Social Work Spotlight - Episode 83: Stephanie M

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

In this episode I speak with Stephanie, who has worked in Canada supporting people with addiction and comorbidities, and now works on accreditation, social impact and organisational transformation. Stephanie is the quality and compliance manager at The Burdekin Association, where she manages a team of six specialists who work to amplify best practice for children and young people with trauma. Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode: The Burdekin Association - https://burdekin.org.au/Leap of Reason - https://leapofreason.org/Dr Gabor Maté - https://drgabormate.com/Oliver Sacks Foundation - https://www.oliversacks.com/Prof Yuval Harari - https://www.ynharari.com/Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score - https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-scoreJohann Hari - https://johannhari.com/Rutger Bregman - https://www.rutgerbregman.com/Very Bad Therapy podcast - https://www.verybadtherapy.com/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QlSMT6aqy6uIwJT76xr9HsyIEi5jddfomcHnahTu8rE/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

I begin today by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Euror Nation, traditional custodians of the land on which I record this podcast, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have an intrinsic connection to this land and have cared for country for over 60,000 years, with their way of life having been devastated by colonisation. Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession in each episode.

I'm your host, Yasmin McKee Wright, and today's guest is Stephanie, who became a social worker in 2015 when she landed a dream job case managing children and young people in out-of-home care and at risk of homelessness. She has also worked in Vancouver, Canada, to gain experience supporting people with addiction and comorbidities. As a systems thinker, however, after a few, few years of frontline work, she found herself being asked to write and develop policy and procedures. This led to working on accreditation, social impact and organizational transformation, and she joins me today as the Quality and Compliance Manager at the Bodekin Association, where she manages a team of sick specialists who work to amplify best practice for children

and young people with trauma. Welcome, Steph, onto the podcast. I'm excited about having a chat with you about your social work experience so far. Thank you, Yasmin. Thank you so much for having me. I would love to know when you began as a social worker and what brought you to the profession. So I started when I was just out of uni and it was about 2015. I was fortunate to get a job more or less straight out of uni and within the geographic area that I was living in. I was sort of considering at that point different options, including regional or international, but a really, really great position came up close to where I was living and sort of it was basically too got an opportunity to refuse. So I've been there for some time,

but what led me there, I suppose it was a little bit, there was some backwards and forwards, and it's probably common to hear social workers say they felt pulled towards social justice from a young age. Yeah. And for me, that was certainly the case. I didn't really know what else I would do. So there wasn't really too much of a distinct considerable change with the trajectory. But when I was in school and kind of early 20s, I had a stronger pull towards internationally

in human rights and even started a study towards that, doing law, but then basically a series events and circumstances led me to realize that I wanted to be working based here in Australia and reorient myself towards kind of the intensely practical work with people, which social work was obviously a natural fit for. Yeah. And tell me about your placements while you're at uni because they sound really interesting. So the first one was with the city of Sydney and that was with their Safe Cities team. That was quite a unique team and quite a unique role. They kind of looked after a bunch of different portfolios within the city of Sydney, which is city and the inner city area, homelessness, general safety of the citizens, sex work, drugs, needles and sort of like

basically projects and communities and community work to help boost the livability of the city. there was sort of like quite a lot of policy work and that kind of opened my eyes to you know government and processes within government and then the second placement I did was in Broken Hill and I wanted to experience social work out in the country and having done a placement in city of Sydney which was obviously like very urban and much more a sort of an administrative role I wanted to do something quite different so I went to Broken Hill and I'd say that was quite pure. I suppose. I loved that placement. And did you have any connections to Broken Hill or you just pivoted completely and thought, let's challenge ourselves? Yeah, it was more the latter. No connections. It was just when the deans were speaking to us about our placements and our different options, they were advertising the regional placements and I suppose I was really wanting a challenge and I was wanting to stretch myself. I'd sort of also considered for some time

whether I wanted to be based in Sydney. As I sort of mentioned earlier, it had been something that I'd really been thinking about at the time, whether that's working overseas or in remote areas. And yeah, I just sort of wanted to see how social work occurs in small communities and Aboriginal communities. So I applied and was fortunate to get in. And then I worked at a primary school.

sort of a priority list primary school with the children with complex needs and complex family arrangements that were already linked in with the student liaison yeah okay so quite challenging content plus living away from home plus longer placement so yeah definitely thrown in the deep end with that one yeah it was great though I had really great support and would actually recommend it to many people if they're thinking about it, I would recommend it. Yeah, lovely. So tell me about your first role out of uni. It sounds as though it was a good sort of jump into professional life.

Yeah, so I was a case manager for children and young people for an organisation called the Burdican Association. And they were very small at the time. And my role was case managing children and young people within the care of the minister, as well as young people who couldn't live at home and were at risk of homelessness or homeless. And we also provided a specialist homelessness service. So essentially case management and support for children, young people who couldn't live at home.

And it's a great organisation. I still work for them today, though I've moved to Canada and back in the meantime. But yeah, at that point, I was case managing and I was, there for about three years, I think. During that time, I started to help develop and contribute to some policies and procedures and projects, which I really enjoyed. And yeah, that sort of helped lead me to where I am today. Yeah. Tell me about Canada. How did that all come about? Look, again, because it's actually probably a little bit of a theme here, but I was just wanting a professional challenge. It had been on my bucket list to live overseas. And like I said,

earlier, I had planned, or at least envisaged myself doing international aid and international overseas work. I've travelled a lot and just love experiencing other cultures. But the practicalities of only being able to speak English, unfortunately, meant that I wanted to work overseas and work as a social worker or something that would be relevant. to my field rather than just sort of say moving over to Europe and doing hospitality or unrelated works. So I thought, where can I do social work? So it obviously kind of led me to English-speaking countries. And at the time, I had a particular interest in working with different populations, so adults, and was attracted to Canada somewhat perversely because there was a, and still is a

huge opioid epidemic and significant drug addiction. Comorbidity challenges, it's in some ways, at least I thought at the time, a really progressive city. And so I just basically set my sights on moving to Vancouver, Canada. And so, yeah, put in my visa. That took some time to get approved. But then once I finalised all the details, I moved over there, got a job. essentially a case manager working with adult populations in like a community outreach

capacity and the adults that I was working with had comorbidities generally was drug dependence and mental health or disability and that was really really great I really loved the organisation and the work it was a great challenge and unfortunately my time was cut short there because of COVID so I ended up coming back to Australia earlier than I expected, but I was over there for about nine or ten months all up. Yeah, wow. Such an incredible experience, and it sounds like you were able to really translate the existing experience that you had

just to an older population, or was it a bit challenging at first? It was, yeah, it's a very different dynamic. It really is very different dynamic, and there's strengths and challenges with each. I mean, I found it really interesting, in some ways encouraging and in other cases, dispiriting to see the correlation between how many people that I was working with in Canada had also been in state care or removed from their parents or had left their biological family home of their own volition and see their journeys.

And in some cases, there was, you know, huge triumphs and a real kind of improvement in capacity and empowerment and capacity for decision-making that the young people that I work with in Australia would really struggle with. But at the same time, you sort of still, you also see the impacts of trauma and instability play out throughout the lifetime. But yeah, I mean, on the whole, I found working with adults really satisfying and probably, to be honest, a little bit easier, but I do like the element of hope that you have with young people and the fact that they're still building and growing and they've got a life ahead of them and there's kind of a real capacity to make some changes. And there is with every sector within social work. It's just I think

everyone has their, not everyone, but a lot of people find a niche within social work that they really love, whether it's DV, your homelessness or addiction. But for me, I think it's children and young people. Did you find that there was much of a difference in the system in Canada or perhaps in how social work as a profession was managed? So for your first question, not a huge amount of difference. To your second question about social work, it's actually quite different in terms of the profession, so I'll get to both of those. So in Canada, the systems, like the welfare systems, they were obviously called different names and operate in slightly different ways, but conceptually, it's all pretty similar. I definitely had to spend a bit of extra time in the first few months,

just doing a bit of a crash course in my own time around, you know, the equivalent for say Centrelink and housing pathways and, you know, the equivalent of NDIS there, which is sort of quite a different system. And, you know, just finding out which are the good doctors, which are the good psychiatrists, how do you get funding for those, all those sorts of things. But the system, the legal system and the welfare system were, you know, similar in that they're kind of, you know, means tested and, you know, there's housing provided for the most vulnerable and there's huge waiting lists and way too many First Nations people in care and incarcerated. There's sort of like systemic issues which are unfortunately really similar across both Australia and Canada.

But once I sort of got, as I said, like after the first few months of doing a bit of a crash course myself in how the systems work over there and what the different names are, certainly as I said, my time was cut short. And so I didn't even really scratch the surface of getting like really into the work there. But just as a, you know, maybe for the listeners, if they're thinking about a bit of a change or moving to Canada and doing social work there, it's not vastly different. The piece of advice so I would give, and I didn't realize this until I was over there, is that to be paid as and considered and called a social worker there, you actually need to have a masters of social work.

and I just had a bachelor or I think a master's equivalent. So I just had my bachelor degree and even though that was a four-year degree and you know obviously qualifies me here to be a social worker, I was essentially sort of like limited to more of what we would call here a youth worker or community outreach worker. So that was a bit of a barrier in terms of pay and also the different kinds of jobs that I could get. Like I think for example, some in the statutory child protection services over there, you had to be a social worker to work for them. That was probably just something that wouldn't have maybe changed my plan

to move over there, but was a bit of a, a bit of a disappointment or a bit of a surprise, I guess, when I got over there and certainly made it in terms of cost of living was really difficult, and career progression would have been difficult. Had I stayed there, maybe I would have decided to take on a master's, just so I could sort of progress to the next level. And was the masters, say, a two-year full-time equivalent on top of their bachelors? Is that how it worked? No, so they just don't have a bachelor of social work. I don't want to speak out of turn here, because it's going back, right, three or four years,

and my memory may fail me, and also systems and policies do change, of course, But the way I remember it is that they just had a Masters of Social Work, which I think was, you know, like a Masters like we have here in Australia. Yeah. It's just, of course, in Australia you wouldn't do a Bachelor of Social Work and a Masters of Social Work. They're equivalent. So, yeah, I think in Canada, essentially you might do like a Bachelor of Arts and then Masters of Social Work, and that would be four years all up.

Okay. So it sounds like it's almost sort of we're halfway between the UK. and Canada in that respect, in that the UK, from what people have told me, we're very highly sought after for our training because we've had the four years of the undergrad, whereas in the UK they have three. But in the States, it's almost like it's the same amount of time, perhaps, but it's more of a direct, a very intensive final year of study. Yes, exactly, exactly. But look, nevertheless, it was a great experience. I loved, you know, even separate to my job and the professional development.

I did really enjoy living in a different country, exploring a different city, you know, kind of challenging myself because obviously you're there and you don't really know anyone and you have to make friends and find a place to live and all those kinds of things. So I did really, really enjoy it and I am very glad I did it

because now having returned to Australia, I do feel, you know, not that I would say I'm never going to, move overseas again, but it's kind of scratched that each, I guess. What was the process like on your return to Sydney? Was there a period of adjustment there? Because, I mean, like everyone, we were adjusting to working from home and all that sort of thing, but you'd been away for so long and then having to come back and fit back in. Yeah, so there was certainly a pretty brief period between deciding that I was going

return to Australia and getting off the flight in Sydney because the situation with COVID was evolving so quickly and certainly the cases and the kind of critical nature of COVID and ability to cross borders, etc. was becoming quite critical and escalating. So yeah, got back to Sydney, no job and we were essentially locked down. I think, or at least everyone had been very, very cautious. So I started looking for short-term work, short-term project work, because me and my partner basically thought that COVID would blow over in a few months, probably as many people did and planned to go back to Canada once it blew over. So I didn't want to take on a ongoing or permanent position because

it's just I just couldn't do it for my integrity. Like I couldn't go into an interview and say, you know, yes, I'm going to be around for a long time. I didn't want to do it to the clients to, you know, start building a connection and then leave, you know, shortly thereafter. And so I was looking for sort of project work or casual work and actually got in contact with Burke and the previous employer that I'd worked for in Australia.

and oh by the way when I was in Canada I continued doing some kind of ad hoc policy consultant work for them and I found that really really satisfying just cognitively I really enjoyed it found it really stimulating my work my job at the time in Canada was more kind of out there on the road with people and so I did find it really satisfying doing some kind of just written writing and policy program development stuff. And so I would do that, say, half to one day a week, just remotely, obviously. And so I let them know when I was back in Australia, and if they happened to have any project work, I was looking for some.

And really, really fortunately, I was told that they would start to start their ACEs accreditation. So this is accreditation for the SHS and other sectors, but for them it was for their NHS or specialist homelessness service. And they had someone, the team leader for that team, kind of doing some work on it, but they could kind of see that it was going to be quite a big piece of work. And so I started doing some casual project work. And that really suited me well because I'd already been doing some policy work for them and ACEs was a lot of policy work, and it was also quite flexible.

So at the time as well, I didn't want to be out in the community as much as I could avoid it because of family. And COVID at that time seemed probably riskier than it really was. But anyway, it basically suited me really well, and I was really fortunate to be offered that position. So I've basically started soon after getting back from. Canada. There wasn't really a gap, at least not a significant one. Once I got back to Sydney, yeah, so I just started doing this ACE's work. Essentially, that turned into a full-time

position because the organisation was growing at the same time and the role became permanent and was doing lots of different activities across the organisation. So it was a huge learning development opportunity actually and was sort of quite a significant jump to the side, working kind of alongside lots of different teams across the organisation. So rather than just working with, you know, the operations and client services teams, I was working with HR, finance, admin, WHS, developing, improving our risk management, developing governance, working with leadership. So that I found really, really satisfying.

and yeah, was sort of fortunate that I could continue in that role, I guess. Yeah. And was it around this time that you looked into completing the Masters? Ah, yes. So that was in 2022, actually. So no, look, there's definitely a correlation there, but it wasn't until sometime later that I actually decided to commence postgraduate study. So as I said before, and he's probably picked up, I was through Aces doing a lot of work and a lot of learning around sort of a suppose what you'd call it the corporate elements of not-for-profits. Yeah.

So, you know, how HR functions, how finance functions within a not-for-profit, how governance, how governance is best structured, privacy, these sorts of things. And also service improvement activities and how we're actually. structured to ensure that the organisation values service improvement and continuous improvement and also actually like imbens it. So I sort of started to feel a bit out of my depth. And I mean, even where I felt like, oh, I can actually get this done and I'm getting good feedback on it, there's probably many people will just feel, and I certainly did feel that I just want to be more qualified for this and I want to learn more and I'm sure that COVID and all the series of

lockdowns had something to do with it as well because you sort of have all this spare time and I was just really feeling like oh you know I want to I want another challenge and I just want to keep on learning so I got my bachelor's of social work but like you know gosh I'm many people that have masters and have you know doctorates in philosophy or have multiple degrees and not that I was necessarily just wanted to compare myself with them, but thinking it's not uncommon and it certainly seems to be worthwhile considering doing some post-grad study or some extended learning. I'd actually done a few, I'm just remembering now, Yasmin, I'd done a couple of like short courses. And I thought that was cool, but I was like, oh, they're just short. Like, I don't know how much you can really

learn if it's in this format. So that's my start to think about university and masters and I looked around and I started speaking to different people and looking up as well, people that I admire and seeing kind of what their trajectory was and what their study had been and then speak to different universities and looking at all their different kind of offerings and basically landed after all of that on an MBA, Masters of Business Administration, majoring in social impact. So it's quite a unique degree that UNSW is offering at the moment. It's essentially sort of management for not-for-profits. And I'm really, really enjoying that. But I started that in, I think, about mid-2020.

And it'll probably go for another couple of years because I'm just doing it part-time. But it's been wonderful. It's been really, really good. And I've learned a lot. And it's really, really complimented a lot of the work I've done and been doing as a sort of a manager now in a not-for-profit. It's been really sort of satisfying and validating and challenging. I mean, I think the course for me is great. It's a good fit for my role and what I was seeking. It's a huge financial investment. Not everyone's going to be in the position to do so,

but I just think having a commitment to continuous learning and sort of just being a lifelong learner, for me, helps keep me kind of fresh and invigorated, which I think is really important in social work. So, yeah, whether it's short courses or YouTube or reading or podcasts, you know, or just professional development through your work, I think, kind of trying to keep yourself fresh with skills and new learning is really good. It's good to hear that there are those different aspects to the MBA because other people that I've spoken with that have completed it, it sounds as though a complete cognitive shift in terms of the way that we're taught to think and the way that we can translate the

learning to what we're doing. But if there's something like the opportunity to have a real social impact, especially with NGOs coming from that learning, then that's pretty unique, I think. Yeah, it is. It is unique. And I'm meeting great people through it as well, that, you know, working in the not-for-profit sector or the for-purpose sector. And there's some great lecturers. And look, some of the courses are going to be dry and people within the social work background under ethos will find them really challenging, perhaps, ethically or just, you know, intellectually, because there's standard subjects, like there's a finance subject, which I'm not looking forward to. There's legal and law and regulation subjects, which are probably really interesting.

There's ones on strategy. And some of those are standard across an MBA. so everyone, you know, from people that are working at, you know, consultancies and big business will be in those two. But I think it's good to kind of see how they work as well and get a bit of an insight into that. But for sure, the most relevant and exciting subjects I've found so far are the ones within the social impact stream. I mean, they're just about basically like how to demonstrate social impact, how to measure

it, how to inspire an organisation around your vision, how to make sure. work you're doing is ethical, how to get funding, increase and improve fundraising efforts. So lots of different kind of subjects that are really relevant to the field and probably will be a real help for me moving forward. Yeah, and it's great that you can complete it over a period of time. So it can work around your schedule, work around your work, your lifestyle. Yes, there's pressure to complete it within a certain amount of time. but you can really get into it and spend the time so that you're not feeling rushed through it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just do one subject at a time, which for me is probably all I would want to do any more than that. And I think it would really start to, I'd have to sacrifice something, you know, whether it's my exercise or my seeing friends or family or sleep or something really important to me. So, yeah, I take my hat off to people that can manage full-time work and more than a part-time study schedule. And there are people in my course and many people out there who are also bringing up children and managing all of that as well. So, yeah, there's certainly a huge amount of possibility out there. And, yeah, it's been challenged, but I've found there's enough flexibility and it's always great when the holidays come around.

Yeah. Did you find it challenging going into that environment with the quality and compliance stuff, that strategic planning? Because it is a very unique skill set, but an area where I think social work can make a great impact. It has been, but I've also found it really satisfying. And luckily, the organisation I work for has been really receptive to the whole concept of quality and compliance and improving our systems and getting more sophisticated. And it's also happened at a interesting period for the organisation because it was growing, which is unusual in a way. I went from a very sort of small organisation to now a much bigger one.

And so there was just a clear necessity to have more, I suppose you'd call them broadly back-of-house staff and better systems and more transparency, accountability, and hold ourselves to really high standards. So, yeah, look, there's been a whole lot of challenges, a lot of challenges, so many. And some of them have been out of my control. You know, challenges related to COVID and lockdowns, great resignation, staff retention, all the impacts of COVID on the young people we look after and the flow and effects of that. there's been challenges just from growth and trying to keep up with that while also providing

a quality service, people come and going, you know, accreditation cycles. Gosh, you know, so many. There'd be so many that I'm forgetting as well. So it's been a challenge, but I don't know. Like I think for me, I've really enjoyed the role and I guess it's really important. It helps kind of drive you through those challenging periods, but I've got a really good team, a really fabulous team, but even broader than that, it's just a really good culture, and it's a culture that's from way before I started, it's really receptive to change. So I think culture is really important in an organisation and does dictate and influence a lot in terms of roles and functions, implementation and so on. So the culture, at least at Burdiken, is very open to changing the way

we do things, looking at things differently, improving. It's sort of not a, you know, there's not like inertia to fight against. So it does help. It really does help because it was a new role and new processes. So it definitely helped being within that culture. And it also helped though having some history with the organisation as I wasn't coming in as a brand new fresh face. Yeah. What do you think has driven that growth within the company? Where has that come from? Yeah.

So it was twofold. Firstly, it was an opportunity arose to take over an organisation that had to close down. So people probably familiar with the concept of a merge. It was similar to a merge. I think technically or legally, it's a takeover. But essentially this organisation had children and young people in its care. And obviously someone and then geo needed to take over the responsibility for those children and young people and staff.

And so Burdekin was given that opportunity. And we said yes. And that expanded us into new territory. So we had been primarily in the Northern Sydney area. the northern beaches area of Sydney and the service we're taking over was in the inner west and that then sort of drove growth in the inner west area because that's where a lot of the need was and a lot of our young people that were being referred more that we already had in our service but were being living in the non-sidney area were from or had had connections to the inner west or western sydney and so it was

just a more appropriate place for many of the children and young people that we either looked after or were being referred. So that was the biggest precursor to growth, but then since moving to the West, there have been some other opportunities that have come up, like more community outreach work and community work in general. So that's kind of been the direction of, the organisation and it's sort of being part of the strategy as a whole but attention of course is

maintaining quality services while also delivering those quality services to more children and young people to try and improve life outcomes what an interesting period of time though I can imagine when you've got a lot of changes for staff already to shift the way that they're working who they're working with, trying to build new networks. So trying to support the staff around that merge would have been incredibly challenging. Yeah, yeah, it was. And it still is. But things have definitely improved.

But it was, I think, challenging for a free employer and every not-for-profit during COVID for lots of different reasons. You know, for some, their philanthropic funding got cut because, you know, like business profits weren't what they were used to. There was obviously everyone just locked down and the challenges that caused for both staff and service users. But yeah, for us on top of that overlaid was growth and new staff and recruitment

and having to build new teams and structures and all the rest of it. So, yeah, it was certainly a wild ride, but it's been great, to be honest. It's been a great learning opportunity. and we've managed to get through it really well. Like we've always just kept our focus on the children and young people. Like you just have to keep that front and centre and your top priority,

which we've done. So yeah, we've always, you know, even if our, you know, processes weren't totally up to scratch or our case notes were falling behind or the training wasn't where we wanted to be hitting, we just thought, let's make sure actually new people are safe. They're well looked after. They're getting to school.

They're getting a telehealth or whatever it is. So that's, I think, helped get us through and keep sort of spirits high. And now, you know, for the last sort of six months or so, we've really been making a focus on, I mean, it's been a focus throughout, but like really let's spend more time on figuring out and how we look after our staff, how we make processes more efficient, how we, you know, build our team, so they're functioning better. But yeah, challenge. But, I mean, everyone's had such a challenging time these last few years.

So, yeah, I don't think Vertikin's unique in that. Yeah, true. Just different sorts of challenges. Different, yeah. Do you sometimes find yourself missing the clinical work that face-to-face with the clients? Yeah, I do. I do, actually. but I find I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing the work and seeing service delivery

from a few steps back too because they did find it and this was just for me personally not a reflection on social workers or other people who were in those roles but for me personally I found it difficult when I would work just with the young people in the caseload and you didn't really have as much an impact on the broader system and not necessarily sure how you kind of fit it into the broader picture, whereas now I do. But look, I think for me, at least I know that working in a management role is really satisfying for me and I can kind of use the clinical work I did and use the frontline work I did to help drive and improve quality services.

So it's been really, really helpful in that experience. But I, yeah, I think it's important to keep current and I do make an effort to and make sure that I do connect regularly with our case managers and other people that are seeing our young people. Regularly, and we've got a bunch of people within my team that are regularly out there visiting the houses and reporting back. We've got kind of a bunch of different safeguards in place to make sure that the services are quality. that the young people are getting best of as they can. But things for me like doing our client surveys, even getting complaints, seeing photos from activity days,

those kind of things that they help fill my cup. But if I felt like, oh, yeah, I really wanted to do some more clinical work or wanted to do some more frontline work, yeah, I would definitely investigate and explore that. Like I might even consider doing volunteer work outside Burdican, because I just think it's important not to blur the boundaries too much of your own role.

Like I don't want to start stepping in and doing the work of other people or, you know, being another face that the young people have to see another person they have to meet another person in their lives. So, yeah, if it was sort of like for me, I needed, you know, to fill my cup, I needed to start connecting with young people or doing more frontline work or whatever it may be. yeah, I think that would be important for me to try and resolve one way or the other. But for now, I'm really happy and I kind of get that direct connection to what's happening on the ground by different ways.

And for me, again, this is just me, but I find it more satisfying seeing the global picture, like seeing how young people are going on a whole rather than just one individual young person. or a couple of young people. Yeah, nice. I'm wondering then, without that clinical caseload, I guess, I'm wondering what supervision might look like for you, if anything. What sort of support do you need in that role? Yeah, so it is different for sure when you're not in the clinical role

and probably technically in terms of accreditation. I'd be curious to know where they would see my role. I do get supervision and I get it regularly through my supervisor, but it's obviously got a different flavour to the supervision of frontline workers. And I think it's just really important for a bunch of different reasons. So, yeah, what does it look like by getting internal supervision through my supervisor? And that's about once a month. I find that supervision sometimes doesn't really come when you need it.

and comes around when you don't really need or you're not really in the mood. So for me, it's really important to be able to have the ability to ring my supervisor up and just to talk through a personal professional issue as and when the need arises. And that doesn't mean picking up the phone and talk to them every day or multiple times throughout the day, but not having to wait for two weeks to see them and bring stuff up. For me, it's really important and sometimes also just being, yeah, able to use supervision for different reasons. to focus on different specific areas for me is really helpful sometimes too. But yeah, I think supervision as a whole is really important.

And at Burdekin, our frontline staff are lucky to have. They get their internal supervision as well as external group supervision and a few other sort of ways of getting that supervision. So it's not just a once a month, which I think is important. But, yeah, we try to focus not just on your workload and self-care, but also professional development and where do you want to go, what training do you need. So it's sort of quite holistic. Yeah, nice.

And given the, I guess, context and heaviness of some of the things that your case workers, case management team would be looking after or would be responsible for, it's really great to hear that they do have those diverse ways of receiving. been supervision. I think that's really important. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do you have capacity to supervise students then yourself? Do you think there would be a role for that? Oh, so we've actually got an entire student and volunteer team. So I've personally not supervised. I've definitely been involved with students. Like, for example, in about September, October, we had our new client survey and we had a team of students.

students, social work and community services students on board at the time to help roll out that survey so they were doing the face-to-face or over-the-phone interviews with young people together their surveys. No young people could complete themselves online if they wanted to, but for those that elected to do it in person verbally, we wanted it to be someone that was not their case manager or not someone they had to see every day, so you'd have a bit of a sense of anonymity, like, I don't have to crap on Berticane and then see them the next day. And also allowed them to speak openly, hopefully, about the staff. So yes, I wasn't directly supervising them, but I was sort of managing them.

And that was really great. They were fantastic. And actually one or two of them have got permanent jobs down with Berticant. So that's been really wonderful for them. But, yeah, we've got a student and volunteer coordinator, who's fabulous. and coordinates all of our students and volunteers. Personally, I probably could have a student, but more likely probably someone in my team,

I manage a practice team and it's specialists within the organisation. So like our therapeutic specialists, practice lead, education specialists. So they may be probably more of a good fit for a student, but it depends what they're interested in. If you had a student that was really interested in, what I've been discussing, quality compliance, with governance, management, that kind of thing, then for sure, but I don't think we've had many inquiries of that nature. It sounds as though the team that you lead is quite diverse in terms of the disciplines,

so that might then give an opportunity for you to oversee or support someone who's supporting a student who's not from social works, that that would be quite enriching too, I imagine. Yeah, actually we could. Like, I mean, our education specialists, obviously, are a good example of that. But we've only had, and it may even actually be in our eligibility criteria, that we only take social work or community services. Students, I'm not quite sure. I'd have to check that.

But, yeah, look, the students that we've had, they come from all looks of life as well. Like, they're not always maybe studying social work, but for many of them, it's not their first career. like they've had other careers beforehand and then they've decided that wasn't for them or it wasn't fulfilling or you know that they've had some sort of a change in direction and it's been really good we've had some excellent students and I think more than that it's really good having students and volunteers because they come in and they say hang on why is this this way you know they're bringing the latest research in and they're also looking at things with fresh eyes so that can be really

helpful too. Yeah. Given that you've landed in, I wouldn't say a less traditional role, but maybe something where people might feel is less akin to social work or they might not think a social worker would be a good fit. What do you think we bring as social workers to this kind of role? I'm just thinking in terms of understanding context and perspectives and there are so many benefits. Yeah. Empathy as one. And I think an understanding of. appreciation of the just realistic challenges of social work. Like I can certainly imagine, and I know people with a similar role to mine, with responsibility for accreditation and for compliance and for things like child safety,

you can have people that have really hard-nosed about it. And sometimes that can be really helpful. And sometimes I have to be as well. but it can also be really helpful when designing and providing training to frontline staff or case managers of team leaders and developing resources for them just knowing how difficult it can be to, for example, get a young person to a health appointment or fit in your case notes within a 48-hour period and things like that. So I think just a dose of a suppose realism as well as sort of empathy for the same. staff and how challenging it is. Also like a real passion, I guess, for the work and just keeping

that kind of the front and centre. I know different sectors have different sort of remits or overarching principles in our home care. It's the best interest of the child. And we've also sort of strong empowerment, independence and being able to sort of keep those front of mind is, I think, easier when you come from a social work background, rather than say, the administrative one, or purely just business administration, or, you know, risk management, quality management systems, etc., that would probably also be good fits for the role as well.

But I do find that it's, at least culturally, in terms of connecting with the staff and embedding change and new systems, it does help when they can see that you understand their workload and their day-to-day and that you're also wanting the same things that they do. Yeah, that makes sense. If you weren't doing what you're doing now, I know that you love it and it's a good fit, but would you look at working internationally again,

would clinical be on your radar? Where would you be? That's such a good question. and probably not one I think about often enough. To be honest, look, it's probably all on the table. It'd be great to continue on this trajectory and just keep on learning. If I wasn't doing social work, then I'd probably be doing something totally different. And I don't even know what that would be.

Like, you know, maybe it'd be really creative. Maybe it'd be something outdoors. Like, I don't know. I've got lots of different interests. But, yeah, look, I think if I wasn't doing what I'm doing right now, like realistically I'd be working at some other child and family organisation or in some other role that is about demonstrating impact, you know, measuring and reporting impact, working on how we improve the impact we're having and yeah, sort of like broadly service improvement, service

quality roles. Yeah. Yeah. Given that you try to stay as current as possible, you do a lot of learning outside your role and inside, are there any good resources that you might point people towards if they wanted to know a little bit more about the kind of work that you're doing? So look, I read a lot and I really love reading. There's probably a good few resources that are about social impact in general. One's called The Leap of Reason, which is a bit of a similar book around social impact and demonstrating the work that we do when just having an impact mindset. in social services, but beyond my MBA, I don't really sort of read a lot about things

that are directly relevant to my work, but I really enjoy reading about things that are sort of tangentially related. Like I love books on neuroscience and building healthier societies about trauma, I suppose some of the authors that I read and really like. I've got Gabor Mate, he's probably,

a popular one in the podcast. Oliver Sacks, he's written many, many books who was a doctor and written many books about neuroplasticity, but are really, really accessible, like just really, really great stories about how mind can change itself. Yuval Harari, I find really insightful. He writes books about kind of the globe and humanities a whole.

I'm just trying to think, Yasmin, some books that have been really influential for me. Bessel van der Kolk, his work, his podcasts, a great, his book, hugely popular book, The Body Keeps the Score, I think, is essential reading for people working in trauma. And then there are a few other books that I think helped me sort of see and visualize and have hope for a better future. So it's an author, he's a journalist actually called Johann Hari. He's written a couple of books, one about depression and anxiety and another about focus and how important focus is. And then

Rooka Bregman, he's another author who writes all about universal basic income and just sort of talks about how, you know, we could build and structure a better, healthier society. So, yeah, I mean, there's just a few. I used to read sort of slightly different books that were a bit more social work related, I guess, when I was a bit younger in school and in my early 20s and when I was traveling and stuff, and that probably helped put me on the path of, you know, direct action work but yeah in the last five years or so I've sort of really enjoyed books that are about understanding the human brain and human behavior and yeah I just find them really helpful and useful in seeing a big picture of our work and also just understanding what effective methods as

well as you know when we may start to see the results of them yeah I mean I like you said like you do I love podcasts I listen to podcasts quite a lot there's one that actually called, I don't listen to a lot of social work specific ones apart from yours, and there's one called Very Bad Therapy. Uh-huh, that's great. Yeah, I really like that because I like, it sort of sounds funny, maybe you're the same, and maybe I'm not that different in this, but I think it's really important, I find it really refreshing hearing critiques of our work, and I think it's really important to critique and reflect on the work that we do and actually really interrogate the effect of it, but also the user experience, and really validating

that. I think that podcast does it well most of the time. Yeah. So yeah, there's probably a few, and I'm happy to send these details to you if you need to, you know, grab the details of them again. Thank you. That would be wonderful. And I can put the details in the show notes and people can go off and do a little bit of extra reading or listening if they're interested. Yeah. But I think Ben and Kerry, I could listen to a very bad therapy hosts just from a very philosophical perspective. I really appreciate his insights. So often we get bobbed down in the practical and sometimes it's really refreshing to take a step back.

And yes, we're encouraged to do that to a certain extent in supervision. But I love when you can just put all reality aside for a second and get into the crux of sometimes it's just the real humanity of what's going on. Yeah, exactly. So for me anyway, I mean, I know a lot of people, I think just finding something that keeps you stimulated and fresh and invigorated is really important for me that is reading and learning. For others, it's, you know, the opposite.

It's doing, you know, outside work hours, not reading anything that's kind of even remotely related to challenges and trauma and adverse experiences. But, yeah, I guess it's just I figured out how important it is for me, reading and learning and doing stuff that's outside of work, I'm just the one driving and dying into. And it still aligns with your interests. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Like I think even if I had a totally different job, if I was working at a shop or something, I'd still be reading these books. I don't read them for work. It's just convenient that they do have some connections there. Yeah. Are there any programs or projects that Burtigin are running at the moment that you wanted to shout out in particular? Ah, so we are, yeah, it may be helpful for listeners to know exactly what we do

in case they have people in their networks that could use them or maybe appropriate. So we've got a specialist homelessness service which is based in northern Sydney area, but the eligibility criteria is that people have to be between 17 and 24 and at risk of homelessness. And it's a transitional housing program, so it's up to 24 months. And that's got case management that's really about independent living skills around it, and that's headed up by a fabulous team leader and coordinator. So it's a great program, and it's really embedded in that northern Sydney area. So obviously people have to be willing and able to either move there or live there. Our out-of-home care is for children and young people that have been removed from the parents

are in-state care and all the referrals come through DCHA. But if people are working with out-of-home care, they may or may not have heard about Burdickon because we're still relatively small compared to many of the other orgs and certainly new in the area, but we do trying to find foster care as, as is everybody. But, yeah, we've got a great, but very small foster care. program and we'd love to build that. And we've also got staff care homes, so sort of more traditional busy care as well as supported independent living, so 16 to 20 year olds that are

wanting to live alone or can leave alone. And we've got a independent living skills project underway with that at the moment. So it's like a whole inclusive, wonderful, in-depth program. that young people can take themselves through and get supported to take themselves through to develop cooking, cleaning, looking after themselves, doing themselves out of tricky situations and so on. We've also, it's been difficult with COVID,

but we've been really strong previously in community outreach work. So, you know, supporting young people, meet them. The classic example of shooting hoops, but that kind of work with young people going out for coffee, but especially for young people who are at risk of homelessness or risk of family breakdown. I've got a family, two family intervention workers who can help families who are experiencing a family breakdown or a young person wanting to leave home. We try to keep young people unified with home because that's for most young people the best

place to be. And yeah, there's some outreach programs. There's one in Avalon at the Avalon News Hub. There's one at the Canada Bay Library, but that's been a bit tricky with COVID to really get going. So yeah, I think that's it for the meantime. We've spoken about lots of other different projects and lots of other different service delivery options, which, you know, I can't really mention all of them now because they may not even materialize and we've just really made an effort strategically in the last six months to just focus on what we're doing and make sure that

we're doing that really well before taking on something new and different. Yeah, because even for what you've said is a small organization. That's a lot of work. There's a lot of different balls flying at the same time and just trying to keep everything in the air. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Before we finish up, is there anything else that you wanted to let people know about your role as a social worker or about the work that you do in general? Look, anyone's welcome to get in contact with me. I'm on LinkedIn, but also really open to hear from people who may be listening to, to this and just want to give some feedback on the kind of work that I'm doing, maybe people that have been in a role similar to mine or very, very different to mine that have some sort of

feedback or advice on how a role like mine can kind of best be integrated in a human services organisation, particularly a child and youth one. But no, look, I suppose we didn't really touch on, we did actually at the beginning, but my journey was certainly, like I'm not kind of where I thought I would be when I was starting out at uni and I'm proud of where I am but my trajectory hasn't followed a plan and in many ways it's sort of actually been some luck, some chance, some circumstances, but I've also done a lot of kind of reflection, especially in the last couple of years about what makes me happy and I think it's just so vital in social work to be able to be sustainable and to be delivering a good service, you've got to find a role, not even a role, but just understand

what feels your cup and what stresses you out and what kind of work you'll be able to do. And for me, I've realised that being able to be more administrative is more helpful for my wellbeing. And it's also more satisfying for me professionally. But it's, you know, I think you've got to kind of like trust your instincts with this in terms of your path. Good to have ambitions and good to have plans, but the path can certainly change once you're on it. Yeah, absolutely. I think you've really had that capacity to make change or facilitate change for both yourself and the people that you support

through, yes, finding where you fit, but also I feel like the combination of placements that you had was a really good stepping stone for your first role because you had sort of the combination of the disadvantaged communities plus the youth work. So that was a really nice tie in, at least to have you feel a bit more comfortable going into the first lot of work that you were doing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And look, volunteering as well. I do recommend so volunteering through uni or even before you get to uni, I think is helpful too because you just start to get to know different organisations and different people. You never know what they come of it too. But yeah, volunteering, I think, is as difficult as it can be when you're balancing study and work and rent and all of that.

Even if just like a day or fortnight, sometimes that's all organisations will need. But I think just getting those experiences can help sort of inform your next steps, but also help you understand yourself. Yeah. You've had experience providing a quality service in an environment of growth, which is really challenging as well. so you've had to build a diversity of knowledge and networks and kind of run with it. And I think having the additional background and training in management and clinical governance has helped you step back a little bit and see where the pieces fit and where your commitment might be to lifelong learning and as you said, keeping current.

But it helps that the organisation's culture is one that fits with your values as well. so you're not fighting an uphill battle quite as much as you might be elsewhere. And what a great time to be part of this organization when there's such growth. I feel like that would be really rewarding and help you to not lose sight of why you're there. So even though, yes, maybe it doesn't fit with the trajectory that you imagined for yourself, it's really given you an opportunity to feel proud of your profession and say, yes, there is a role here and yes, we bring this to the table because of X, Y, and Z. So I think the capacity to be creative within our profession always astounds me.

I think it's incredible work. So thank you so much for sharing. It's hopefully inspiring for other people to see what else is out there and what can be, particularly for people who might be less interested in the clinical and more passionate about the policy work, because I think that's very. really important as well. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And all of our wonderful case managers and team leaders, they all need good supports. They all need good managers and good supervisors. And, you know, they do tend to be the ones that help drive the shape of service delivery. So, yeah, it is really

satisfying, but in a different way, for sure. Thank you again for meeting with me, for taking the time to share your experience. I've loved getting to hear all about it. And yeah, thank you so much for your time. Yes, ma'am, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for yours. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Stephanie, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlightpodcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed,

or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Peter, an accredited mental health social worker who has had extensive training and experience working in the areas of sexual assault, family violence, mental health and trauma. Peter currently runs a private practice providing evidence-based trauma therapy, as well as delivering training on managing sexual disclosures and regular. the nervous system. 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.