we knew from our network anyway. And we'd catch up once a week with our team leaders to work out how we were going, talk about the different cases we had. In terms of professional development, that was, again, on the side. Those were services that were co-opted by the Commonwealth to assist both clients and workers.

But we didn't really need, we didn't need any help from the psychologist as such. Rob Gordon was a psychologist, but he sort of helped with clients' journey and he taught us how to recognize the different stages. It was really when we went in to seminars with Rob, it was people from the community that we were helping, plus ourselves, that were sitting in the same audience. listening to this, which I thought was quite good because we get our clients to go with us and then we discuss it with our clients afterwards and say, okay, like where in the spectrum do you think you were with that particular topic or that particular discussion? And we'd

sort of work with the client that way. The way that they did it was actually a model for a lot of the disasters that have happened after that because the Commonwealth now has a response. Centrelink now has a proper response to that. So when you hear about bushfires happening up north or the bushfires that we've had recently, once it becomes a disaster for the Commonwealth, then I think they know now how to respond. And now you've made a complete sea change. You've moved overseas again.

I'm hoping to start a business where I've got a counselling service where I can actually deal with on a pro bono basis at first, just helping wherever I can. At the moment, we're in complete lockdown still. Yeah, in South Africa. We've got a curfew from 8 at night till 5 in the morning. We're only allowed to be on the road if we want to buy food or seek medical help. We're only allowed to be out on the street between 6 and 9 every morning to exercise and walk our dogs. So, you know, it's still very much a locked up situation.

But at the moment, I'm working on some material and working on my website even now just to see what my value proposition will be. I mean, it's always been my dream to do my own thing. But it's about marketing and networking and most of my networks are in Australia. So it's going to be a bit of a difficult one here. I'm a very, very close alumni with my university. my BA degree from here in South Africa. So hoping that I may start very small with my counselling, you know, and it's just going to be a one-stop shop anyway.

So I'll cover all spectrums of counselling. I mean, we're talking about vocational, we're talking about, you know, just psychological stuff. You know, the rehab counselling course, we did a lot of group work as well. So that is something that I've never been able to do before. Yeah, so that's what I want to do. I'm curious as to if time or money or pandemics were not an issue, what other kinds of social work you might have been or might still be interested in pursuing?

I'd love to work with Indigenous people. And if ever I was able to do that, I'd love to go and work in Indigenous communities. And I think I want to hone everything that I've got to give because having this home economics, teaching thing, I can teach people's social skills, I can teach them life skills, I can hone in on the psychological stuff, I can help them with work, help them with finding the right training to do a particular job.

And I've been doing some of these things on the phone with participation already. So I'm just hoping to hone in on all those sorts of things. So I'd love to work in an indigenous community, whether it be out in the outback or even just out in cities. I was born and raised in apartheid era and there are a lot of people in South Africa that are totally still disadvantaged by that regime who I would love to work with. And you know, I'd give my time pro bono for that. There's a lot of poverty and a lot of disadvantage. And at the moment, the COVID-19 has highlighted what strife people are in on a daily basis. It's amplified everything, Yasmin.

has amplified a lot of things. And, you know, there was issues with crime, issues with fraud, issues with extreme poverty, which, you know, people are starving here in South Africa with a lockdown. So the government has had no choice but to open up a few avenues work-wise so that some people can get back to work. So it's just amplified the issues. Is there any type of social work that you've never had any interest in? probably age care and probably because personally, you know, I had my mum live with me all the time and I had issues with the age care provision, you know, that area when my mum had dementia. I find that it will affect me emotionally if I did work in that arena.

You know, I think they can do so much better. My mom was in age care for eight months and my mum had. hated being there and I hated working with the providers at the age care facility. In the end, I actually took my mum out because she hated being there. And although she was very well cared for on a personal level, my mom, her room was impeccable, she was impeccable. But she just didn't want to be living there. She loved living with her family.

And it was hard for me to actually put it in there because, you know, I was working full time and most of the time my husband and I and my whole family, she'd wake up in the middle of the night she wouldn't sleep. I felt that the age care system actually failed us as a family. She hated sitting in the dining room with all those other people because she didn't think she was old. By the time I took mum out, I was so disgruntled with the whole thing that when I look at age care and when I think of age care,

and I know I can make a difference there, if ever I've got to manage an age care facility. I'd do it so differently. Where else wouldn't I like to work in? I was always scared of disabilities, but now that over the years I'll be fine with doing that too. But I think age care is just the biggest thing. I just can't.

It's too personal for me. I couldn't do it. You've spoken a lot about what you loved about your jobs and the roles that you've held with Centrelink and many government departments, there are always funding restrictions and eligibility restrictions and wanting to help someone, but you're constrained by the legislation or by the policies. And I know also with Centrelink, there are a lot of expectations that people hold, so they might go into that environment thinking it's going to be a particular way

or thinking that they're going to have a particular experience. and I guess your role was to prove them wrong and show them that there is a heart in the government. There are things set out for them for a particular reason. But what were some other things that you found particularly challenging? I think once people understand why Centrelink asks things in this way or why are we filling out of form at the moment together and Centrelink has asked you the same question in five different ways, as social workers, we need to inform people about what is legislation and what is policy. Because, you know, you can change your policy tomorrow.

Policy can be, okay, because of COVID-19, we're only going to allow 10 people in the office at a time. Circumstances will change policy. But with legislation, most of our clients will know that things are based on legislation. and as social workers, our frontline work is to try and work out what is the most appropriate payment that a person can be on. If people are informed, it's in legislation, people go and look at it today on the website as to, you know, how Centrelink makes decisions.

And that's the basis of social work too, eh, giving people options and giving people information. I think our biggest challenge in Centrelink has been aggression. Senior social workers have got quite a high standing within an office because you're sort of the go-to person and you know you make people feel comfortable and stuff like having you around and that's the environment that the social workers cultivate within Centrelink. A Fitzroy office was quite a difficult office to work in.

It was the inner city Centrelink office where we had homeless, people, people struggling with mental health issues, people with substance abuse issues, all of them used to come to Fitzrore office, which sometimes, you know, when the manager was in there, I'd have to stand at the door with my heart in my stomach telling somebody that they should leave. I had to sort of change the culture. That's what social workers do, eh? You try, you see a culture that's not good for everyone. And then you try and change the culture. culture, work with staff and help them think in a different way and how to make them think outside the box and help them to use their delegation when they're just scared of using it.

Social workers were very much on the forefront with being on a panel with your manager and team leaders in the office, working on a way that you could service the client who was aggressive and working with them to maybe fit in some other agency from our business. outside who could help that person. So you can say, look, you can't come in here, but I know you see Sally down at housing on a regular basis. So whenever you've got issues with your payment, you can possibly ring from there, you know, and we'll help you with that. And you meet people at interagency meetings, and that's what I thought was so fun. Being at Centrelink and Social Security was that we met on a monthly basis and met all the agencies in the area.

and worked on ways how to help clients. I often used to go to our local maternity hospitals in Melbourne as well, and I used to talk to them about claiming family payments and how we can streamline things for moms that have just had babies, and I take the forms to them. You become friends, so you could just basically pick up a phone and say, hey, can you help Mrs. Bloggs? She's got this, this and this problem.

Would you be able to give some information about it or can I send her down? Centrelink is very big on community engagement. So that's how we get around changes and so forth, which people can't get their head around. Because social workers are change agents wherever they are anyway. I'm curious to see what changes you have noticed over time in social work. I think the problem that I've seen, or the changes, okay, you say changes, but I sometimes see it as a little bit of a problem too.

Being as old as I am and being in the profession as long is just the training in the universities. And look, I'm just thinking about Jonathan, my son. I remember us doing social policy and administration, social policy and provision. How the government delivers social policy and how it administers it. I think that new students don't really know those. things and I don't know why they haven't at least focused on a little bit about that. I just find that particular skill, that knowledge is a little bit deficient sometimes in the students. I think they go more in depth into the elective part of things where we mainly

just skinned over it, but I don't think a lot has changed. I don't know. Social work hasn't changed. I think agencies and the way that they deliver this service, have changed. So social work has had to adapt to that. I think what's changed with social work is now that many of social workers now have to go and work in environments where they need to be on the phone and COVID-19 has actually pushed people towards that. In a rehab counseling sense, I think that would be really, really difficult. How do you do job training with a client that you really have to be limited in seeing them face to phase. Yeah.

Well, I guess then in the current environment, it is really helpful that there are so many call centre jobs and that we can continue to work through this period where there are contact precautions. I think that COVID-19 is going to be around for the next couple of years and I think that's the only way that they've now gotten out to say, okay, this is how to keep us all safe. You're all going to go on the phones and our customers are only going to be able to get us online or on the phone.

So that's where I think Centrelink will be going and this situation has actually given the government a huge impetus to do that. And I think some people will respond better than others. Some people will see this as a great opportunity to develop other skills and other people might just really struggle with the format. But hopefully Centrelink and other departments will be. be providing their teams with support and training and whatever else they need in a perfect world. If people want to know more about social work in this field, where would you direct them? Is there any reading or viewing or organizations that you'd suggest they check out? I'd tell me to go look on AASW website, whatever they can see as a non-member.

I just Google a lot of stuff. Having a lot of articles too, I've got lots of PDF documents. I've accumulated over the years about different types of interventions and what social workers do. You know, it's about building up a little bit of a library about what you can send to someone if they're inquiring. And even looking at if they want to go and learn social work, obviously they can go to the different websites of the different universities that offer social work and see what they've got to offer there and maybe demystifying some of the things that they think is social work. I'd love to, for people to network and any question or anything even about what it's like to work in

certain areas of social work, although I don't have an extensive repertoire. But if anybody wanted to just pick my brain about anything, I'd be happy to do so. I've also got some training materials that I could let people make use of as well that I've put together over the years. So you know, things on domestic violence. Because I love putting stuff together. So if there's anybody who needs any help, please get them to contact me. Thank you. That's very generous. I think other people, if I can even get them to connect with you via LinkedIn or if you're

happy for me to share your email address, I can put that all in the notes and people can access that and then get in touch with you that way. Thank you so much, Jasmine, for asking me to do this. Thank you. It's been lovely chatting. I love my profession. You can use it, whether you're working actually. or not. Social workers are the best, and I'll leave you with that. Thank you very much for giving

me the opportunity, Yasmin. Thanks, Astrid. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Astrid, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email S-W Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. You can also search for Astrid Nolves, that's K-N-O-W-L-E-S, on LinkedIn if you'd like to connect. 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 Sarah, who has worked within the migrant and settlement services sector for the last 10 years. Sarah's work has included supporting survivors of human trafficking and slavery, refugees, people seeking asylum and individuals with complex medical health needs. Sarah also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate social work university students focusing on social justice, human rights and cross-cultural social work. She has studied and worked both domestically and internationally and has a particular interest in the intersection between social work, mental health, and forced migration. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you are notified when this next episode is available. See you next time.