Social Work Spotlight - Episode 84: Peta

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

In this episode I speak with Peta, 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.  Peta currently runs a private practice providing evidence-based trauma therapy as well as delivering training on managing sexual disclosures and regulating the nervous system.  Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode: Child FIRST Victoria - https://services.dffh.vic.gov.au/child-first-and-family-servicesDr Gabor Maté - https://drgabormate.com/PASDS program - https://providers.dffh.vic.gov.au/parenting-assessment-and-skill-development-serviceSouth Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault - https://www.secasa.org.au/Sexual Offences and Child-abuse Investigation Team - https://www.police.vic.gov.au/sexual-offencesEastern Centre Against Sexual Assault - https://www.easternhealth.org.au/services/item/174-eastern-centre-against-sexual-assault-ecasaDr Bruce Perry - https://www.bdperry.com/Dr Stephen Porges - https://www.stephenporges.com/Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk - https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain - https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/seven-and-a-half-lessons-about-the-brain/Peta’s business, Breath Counselling - https://www.breathcounselling.com.au/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10mPhDm-uRElfYPh2j9AfYlUq0NvWk5dUf6hbil9Z_5g/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

I begin today by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eura 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 each episode.

I'm your host, Yasmin McKee Wright, and today's guest is Peter, an accredited mental health social worker who has 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 regulating the nervous system. Peter also works part-time at E-CASA, the Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault. Thank you so much, Peter, for coming on to the podcast having a chat with me today about your work. No, thank you for asking me. I'm very passionate about my work within the trauma, sexual assault area.

So I love having a conversation and sharing what I'm doing now and what's out there for people to know to access. Perfect. I'll ask first when you started as a social worker and what drew you to the profession. Well, it's really funny what drew me to the profession because I was actually, I was overseas and I'd come back and I was studying interior design with my partner and children. And when I got back, my son was unwell. And what it meant was that I couldn't commence the course where I was going at RMIT and therefore had to make other decisions in regards to career paths. So I'd done a BA majoring in psychology a few years prior and my sister who was a nurse suggested what about social work and social work at the time was the only course that probably I could get into where you could

do it off campus. So I needed something that you could do off campus. So I actually I didn't know much about social work, but you had to attend, I think, two weeks a year where you had this very intensive type of program and then you did all your study at home. And then you had placements like at the second year. So how I got into social work, I wasn't this empathetic person that I thought, you know, I have to move into social work. This is a natural progression. It was just at the time, it was something that allowed me to study and raise a family. That's quite a shift from where you thought you would be. Did you have any opportunity to discuss things akin to social work with your sister, having worked as a nurse?

Not really at that stage. She knew when I'd done my BA and majored in psychology, I really enjoyed psychology. And at that sort of stage, I was thinking maybe I'd follow the psychology pathway. I struggled with statistics, but I'd love the human, you know, the developmental, the attachment side, cognitive. And so at one stage, I want to follow the psychology path, but just family, we're moving overseas, that just didn't eventuate.

So it wasn't that psychology or human development or insight to human behavior wasn't off my career path, but I've just gone in a different way at one stage. And when I came back, we had that discussion. Well, actually, it was only a week, and I got into the course and had to do the week intensive. So it was, I learned about it as I went along. And very luckily, I hadn't really been exposed to social services as a child.

So I was so totally unaware of this whole world that existed outside my world experience, really. Yeah. And what then happened for you when it came time to do your placements was that really, difficult for you to juggle with the family and being off campus? When it came to the placements, because the placements didn't come to the end of the year. And by that stage, I had a lot of family support. So like my mum could come and look after my children, you know, my partner would work from home one day a week.

So I had a really strong network around me when I had to do my placements to be able to do it. And as it turned out, my placements were just such wonderful. experiences and I enjoyed them so much that this pathway and trauma started to be this natural way that I want to go and learn and my learning sort of didn't stop. My first placement was with the Australian Childhood Foundation and they were the only placement again that would accept a part-time placement because I couldn't do a full-time placement so they said we'll do a part-time placement and that was in the area of children and

trauma and the first day of my placement I can always remember it was at ridges hotel in Richmond and a psychologist called Bruce Perry I think it's a so he was a psychologist had just been out to Australia and had been speaking to Parliament on early intervention with children and how much money needed to be put into this area because early intervention they were looking at you know how supportive it was for future development And so it was all about the brain and learning about the brain. And that was my first placement. And so all of a sudden, there I was, with the other clinicians as a student,

they're sitting there learning about the brain and how it impacts on development and behaviour. And it just really made sense to me. Were you surprised how much psychology there was in social work, thinking that you'd made this quite substantial career change, but actually you've come back to that stuff that you enjoyed in your studies? Yes, because I think a lot of when I did social work, like did the placements, everyone talked about more that social justice, that broad part of that advocacy. And it wasn't really talked about at the time the therapy part, the counselling role.

It didn't seem to be an area that people were going into social work for. So really, at that stage, I wasn't thinking counselling in my head. It was more just following an interest. And the subjects had interest me. And then my placement really fascinated me, the brain and trauma. And so all of a sudden, that seemed to be the foundation of how I learned, how I looked at all my learning from the next year with my social work and every job I've had, every experience I've had has come through that lens of that trauma and the brain and the body. And were you able to build on that first placement with the second or was it quite different? Well, the second placement then was a counselling placement and it was through a community health centre but it was very broad at that

point. So I'd gone from this real specialist area of children and trauma, and I had such a good mentor that I was working with, and also around children with harmful sexual behaviours with my first placement, I must say. And this was an area, but no one was talking about, and there wasn't much research. So I was really lucky. I can remember, Sarah, who was my placement coordinator at the time, we were doing a study to help at La Trobe University to learn more about harmful sexual behaviours. So it was a real niche at that point of my learning and child development and trauma and harmful sexual behaviours and the impact that sexual assault happened within families. So then my second placement in Community Health Centre, people said it was just general counselling,

general anxiety, people having just those day-to-day issues that were come. and present themselves at the community health centre. But all I saw was trauma to their backgrounds. That it wasn't this mild anxiety because my curiosity couldn't stop at this, oh, try this technique or this grounding technique because I just saw the links. I just saw the links from childhood.

I just saw the links with attachment and development. And so I knew that working on that, level of this generalist, if you can do generalist now counselling for me, I don't think you can because I think everything stems from earlier issues. I can't say that. There are, you know, traumatic events, single events that do happen in people's lives. So again, my family has really dictated where my next step. So once I graduated, Child First started up. And I don't know whether you know much about child first. It was that early intervention with families, working on children's development and, you know, getting them linked into services, but identifying at a really early stage

what the children needed within families that were struggling. So child first, I thought, I want to be a part of this. It's just starting up and it was out in Cranbourne. And it was child first. We didn't know how it was going to look. And again, I had two incredible. managers that they were starting off. Do we do it as intake? Do we do it as an assessment? And all of a sudden, it was rolling and learning about how that would be implemented. So I was a part of when child first opened up, and they allowed me to work again part-time. And again, I was exposed to the children, early development, assessment, attachment, the impact of trauma and brain. And the more you go along, that has been, growing that area. It has just been changing and evolving. So therefore, I've had to continue the

training because that training that I had initially started off at placement was changing again. Because in America overseas, they were finding out so much as they were doing studies on the brain, as they were doing studies on the body. New theories were coming out. And to say, I'm working in the area of trauma and not knowing about these interventions on modalities just didn't seem right, which again, my curiosity, more training, and then you go more down that area of trauma again. I'm just wondering whether, because it sounds as though you were given a lot of freedom as a student to explore some of those areas with your clients. How did that sit with, I guess, you and your supervisor and the agency and that second placement for this.

them to trust that you had sort of a handle, a grasp on some of those deeper issues. And was there ever a period where you were at odds with the agency with them saying, this is your role as a student, you're not a practitioner? Well, no, because in that sense, I was still exploring. So when my supervisor would give me information, again, I had a really good supervisor. So I never had when I asked questions and said, well, this is what I've learned. It was never like, oh, well, I haven't heard of that. You can't do that.

It was more about, well, tell me about that. And my supervisor, and again, it's the people that nurture you. That's why I love students and I love new workers because they come with new ideas. It's not just you teaching them what you know through your experience. They bring such wisdom. that's what I got within my placements as well. It was a sharing of information. I must say, though, I wish I'd had so much more structure as a student because I can remember saying at different times, I don't have enough experience to go into this room with this person and deal with their anxiety

and depression. Are you sure I can go in there? And there would always be the same, where you need to start somewhere. And just as the person I am, that, of course, my preparation time, I just always felt like I had to do lots of preparation before I went in there. And then you learn that people don't stick to the preparation work that you've done. You know, I think we're going to do a genogram or we're going to sit down. And then all of a sudden they're off, you know, talking about something and you haven't learned about containment.

and you haven't learned about, you know, managing that emotion that can come with a counselling session because people, and it used to be, and definitely not for me now, if I talk about things, I'll feel so much better. And, you know, that used to be the message. Let them talk and then work out strategies. But I didn't realize at that point that them talking, they were being activated. And then I had no way of really containing them. Do you feel as though there's, though, is a difference then between the disciplines with psychology and social work and how that containment might work and how you might be able to assist someone in that space where they are just a bit all over the place, given that, I guess, from my perspective, social work has the

capacity to maybe be a bit more flexible or look at something a bit more holistically. The way I work now is somatic with, you know, the brain and the body. and depending on the modality you work in, that can be from psychology, that can be from social work, that can be from nursing. If you believe in that sort of modality in intervention of the body and containment, it doesn't need to be restricted anymore to social work. A lot of the literature I'm reading about at the moment is coming from Dr. Gabor Matei. And you've heard of him.

And he's talking again about the body in containment and how to work with different clients or patients, as he calls them. He's from a different professional together. But if you believe in how to treat trauma and how to work with trauma, it doesn't need to be from the social work profession. It just needs to have the same framework of working with him. And I guess just the opportunity to sit and listen and really understand what's going on for that person, it comes down to that core connection. Yeah, it sometimes comes down to the connection. It's sometimes, I think, when people present to me in a counselling room, before they even sit down, you know, if I look at the different theories now about polyvagal theory in the nervous system, before they even sit down, you're starting to give them choice. would you like the lights on, where would you like to sit?

And so all of a sudden they're reading your body, you're reading their body, before they even sit down. So seeing where they're at, you can already see where they're at within their body before they even sit down. And then it's then sort of if they're really heightened and they're very anxious about, I don't know at that point why they're anxious, but I can tell they're anxious, it needs to be some grounding in containment already before you start. So they start to feel safe. Yeah. So that first roll out, how exciting to be part of a program at its early development stages. But tell me what happened after that.

Where did you go to from there? Well, Child Firsts, wonderful experience, again, wonderful managers, again, family and life dictated that, you know, I needed to be around more during the day for my children. I got a role in the After Hours Child Protection Emergency Service. And I'm not sure how that came about because they hadn't had anyone that hadn't worked within the Child Protection sector. And so when I started to work there, I think that was one of the biggest challenges in my career going to After Hours Child Protection. They were a very strong group of practitioners. They knew the Act. they knew how to respond.

They knew legally because you never knew at night what was going to happen. So they had to have such a broad range of skills to operate with when you're working with mental health clinicians, when you're working with heightened parents, police, and legally to know, apart from trying to respond in the best way for the child at that moment, legally to know how you can respond and what you can do by working with also police and what they need to do at the time. Assessing risk, I learned very much what risk was.

You know, what I saw as high risk. I certainly started to see being able to assess risk in another way. You know, you start off with when I started there, you know, 16-year-olds that were using ice and you were just, it was so concerning. And then, you know, 10 years later, you've got 9 and 12-year-olds using ice. So, you know, thresholds changed. in that time as well. So child protection allowed me to work at night. And so by working at night, I was able to get children to school and pick them up. It worked very well for a couple of years,

but also very taxing because doing some night shifts or you know, you had three different types of shifts. Sometimes you finished at one, sometimes you finished at four, sometimes you finish at eight 30 in the morning. and you drop kids at school, get a couple of hours sleep, and then picking them up and trying to grab a couple more hours sleep before heading up to night shift. So they were challenging years. But I learned so much from after hours child protection. I can imagine there would have been an even greater challenge

at times for you when you were dealing with something incredibly difficult to do with child protection and then coming home to your own children. and, you know, trying to switch off, but it must have been really difficult. Well, it is difficult because you start to see your own family life, like your children do something, you say, ah, that's fine. You do, you start.

Helps to normalise a little. Yeah, you normalise things that probably you would never have normalized in the past, you know, because what you're dealing with is such high-risk situations. and really vulnerable children. And so you come home and you really start to think, well, my children have got a great, you know, they've got a roof over the head and they've got food, that they should be grateful.

So your life switching off, especially working with children switching off sometimes to say, my children need more than just food and a shelter, you know, they need, time. They need you to be present, not tired, they need you to be present, you know, even if they don't want to talk to you, but they like to know that you're in the lounge room watching telly so they can ignore you if they want. How did supervision then work? Because I know how it is, middle of the night, there's no one around. Even that shift that finished at 8.30 in the morning, there's

potentially someone to hand over to, but they're about to do ward rounds. How did that work? for you? What support did you need and what did you have? Well it's a really unique situation after hours child protection, I must say, because you didn't have time for supervision. If you were a full-time worker or a part-time, which I was for a couple of years, but then I went casual, doing it a couple of nights a week or days a week, like in the evenings or on the weekends, you really didn't have supervision. And your peers, if you did an outreach with someone, you debrief with them, you talk with them, you spent hours with them. And they were your go-to person.

And maybe if you got to see them at another shift, which sometimes you mightn't see someone for months, but if you got, you would go up and say, I wonder what happened with that child. Do you know what happened? Some people would say, oh, look, I heard what happened because in other times you would never hear what happened. So how did it go with supervision? They were challenging years because you didn't have supervision at that point. Because at 8.30 in the morning, when somebody said, do you want to debrief, you go, no. Like, no, I just want to get home. I am exhausted.

I'm trying to type up this because they need this report for court. And they're saying, where is it? And you just want to get something done. So they were, I would say, the most challenging and rewarding times at after hours child protection. I learned so much. apart from learning so much from other clinicians, professionally there was such growth at that time as well. But again, family took priority. You probably just needed to step back from that for a while. What was the next step? What was the compromise? How did you manage to still keep up that work that you

were so passionate about while being able to meet the needs of the kids? Well, then you sort of have the juggle of, of, you know, financially, and that's realistically. Other people have done different work, that work-life balance. So for me, child protection paid really well in the sense that you got penalty rates. So to go to another full-time role during the day, you weren't going to get the same amount of money. So realistically, I worked three days, part-time during the week, and then did the night shifts on the weekend. And that was a balance that I had for several years. And that was working in again, the first job out of was with the PASDA's team, the parenting assessment development, skill development. Yeah. So it was working with attachment and

mothers. Again, had an incredible team around me. There was eight of us and my manager was very experienced. Again, evidence-based work, assessment work. So very honed to what we were noticing, what we were seeing, how to report that information, because you were very much dealing with the court saying, can this mother, at most of the times, can she parent this child? Does she have the capacity to care for this child? And it wasn't up to you to say, should she be removed? You just said, well, we can build on these skills

because these are the areas she's having a challenge with. And then you had six weeks, six weeks, can you believe it, to try and create some change, you know, and then write the report up. So it was, it was a short period of time, but again, I had a strong team around me of other clinicians or practitioners. They were really into early intervention and mental health, infant mental health. So again, they provided me with a lot of skills and knowledge that I wouldn't have had otherwise unless I'd going to work in this team. And with PASDA, was it the kind of situation where there was flexibility where you could write a report at the end of the six weeks and say, we're making progress and I am

seeing change and I am seeing promise and capacity? Can we have another X period of time? Or was it very cut and dry? It was very cut and dry because it had to be for court. So they really want to know. And if you said this parent is actively engaging, is showing inside, then they might put in some family services or other services because it showed them at that time that the parent had some level of motivation as to want to work or want to attach or attune with the child but just didn't have that role modelling or those skills or they may have never been taught those skills. And there they have this newborn baby and everyone's going to be. on, well, she doesn't know how to parent. Well, has anyone taught her had a parent? Has anyone

taught her how to hold a child, change a child, get up during the night and feed a child? All these things that a lot of us take for granted this knowledge, you know, a lot of families, parents just aren't given those skills in love. Well, even, like, how can you possibly expect a first mother to know what they're doing. And even for you, it must have been a challenge the first time, probably the second time, of saying this is normal. I don't know if this is normal. Yeah, and a lot of times as a parent, and this you can pull on, I pull on my own experience too, you rely on other parents to know what's normal. And if you're normal, growing up normal, hasn't been what's, you know, developmentally best for a child, you don't see that you're doing

anything wrong. You say, well, you put them, they cry all night, but, you know, that's all right. They can cry all night. You know, what's wrong with that? You know, they need to learn to sleep on their own. Yeah. You know, there's a reason why they're crying all night. They need to be fed, changed. Oh, you know, we just assume people have that knowledge. And how intensive is that six weeks? How often did you get to work with them? Oh, you only work with two or three families, so it's really intensive. Like you might spend whole days with some mothers, you know, really once you observed at the first stages were just really about observation. And they knew you were there. It was so intrusive too. They knew you were there to sit there and watch them. And you weren't allowed to do

much intervention at that first stage because you want to see, well, part of it was to see whether they could do it or not. But you know, you'd have to intervene because, you'd have to intervene because, because some things you'd say, no, that child will, you know, really, it will fall if you leave it there. Oh, so you need to put a child, you know, on the ground if you have to or just not leave them on the bed because they can roll off. Oh. So it was very hard. And it's very hard to watch children for me not get the attention or love that they need,

not to have that opportunity. Yeah, from an attachment perspective as well, I can just. see how difficult that would be for someone to have that intensive support and then all of a sudden it's gone and they must feel so there's probably a sense of abandonment or unless you can link them in with other services you've done as much as you can and just letting that go must have been really challenging and you have parents that genuinely you know they love their children but they had no idea how to parent they really have really. really they don't have any idea of how to parent.

And, you know, some of them really didn't have the capacity to parent. The hardest homes I used to attend, especially with child protection, was always the emotional abuse one. Like if a child had been hit by the dad and you had the dad going, oh, I lost my temper, but when a parent didn't want to look at a child, didn't want to talk to the child, the child had been left in the room, that real emotional neglect, I think that was. was so hard that there was just no connection. The child had just lost any value of them as a

person and they'd lost it from such a young age that I'm not seen, I'm not valued, I'm not loved. And they're the ones that I still do, the emotional ones. You see parents try and they've made some wrong decisions and their children end up in the child protection system or end up because of their association with people being sexually assaulted, but they're engaging and they want to work and they want to be able to do something to support their children, but the ones that are totally disconnected, they're the hard ones. And I know that outcomes for a person

are not necessarily what makes you feel best as a social worker, as a counsellor, as a therapist. it's not about that objective measure. It's often the things that you can't really explain or the things that you weren't expecting to come out of a particular engagement. Is there a case that you can think of where it was just so incredibly fulfilling for you as a worker

regardless of what actually happened in terms of the outcomes? Well, after our child protection, I can't, you know, you never know what you're going to do. I always used to say you would make, whatever's happening at night as easy as possible for that child to deal with. So I'm just trying to think of a case while working with PASDUS off the top of my head. And yes, some of the family violent relationships, when the mother, and I'm thinking of one at the moment, got the opportunity, well, was forced to separate from the partner because of family violence,

but her priority was the child. but she wasn't able to connect to the child because she had disconnected from herself to survive the family violence. But supporting her to learning how to connect and what it meant like to connect, I was amazing. I remember like she hadn't had connection with her own mother as well. And I remember I took her along to this play group and it was other mothers that are also having challenges connecting with their children. and this play group that I stayed there because this mother really didn't even know how to connect with other mothers

or had casual conversations. She'd been isolated for so long but had this baby. And at this play group, they had set up all this playdough in the middle for the children to sort of play with or to connect. And all of a sudden, all these babies, I can always remember this, were put on the ground and all these mothers went in and played with the play-doh. And we're all sitting there going,

oh, this is not what we expected, but it just highlighted to me where they were at and they wanted that connection and they wanted to be childlike again. But it was them teaching them how to, you know, be with your child, to sing with your child, to nurture with the child and watching over those couple of weeks that mother just learning those steps of how to and these other mothers connect with their children, that was probably, I don't know whether you say they're successful. stories or not, but they're just moments, they're glimmers where people have the opportunity to learn. And I learned off her too, you know, I never see it as success as such. I see it as,

I genuinely believe we all move within this community sharing and giving and you learn up each other. And sometimes we just need a little bit more support at times. And we get a little bit more opportunities and better pathways than others. What a beautiful moment also for her to communicate with you and the rest of the team what she needed at that moment without she probably didn't even know no no no didn't even know but just knew that that was how she needed to contain needed to touch and had no idea that that might have been for the children to play with or the other babies to anyway whatever she thought it was very evident that's what she needed and what those other mothers needed. Yeah, wow. Okay, so such a rewarding workplace, obviously very challenging, but what then shifted,

your next move? So then shifted because the funding, I think, cut for this team at the point. I think it was given, but all of a sudden, you know, the funding wasn't there. So within, I think, a month or two months, there was a move in the offices. I think it was with connections at the time. I can't remember, but we all had to get new jobs and new working positions. And that's when there was a job at the South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault, Sakaza. And it was working in the multiple disciplinary centre in Dandenong. I don't know whether you know about the MDCs and went along for the interview and was given the opportunity at that point for a counsellor advocate.

again I had an amazing manager, Nerida, and I had some wonderful teammates because at that point trauma and what was coming out of trauma and what was evidence-based and what we were learning there was so much information out there. There's so much information you couldn't learn about it all yourself and so it really was coming from other clinicians, it was coming from your manager and we were learning. It was like someone saying, I went to that training. What did you learn from that training?

What do we need to do to incorporate this into the work that we're doing? What are they finding out about the nervous system? How does that work with the brain? What's happening with, you know, somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, EMDR? All of a sudden, it was just so much around trauma. And as a clinician, you had to learn about it

because you had these people that were coming to you with quite significant trauma symptoms that they're experiencing and without having this knowledge with this work that was coming from overseas, then you weren't really being able to shift people with their trauma and with their body and with processing. So going to, again, it was another learning opportunity. Working at the MDC was a marvellous position as well because At that stage, the MDC had only been opened a year or two years. So the relationship was building between Socket, the sexual offenses team, and child protection was also working there.

We had community nurses. There was the aware team, children that engage in sexual harmful behaviours, and we also had the counsellor advocates. And then upstairs, then family violence moved in and other services. But at that stage, we were responding with police. If anyone came in had been recently sexually assaulted, they started to call on us. So we started to have a response person.

So one person could immediately go down, do some grounding tools, give that information that was needed so vitally at that moment for families to not minimise what was happening but to be able to make sensible decisions, sometimes in regards to children and their families. Sometimes it was people giving people legal options, healing options, and just being there at the start, we had to learn to work with police and police had to learn

to work with the way we worked. But we started to get a real momentum. They realized if we were able to ground and provide a safe place for people that were coming in, they found that that was a really beneficial way for them sometimes to interview. And we also at the same time understood the information that they needed. So we knew that the questions that they were asking, they really needed to know what steps to take next. So depending on who we got, because there were some people that didn't want to be working at the MDC police, it was seen as just a step within, you know, part of their career and others that were really motivated. The same probably in our profession, social work, where they're just turning along, not much

interest, they've got this counselling, but not really a lot of interest in sexual assault or trauma, but end up in, you know, careers or professions that they're doing. So, but it was a wonderful opportunity, again, to implement not only just what we were learning about trauma and the intervention and processing, but also working within that multiple discipline routine that you could call on someone, call on the community nurse. I've got a young person down here that's been in resi care, it's been sexual exploitation.

No one's ever talked to her about periods. Can you come down and speak to her? Or can I make an appointment for her to speak to her or contraception? Yeah. So... I guess then there's less temptation to blow the lines when you do have those other disciplines to come on? Yeah.

When somebody's there and asking questions and you can say, and they feel safe and supported, then when you say, can I introduce you to the community nurse? Yeah, that's her. Would you like to talk to her about, oh, yeah, that would be great. All of a sudden they've put a face. They know who this person is. It's in a place now they feel familiar with

because they've been here before so they can come in and they can go and sit with the kids. community nurse. Saying that, when people had had experience with the police downstairs to come to counselling was sometimes detrimental for children because they didn't want to come back into the same place where they had to be interviewed by police as well. Right. Yeah. So I know that in the previous roles you've had, you had access to some of that interdisciplinary collaboration because you had to work closely with police. You had to work closely with the court. So there was the legal system. You were health already, you would refer to NGOs, but having everyone under the same roof, I feel like

there's a better opportunity to develop that respect for what each profession can bring to a particular case. Oh, it can. It definitely can. You know, I think when people make themselves available at that point, so you get to know people, you get to know their intentions, you get to know how they work, that you feel safe as a professional to go and talk with them, to be vulnerable to say, look, I don't understand. Can you explain to me what's going on? You know, why did child protection make that decision? There's no defences then by child protection saying,

well, we didn't have an opportunity. Then they're able to talk. Or they say, why aren't you engaging with this young person? What's going on? And you start to be able to have those open conversations, those conversations that generally allow for growth when you're both in an area of vulnerability. there's that room for growth and manoeuvre and understanding with other professions of what they

need and what they can do with their resources and their skill set that they have too. Yeah, absolutely. At what point did you make the big decision, the big jump, to open your own practice? Oh, well, open my own practice. Well, one of the other girls had started the, you know, accreditation for mental health social work. And, Michelle, She was the motivator saying, I think I want to go into private and I was still saying, I'm not sure what I want to do. But I feel like with everything I do, I feel like if I'm going to work in mental health, I need to get that accreditation. I just need to get that accreditation. It sort of was forced upon me in a little way because I was dabbling in it and then I came up with the name Breath and I really like that.

and the idea of working with clients, how I want to work with them, was really appealing. But I actually got a position, and I won't say where, as a trauma consultant, and it was part-time, and it sounded really interesting. And a lot of the work that I do, I don't know, is with EMDR. And at that point, I really want to get into more of the EMDR response type of work, of when you can debrief on a sort of a larger scale. And this private corporation that I was going into, they were really interested. But when I got there, and it was only for a short time, I thought, well, while I worked there

part-time, I'll do my private clients so I can get my accreditation for EMDR. So that's where I want to go, my accreditation for EMDR. So it seemed to be that good balance of doing this work and the EMDR, so leaving Sikaze. But that private company was it really, I started. to work against my values. We got there. The way they were going to work with others was not very trauma-informed. I can remember they refused to do acknowledgement to country. It was little things that you sit there and you're thinking, I've made a huge mistake. I've made a huge mistake with my

profession. I'm going against my value system. So then I sort of had already, I thought, okay, well, I've really got to kickstart this private because I don't think I'm going to stay here. And the private work came in really quickly. I think there's just wait lists everywhere. So that work came in really quickly. But I still like to work in public health. I really know that balance between public health in private is where I need to sit. And that's when the role at E-CAS, where I'm at now came up. And I thought, okay, this is the balance. I need to be a part of a team. I need to be learning within the public health. I don't want to be isolated. with private work because then I won't learn as much because I learned better personally in a

team. And so that was the progression to the private work and the public work on where I'm sitting now at the moment. And was the work at Sikaza formulated in a way that meant it counted towards your accredited mental health social work qualifications? Like obviously you need to show that you've been supervised for a certain amount of time doing that work. Yeah, because of at Sarkasa at that time and they had a change of directors while I was there. So for the first three years, Carolyn Worth had set up the CASAs had that very much. Once you're in there, you stay, we will work with you. And so you were able to really see clients on that long-term scale or work with them.

Not that you need to do that with EMDR clients as such, but it gave a lot of growth because I had a lot of supervision at that time, a lot of peer supervision. a lot of, you know, for my manager supervision, as well as lots of training. So it really allowed those clinical skills to develop at that time. So yeah, it did go towards my mental health accreditation. Yeah, great. So I actually interviewed Ashton Hayes, who has her own practice around supporting people with their AMHSW accreditation.

So if anyone or yourself is interested in going back, I think that was episode 22, and she has her own podcast now called Becoming an AMH-S-W, which is great. She interviews people who have been part of that journey, and they talk about the forks in the road that have led them to that point. They talk about the bumps in the road, and they talk about their process just in general, which I find really helpful, not because it's a way I want to go down, but just in terms of reframing for myself, how am I considering the work that I'm doing leading? to something else, as well as people who are interested in going down that path and having to think about how do I prioritize or how do I chunk this enormous task that's ahead of me? How did you find that process?

You know, I don't think I would have done that process on my own. I have to give credit to one of the workers I was with Michelle Downs. She started the process and she said, we all have to do this process. and but that was the group of people I was with. They were all very motivated with what they were doing. And she said, okay then, let's do one question a week. And you wouldn't get, and she'd go, Peter, come on, by the end of the month, you've got to do one or two questions.

And it was that constant, you know, of what have you done? Where are you at? What are you having problems with? And that peer, I've done number two. What are you doing? How do you, you know, if I didn't have that peer support, I don't know how I would have gone doing it on my own. And I have admiration because I know people take a week off work just to sit down and

try and work through the process. So I was lucky. It took me up probably six months, I would say. And that was from when Michelle said, come on, we've got to get this started. And really sitting there and registering and getting your points up to date to actually finalising it and support. admitting it for the exam that's at the end.

Yeah. And you said that the private work came in quickly. That would have been a bit of an adjustment to begin with anyway because anyone's starting a new practice, we don't learn this stuff at uni, right? We don't know how to do the accounting, do the scheduling, figure out how much we should be charging.

So to be bombarded almost with clients, with people that want to access the service, when you're still trying to figure out that other stuff, must have been challenging. The private work is still challenging for me. I realize I'm not an admin person. And my nephew that's in, he's got his own private electrical business. He said, you've either got to expand and hire an admin person or learn to do it yourself. And I said, well, I don't want to expand, but I would like an admin person.

So that was a huge learning curve. Again, it's the people you surround yourself with. The people I've surrounded myself with have surrounded myself with, haven't been knowledge is power. They've shared their knowledge with me. It's been asking questions. And you pass that along now. I have questions still with private practice, with item numbers, with the COVID, what went on, with how to schedule people in how much to charge or that's too much to charge. So again, that is contacting your peers. That's how I've learnt. It's really peer support, you know, have you opened up a bank account? Have you got an A-B-N number? Oh my God,

it's not just about opening the door. Yeah. Do you have your provider number sorted? Do you have your provider number sorted? You haven't got your practice. Your provider number, you've got to have a place where you're going to send your provider number. Oh, just say my home address. Well, then everyone will know where your home address is. Oh, my goodness. All those little admin jobs that you just don't know about that just seem to come up and people just assume that you know. And I'm not someone in my private practice too. Like if someone needs a resource, then I want to send them a resource. So even sending up resources to send people, if you've learned a new task or we've learned a new theory or we've learned whatever we've learned.

And they say, I'd like to learn more about it. I don't want to say, well, I'll wait till next week when we sit down again, we'll go over it. So even constructing a whole lot of resources that you can flick people and send people in YouTube's or articles. I'm still trying to get that together now, sending GP's letter after six sessions. So the admin side, I love the private work when I'm with the clients. The admin is something difficult. And even the conversations, like I don't take anyone on without having at least a conversation with them to see if we're the right fit and, you know, go to my web page, you know, this is how I work. Is this something you're thinking about or interested in? I was actually speaking with another lovely social worker recently, Michelle, and she was saying that she just had to kind of set up a client management system online where you book in independently, so someone will ask, when are you next available?

and she had this tendency of just booking people in, even though she knew she didn't have time. She just thought, you're in front of me, I'll quickly try to fit you in somewhere. And now she just sends people to her website where you can book online. So it shows when she's available. So she's not overbooking herself. But it also means that they're paying when they book in the session. So it kind of takes the hassle out of chasing people up if they don't show and that sort of thing. So I feel like you've got to find a balance that way.

works for you and your values of how do I want to be operating this and does it fit with me? And everyone does. I think how I've worked it with my private work, I have a half an hour between clients. Because I do body work, I always feel like I need to be regulated. And if someone needs to go five or ten minutes over, I don't want to say no. If that's what they need it, generally I finish on time. I also book people into the same time slot because I work within trauma, so they know, so they're not worried about, you know, when's my next appointment. And we do four sessions in advance. So I've been really lucky that that model people seem to go, yeah, all right, because I say,

we need to get some momentum and I'm not going to get momentum if this is what we're, and especially when you work with trauma, you know, you really need to say, okay, I really need to get a grasp on what's happening with you. And I need at least, you know, a few sessions booked in so we can start. and see where we go and work out a case plan. So I've been very lucky in that respect. So I say to people, a time slot comes up. I go, oh, I've got a 1130 time slot that comes up because then, you know, someone's finished their treatment course and then somebody else might come along. And what do you need, given that so much of your work is that exposure to traumatic content.

You're a sole practitioner. Obviously, you rely a lot on your networks and the supportive people around you. But again, you're juggling multiple roles as a professional, as a mum. What do you need? How do you support yourself? I have really strict boundaries. After five, I don't check calls, don't do emails. So my boundaries have helped me. If I'm thinking about something past six o'clock, I then go, okay, you're still thinking about this.

We need to do something. So I even do body scans. I have strict healthcare practices because I know I always can tell when I'm starting to burn out. I know the first thing that goes is I just replay something over and over in my head. Saying that, I've applied for long service leave in July. And I'm taking long service leave for that pure reason that I know at this stage, I need to take some time out because I've just had trauma for so long.

And if I can't regulate, I can't expect other clients. clients to regulate as well. And how that'll look in the future after a long service leave, I have to get a balance where I'm not exposed to so much trauma. Do you still in the private practice work have much of an opportunity for that interdisciplinary collaboration that you had back at Sarkasa? No. That's the difference about private work. It really is. Unless you set yourself up in a private practice. And I am, but there's other people that don't work the same days or times. You're really on your own. You set your own time. You set your own schedule, which is great. There's a lot of pros and cons, but what a private practice doesn't give you. It doesn't give

you that debriefing. It doesn't give you that space to learn. You really have to learn outside that clinical setting. You have to be motivated enough to upskill yourself. And that's why Working in public health is really important to me because it keeps you accountable to how you work, to your knowledge, to what you're doing, to current practices, which is really important. And because the work I do, I see is very much evidence-based, and that's the way I work, and I work with clients. I want to make sure that I'm keeping up to date with the current information, which I can't do all the time. I can't do. It's just impossible with trauma. I do miss working part of a team.

That is the big downside to private work. I saw also that you've been doing some training consultant work, and I think that's around the sexual assault disclosures. Is that something you're still actively doing and maybe something you want to shout out? You know what? I do a lot of the single sessions. I find parents contact me and something's happened,

and we do a single session. So some of the training I've put on the, sort of the back, back at this stage, just because I don't have the time really to do it, because you could do a lot of things after hours, but I don't want to get into this work after hours. I realize it just breaks into the work. The work that I am getting into that I'm finding is more useful is the nervous system. That's some of the training work that I'm going into because I think the nervous system and regulation and people understanding what their body's saying to them, it gives them some context to what's happening in their life and gives them

some understanding of what decisions they can make to manage their nervous system. So that tends to be where my interest is at the moment and where I'm doing a lot of the training with families, with other members of the public, it's around the nervous system. And it just seems to be the area that seems to be more in demand because people need some of that containment about what's happening to them and normalising that the anxiety is a description and the explanation is in your nervous system and that's what we've got to get to know. I'm just thinking you mentioned students a little while ago. Do you have an opportunity to supervise students in the work that you're doing now? No, I don't. Is that something that you miss?

Supervising students, yes. I think where I'm at at the moment and everyone will tell you, there's a staff shortage in our area. I have a 12-month wait where you're at and so resources are just so limited. Training is so limited and when students are put into situations, they're given much more of a workload than they should be given, and there's less training. And it's interesting what's happening at the moment in our workforce and how will impact the clients. I remember when I first started to work in trauma at Sakaza,

it was a minimum of five years before you could get a job working in trauma because they just felt you needed a good grounding. And then going there, they gave you a lot of training. You know, that's not happening overall. not just in the cars as it's everywhere, because we just need bodies. We just need bodies around to be able to deliver the service. I'm glad to hear that, at least, that they're not put in compromising situations. So what I'm saying to you, I don't have the opportunity just because I'm flat out with working.

No, that's fair. And have you seen a lot of changes over time in this area of work, either in legislation or in funding or even the approaches. You've talked a bit about the training and the developments that people are talking about that can then be translated to your area, but what's changing in the space? Well, there's a lot that's changed in the area of sexual assault. Failure to disclose, failure to protect. You know, those acts now, it's basically saying the whole community is generally responsible

if we know a child is being sexually abused. If you know it and you don't do anything about it, you're complicit. Those acts actually, we're now taking in grooming, which grooming, I don't know whether it's gone through, anyone's gone through the courts for just grooming yet, but grooming is now being taken very seriously by police, and it's now being recognised as part of the offending behaviour. So you're looking at now what's the changes that have gone in new, South Wales and have just come to Melbourne. Affirmative consent we're looking at now. We're looking

at stalking, being recognised, you know, choking, you know, what they're saying about choking, you know, and I'm even hearing a lot about, you know, children what they're exposed to with pornography, you know, what is it? Social media is probably complicating that quite a bit. Yeah, it is. One in ten children before nine are exposed to pornography, you know, and they're saying the education we should be starting that at six with children. So this space is growing in one area that we're not keeping up with it and in other ways the acts are coming in to reflect of what's happening in the community. Which is difficult because you're then putting a lot of responsibility on a six-year-old who should be enjoying their childhood instead of having

to worry about some of these things. Oh look we put a lot of responsibility on children. We put the responsibility on children to disclose. We don't put the responsibilities on adults to recognise the signs and to respond to the signs that they're seeing. because we just don't want to go down that area of could this child being sexually abused. We don't want to say those words. We don't want to actually bring it into our consciousness. So we prefer to believe that a child's badly behaved. We prefer to believe that a child is difficult.

They're things that we can explain. So we do put a lot of responsibility. And because I believe the behaviours are just really a protection to a child's safety, that any behaviours that are manifesting in a child, why are they there? What's the child trying to say that they don't have with words? Yeah. Where would you like to see change? How would you even measure those wins or that improvement in the systems?

How would you see wins? What would a win look like on a big level? I would like to see the stats for sexual abuse be lower than what they are. You know, when we're talking about one in five, or one in six children are going to be sexually assaulted or rape before they're 18. One in three girls before they're 18, you know, that's just not good enough. We need to put so much change into education. You mentioned you lived overseas before studying social work.

Have you ever considered working overseas? Oh, look, I would, you know, I think it comes down to visas and, you know, how that would look. and recognition, I guess, for qualifications. Qualifications. But, you know, you're always, where I'm at now, then you get caught in between, you know, your family, where your family is for me is, you know, becomes your home. Would I love to work overseas?

Yes. What do I do? I don't know. I don't know. I've got my long service leave. I keep dreaming of things. Maybe I'd just go and work in a cafe overseas for a month. So, you know, I'm looking at all options at the moment.

Maybe ask me, at the end, of my long service leave in November what I want to do and I might say I love social work again and trauma yay do you still get an opportunity to be creative I'm thinking back to interior design days and even if it was just kidding out your practice room something like that oh you know what my creativity comes in my practice my work to work with people to understand when you do parts work with people and they understand their different parts, their anger part or manager part or their critic part, how we can start to draw and explore what their internal world looks like. You know, and with EMDR, the bilateral stimulation, you know, how can that look other than just

eyes and tapping, you know, I do lots of work with the body and that comes out in creativity of how you talk, how you walk, you know, into the session. Everything becomes creative within your practice. Not so much the room because I find rooms can be really triggering for people. So my rooms are always really, really simple and pretty plain. Yeah. Are there any particular resources? You've mentioned things about your therapeutic approaches.

You've mentioned Gabel Marte and Bruce Perry. Are there any resources that people should check out if they're interested in? knowing a little bit more about this area? I think polyvagal theory, Stephen Porges, I think that's an area that anyone that's working in, working with anyone really, understanding the nervous system, how you relate to people and how they relate to you is picked up before we even speak. And so it's really probably really important. We know how we manage our own mental health, our own bodies, Bessel van der Kolte. There's some of the things I would say to start to look into, depending on what modality you want.

If you're looking at EMDR, you know, there's some great podcasts out there. What we know about the brain at the moment and learning about the brain. And I'm sitting there. I've just finished another book. So seven and a half lessons about the brain. Lisa, Barrett. So they're probably the resources I would just start to begin with and start to look at and just start to get curious.

Yeah, nice. And it sounds as though you've got quite a few. resources on your website as well. So I might put a link to that and people can check that out. Great. Thank you. Yeah. I love, you made it very clear that part of this curiosity is your dedication to lifelong learning and just being able to really connect with the people that nurture you. So having that, having good relationships with people around you that will allow for new ideas to be developed is a sort of consistent approach. But the connections you may, and maintain with the mentors and the people that have influenced you, you remember them all by name,

which definitely speaks to the way that they've shaped the social worker that you've become and are continuing to want to be. You're so mindful of your own tells, which I think is so important, like the signs that you're needing to take some time out, which a lot of people struggle with their entire careers just to be aware, especially in your own practice, you don't have that access to the supervision that you might in a health setting or in other clinical areas where people can kind of say, hang on a second, let's step back a bit. I'm noticing something that you're not noticing yourself. So, yeah, I think incredible work that you're doing and I think you're still developing,

you're still learning, you're still figuring it out. It is. And like you say, still figuring it out. And I think if I ever say I've learned it all, I think the more you go down, learning about trauma, about the body, you just realize how much more there is to learn. The wonderful thing is there's such progress. There's such progress and there's such treatments. We've just got to get all on the same page now. The medical model with, I'd say, the trauma model just needs to integrate somehow because pharmaceuticals are not working for mental health. Yeah. Before we finish up, I feel like I could talk to you forever about this stuff. It's so incredibly fascinating. But is there anything else you wanted to mention about the work you do or your experience? No, I think going into

social work and I think you said it, I think self-care is probably the biggest lesson I had to learn to look after yourself and you can work with everyone in a healthy and productive way that you come in contact with. So no, thank you very much for the time. Thank you so much, Peter. I really appreciate you doing this, taking the energy and the time out of your day as well, and just all the work that you do, trying to create a better future for the people that you support for your children, for your children's children, if they choose to have them, just trying to make the world a safer, more supported, well-rounded place. I think it's fantastic and I look forward to seeing where it takes you. Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Peter, 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 spotlight podcast at gina.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 Carolyn, who has worked in the trauma, child protection, domestic violence, and mental health sectors in Australia and the UK. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in the areas of supervision,

clinical practice and management, and received a Creswick Fellowship in 2012 to study attachment theory and group supervision models at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic in London. 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.