Social Work Spotlight - Episode 85: Carolyn

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

In this episode I speak with Carolyn, who has worked in the trauma, child protection, domestic violence and mental health sectors in Australia and the UK. In addition to her Bachelor and Masters's degrees in Social Work, Carolyn has a Masters in Adult Education and is undertaking a Masters in Applied Neuroscience. 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. Carolyn provides individual and group supervision to professionals in a range of fields and, is an article reviewer for a number of UK journals and provides training around topics such as Vicarious Trauma and Resilience, Leadership and Management, as well as Emotional Intelligence for a range of government and non-government organisations.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode: The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust - https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/Daniel Goleman - https://www.danielgoleman.info/Paul Ekman - https://www.paulekman.comConcepts used by Paulo Freire - https://www.freire.org/concepts-used-by-paulo-freireResisting burnout with justice-doing (Vikki Reynolds) - https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/reynolds2011resistingburnoutwithjustice-doingdulwich.pdfThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MlmSmlw8QmN3_7IaB2GuMvwWcH7pyC2B8QzCWX5y5-w/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 Carolyn, who worked in the trauma, child protection, domestic violence, and mental health sectors in Australia and the UK. In addition to her bachelor and master's degree in social work, Carolyn has a master's in adult education and is undertaking a master's in applied neuroscience. She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in the areas of supervision, clinical practice and management. Carolyn was the recipient of a Creswick Fellowship in 2012 to study attachment theory and group supervision models at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic in London. Carolyn provides individual and group supervision to professionals in a range of fields and was,

until recently, the convener of the Clinical Division of the Australian College of Social Work. Carolyn is an article reviewer for a number of UK journals and provides training around topics such as vicarious trauma and resilience, leadership and management, as well as emotional intelligence for a range of government and non-government organisations. Thank you, Carolyn, for coming on to the podcast. Lovely to meet with you today to talk about your social work experience. Great to meet with you, too, Yasmin. I would love to know firstly when you started as a social worker and what drew your. to the profession. Yeah, so I started a social work a frighteningly long time ago, coming up for 28, 29 years, I think now.

But what drew me to the profession, I actually didn't really have a strong sense of what social work was. I started straight after school at university studying archaeology, and it was actually my sister who encouraged me to move my studies from, as she joked at the time, from dead people to live people. When I realized that I didn't particularly want to be history teacher, but I was fascinated in studying cultures and groups of people. And so switched to a social work degree and, yes, went through from there. Placements then led to jobs and, yes, didn't really have a plan as such,

but very much fell in love with the profession of social work. It's become a core part of my identity. I often think that being a social worker is more than a vocation or a job. But often the values of it become a core part of how we see ourselves. So I've since gone on to study a number of other things, but I still very much, first and foremost, describe myself as a social worker. Yeah, and did I read that right? I feel like I read you, did a Bachelor of Social Work and a Masters of Social Work? Yes, yes, I did. So I did a Bachelor of Social Work sort of Straight after High School, went out and worked for a while. And then I did a Master's of Social Work before the Qualifying Masters was even a thing. So a more traditional

masters, in a sense, which was about learning more about certain areas of social work. and that was after I'd been out practicing for maybe eight or nine years, went and did a Masters of Social Work as well. Interesting. And how does that differ to the Masters, do you think now? So the qualifying Masters, I guess, is equivalent to a Bachelor's in some ways, whereas it was a Masters that was about, I guess, advanced social work practice or building on further.

And so with the Masters of Social Work, it was about picking streams of interest. And it was from there that I actually, I guess, got interested in writing and publishing papers and things like that because a number of my uni essays turned into articles back then. Wow. That's a big achievement to say early on in your career that you already published. Yes. Yeah. I'm really passionate about practitioners publishing. I went to one of my early experiences was going to a social work conference and hearing lots of academics speak. and it's not to diminish in any way academic research, but it didn't fit with my practice. It didn't speak to me, I guess, about what I thought I needed to know.

And so all of my published work is probably much more practitioner-based. I've literally just finished another subject on research for a different master's. And I would never say that I love the qualitative element of things. But I do very much enjoy writing is how I often think. So that's one of the ways I think things through. So writing about issues helps me grapple with them, grapple with the ethics, the challenges. And then sometimes that seems to be helpful for others as well. So that's what I like to publish.

I don't necessarily go for, you know, the most academic of journals. I go for the ones that I think are actually going to speak to practitioners and help them think further through what they're doing. Yeah, that makes sense. And as someone who myself is very passionate about writing and about publishing, just flashbacks to, I completely. a master's of education, which it sounds like you've done as well by research. But when I finished that, I then thought the most logical step next is to do the PhD. And at one point, my supervisor

said to me, you don't actually think you're going back to your hospital work, do you? Like, this is to try to get you into academia. And that was kind of my point of, I think I'm done with this PhD. I don't want to be an academic. My whole purpose of doing this research is to take that research back into the clinical world. And it was just interesting to me how discouraged that was and how discouraging it was for me to hear that that wasn't something that some people were on the same page for, but keen to hear what your project was and what drew you to that. Yeah, so yeah, I did the Masters of Social Work, then I did Masters of Adult Education, and that was very much. I was in a role at that stage where I was running training,

so it was kind of linked to that. But very much, what I was. became interested is how as adults we learn, how we think. So I've probably only years later, I've discovered there's a theme right the way through most of my study, which is about thinking, reflection and wanting to, I guess, encourage all practitioners and social work practitioners being part of that to be really clear about articulating what's driving their thinking and what's driving their practice and the ethics of that. So my adult education was actually around organizational change. So in what ways mandatory training. can or cannot achieve organisational change

and in particular looking at the way in which continuing professional development is mandated. The adult education world would say that adults often have to believe in what they're learning for it to work for them and so what does that mean when they're forced into doing study that they may not want to do. So yes, that was that feels like a long time ago now.

But yeah, that was the adult education masters. And a bit like you, I've heard a lot of people say to me, why haven't you done a PhD? Because I've just finished my third masters and people are like, what, three masters, but it's been 15 years between the last two. But for me, and I possibly will go on to do a PhD at some point in time. But I learned early on that academia wasn't for me. I'm much more applied in my thinking and I want to actually influence the sector directly. And not that academics can't do that, they certainly do, but it's different the way I like to do that. and it's that translation back.

So I've got a couple of areas. I've always said if I ever do a PhD, I'll have to be so passionate about the topic to actually see it through. And I may end up doing it. But I like the learning and I like the challenging of the learning to keep changing my social work practice. So that's probably why I keep studying without doing a PhD. Yeah, yeah.

And when you say you want to change these industries or these types of fields of social work all these ways of working. Are there particular areas of social work that have influenced your direction of learning? I'm sure there. I think it's probably, I've been doing supervision for a long time now of practitioners across a wide variety of fields. So probably not so much a particular specialisation in social work, but more what is our social work identity? What is key to that? What is it? Because a lot of social workers, some of them work in identified positions. I've done that at various points in my career, but I've also worked in positions that are very generic or

multidisciplinary or where I'm the only social worker in the team. And so I'm quite interested in this whole idea of how do we ensure our practice is really high quality? I think we've got a lot of challenges as a profession in that we don't have a strong, easily identifiable way of describing what it is we do. And I've become increasingly passionate about being able to articulate some of that well and encouraging people to identify with those values. their social justice values, their person in context values, so that they are able to see what they bring that is unique, particularly if they're working alongside OTs, nurses, psychologists, policy makers, things like that.

Social work is such a broad base from which to be wonderful at so many things, leadership's another one. We make good other things, but we're still often social workers disguised as policy makers or whatever, and what is it that is unique about what we're bringing and how do we feel confident and comfortable in that. So is there been an influence? It's probably more that I've worked a lot in the violence, abuse, and neglect and mental health fields.

That's kind of my early career, and I still do a bit of direct practice in some of that. But yes, that's probably more the influence, is that passion for social workers. As I said, that's my identity, even though I could technically call myself other things. That is very much how I see myself professionally. And it frustrates me that we don't always behave in ways

that make other people proud to say they're social workers. So much I want to unpack, but if I were to go back in time, I'm wondering if your desire to start working some of those more, I guess, traditional areas of social work, like the child protection and the van services, were influenced by your placements, whether it was in the education masters, the social work masters, what were your placements and how did that direct where you want to be working? Great question. So yes, it was very much. So my second placement was in aged care because I thought that's what I was going to do. Didn't work out that way at all.

My third placement was in statutory child protection in one of those agencies, and that led to a job. So it wasn't intended. It was accidental, but it led to a job straight out of uni, so that was easy in a way. And it probably did have a big effect. In particular, the decisions I was seeing made around me, the way in which I was encouraged not to identify as a social worker actively at that time,

but to be generic like the rest of my colleagues, that probably had an impact. And then also the decision making. So where I was fresh out of uni all of like 21, 22 years of age, making really big decisions about or having a very strong influence on decisions about whether people kept their children in their care or not. And it kind of frightened me, I think, that I wasn't being called to account more for what was influencing my thinking. there wasn't a robustness in the system.

I recognised my own power to actually completely determine how a parent or a carer was seen in that system. And it worried me that I wasn't being held to account. So I think that that is probably one of those influences. Within a year or two I'd moved, I did a few years in that role. And then I worked in a specialist service for the statutory agency in New South Wales as well, where we went all over the state. There was always two of us. and we got sent to families in remote areas where removal was likely

and our role was to try and work with the entire family network to spend time with the different agencies. We were in the home from breakfast till dinner for five days straight, very unusual program that doesn't exist anymore. And I went from being a frontline child protection worker and I'd been in court, being grilled and treated like I knew nothing, to suddenly, within about six weeks, once I got into this new role being treated as an expert witness and just being really conscious

that I hadn't changed in my skill set, my level of experience or anything like that. So it probably led to a continuing interest in how we justify our decision making, how we think through the power that we have and how we use it. And recognizing that it's there and using it for positive means to actually, I guess, I'm a big fan of kind of the idea that social work is not value new. by any means. We have an agenda and different areas of social work have different agendas and different theoretical frameworks lead to different agendas. But I believe our obligation is to be able to articulate what's driving our own thinking and how that's influencing both the work we undertake

and the theoretical frameworks and practical frameworks we draw on. I wonder if that program you were mentioning where there was that really intensive support might be very similar to a few episodes ago I had Peter, who works in Victoria, talk to me about, I think the agency's name was E-CASA, but basically it was a court-mandated program of six weeks where you had maybe one or two families and it was very intensive. And she herself was mentioning that even though she was slightly more mature, she had her own family, she would go back to her own family and almost feel like, it doesn't really matter what's happening with my family compared to this family. Everything's good. Whereas that made her sit back and go, hang on a second.

second, I think I might need to spend more time with my family and just nurture them and support them and they don't need just the basics. They need nurturing. They need me to be here physically present, available, not exhausted. But it's really interesting that power dynamic that you have both talked about around I am the person and they're probably going to be having a very different reaction or different response to caring for that children, knowing that they're being supervised constantly. It must have been so hard. Did you have good supervision, good support at the time? At the time, it was an amazing team. I'm still in contact with some of the people I worked with at that time. And it was a thorough process that we were put through. So it probably gave me a good

grounding in a way. But we were constantly bumping up against the systemic challenges of what was possible and not possible. We were asked to be creative around how we could intervene to prevent removal and what we could put in place. And sometimes because we were an unusual service, we would be able to help the system be more creative than it usually is. But yes, even the model, like I could have not, because I was away a lot,

I couldn't have probably actually undertaken that role had I had a family of my own. And then one of the things, this is a good example of how I think by publishing, one of the articles I published a few years later was after becoming a parent myself. So doing a lot of child protection work, then becoming a parent and going,

gosh, what's that done to my problem? practice. And so I actually ended up publishing an article about the fact that when we become a parent, it actually changes, if we become parents in the work, does it change what we pay attention to, what we don't? Why is it we don't talk about that? Why don't we interrogate that a bit more? Why don't we ask people to think about the ways that their attention is changed? Like I went through a phase where I suddenly interested it all over again in infant observation and early child development because I was living that. And so suddenly that became an area of real professional interest again, which was great for the families I worked with where that was a needed thing.

But what does that mean about how I'm held to account for why I'm interested in that? And how much am I referencing my own life through what I'm doing with the people I'm working with? What a unique thing about social work, though, that you can publish an article that's almost like a philosophical discussion with yourself around how am I practicing and why am I practicing and who is this influencing? I'm struggling to think as an OT, as a doctor. doctor as a nurse, where that would come into it?

Yes. Like it wouldn't at all? No, quite possibly not. And I think it's pointed out the fact we're a relational profession and the key tool we use is ourselves and our ability to engage. There may be some other professions where that also happens, but I do think it's part of our framework is to actually, the ethical element of our profession would say we should have to name that.

We should actually have to be able to acknowledge that. So yes, there's definitely, as I'm. I watch some of what I write about. It's definitely as I think things through and try to think them through more deeply. What do you think it is about maybe the agency that you were working for or the policies or even just entrenched practices that led you to be encouraged not to identify as a social worker despite holding so much power professionally? Is it our historical issues with removal? Is it that sort of thing? Potentially. Yes. Potentially. Yes. I also think though it was more about, and I think this happens still today,

like I do supervision for a number of mental health teams where this is still the case. You're identified by the title you have, even though you're employed by the professional qualification you have. You're encouraged to be generic. So you're not encouraged to identify the particular profession from which you come. And at that time, it was almost perceived that I was critiquing others for having less than. So I think in organisations, and this still happens in some of the NGOs, I find, where people may have social science qualifications, sociology qualifications,

teaching qualifications. And I've had a couple of people from those professional backgrounds say to me in supervision once they've got safe enough, what's the special knowledge that social workers have that I don't have? So this kind of fear that they don't know. So I think it was partly about don't go saying you're a social worker because you'll be critiquing your colleagues without even meaning to. but also organizations like to think that, you know, I guess if I think of mental health and an example currently, there's a lot of roles where you can be an O.T., you can be a psychologist,

you can be a social worker, you can be a nurse, and you're supposed to be interchangeable. And I would argue that there's a real accident of allocation that then happens. So the service that someone gets is affected not just by the profession of that person, but also their own particular approach. But we pretend as a system that they're all getting. the same because everyone is the same job description. But actually how they choose to do their work is hugely informed by who they are, what their training has been, what their approach is. Absolutely. And even just before we started recording, I was telling you I was visiting a new

client, a new injured worker today. And his wife was a little bit guarded and just, I got the impression that she saw me as the insurer and someone who was fairly generic, as you said. And I just, You know, I asked, do you have any questions for me? No. Can I tell you a bit about myself? I'm a social worker by background. And as soon as I said that, I almost saw her face light up as though, oh, you know, you get it, you can understand.

And look, you take a gamble with that sort of thing. For some people, that might mean nothing. But you assume that if someone's had experience in the healthcare setting, they've come out the other side, they probably know what a social worker is. They've had contact with a social worker. hopefully that will help them to understand where you're coming from. And in this case, it was spot on.

But yeah, I feel like I can't work genuinely without disclosing that, without letting someone know what position I'm taking and how I like to work. Because I feel like if they can't trust me, what are we doing? Yes, yeah. And as you say, it's a gamble because it could also be negative experiences, particularly if they associate social work with things like only child protection. But yes, as you say in the health system, there's usually been a positive interaction, hopefully. Yeah.

So what's your current role? What does a typical day look like? It sounds as though you've got your fingers in many pies. Oh, I do. I get bored very easily, so I love the variety. My current role, so I work for myself and so people sometimes say, are you a private practitioner? And I'm like, not in the traditional sense in that I'm not doing counselling. I'm not an accredited mental health social worker.

I do private practice, some of which is very social work and some of which is not. So my direct practice is that I'm an independent assessor for DCJ, the Child Protection and statutory agency. So I do complex parental capacity assessments, adoption and guardianship assessments, sometimes carer assessment. So at any one time I've got a couple of those on the go. I do quite a bit of supervision for all kinds of, so social worker, psychologist, OTs. I've got people in a wide variety of organisations, different areas of practice.

And then I also do a fair bit of training. So be that leadership training in health, writing curriculum development, running a conference for one of the big government organizations next week. So no two days look alike, I guess, is the short answer. I love the variety. I love the different things I get to do. And part from my direct practice, which kind of keeps my hand in, I would describe that pretty much everything I do is about supporting other professionals

to increase the quality or be accessing materials. So I know what it's like. I've worked in health, in some of the big government agencies. I know you don't get the time to do a lot of thinking and the research. So part of what I love doing is finding things and making it accessible for others, whether it be through training or through individual supervision or I do group supervision for a number of teams as well. Is that group supervision solely with social workers or is it interdisciplinary?

No, some of it's interdisciplinary. Some of it's been with teams where there's very few, social workers. It does vary and even the model that I use for supervision will vary. So I've worked over in the UK for a number of years at a place where I was trained in a very particular clinical model of supervision, a place called the Tavistock and Portman that's very introspective and makes you do a lot of thinking. So I do a couple of teams where I do very clinical supervision where we really unpack cases around what's impacting the thinking. Let's look at it from different theoretical perspectives. Let's interrogate why you made the decisions you did.

why in a session you even follow one train of thought versus another. I then do more what I would describe as educative group supervision with some teams, which is around themes and issues, and then more organizational supervision as well for some, which is more about how are they working collectively as a group, how are we standardising practice. And I find with a lot of groups that actually moves around those elements of group supervision as well. So sometimes I'll work with the team initially until we've got enough safety that we can move into actually starting to interrogate practice. and think about decision-making. So, yeah, each group has its own life cycle, I would say.

How do you feel that a social work lens or a social work style of supervision helps other disciplines to understand what they're doing? It's something I've done a lot of thinking about over the years because I'm not always employed because I'm a social worker. I'm employed because people have usually heard from other people that, oh, this person's good at supervision. I would say that what social workers bring that other stuff,

we're very much a contextual profession. So we will look at the individual or the group that we're working with, but a social worker continually expands the lens out, ask questions about what's going on in the broader context of the life of this person, what's going on in the interagency context? So is the way another agency is behaving influencing us to take a different position or a more extreme position than we would otherwise? Are we reacting to?

So I think that's what social work primary does. It expands the lens out. And one of the things I'm forever grateful for is the critical analysis element. I can remember getting out of my bachelor's degree and thinking, oh, my goodness, all I've done is spent four years learning how to critique everything. Like I don't actually know what I think or what I believe. I can just pull the part anything else. I'm now forever grateful for that because it forced me to build my own understanding over time

and to still be very good at that. So yeah, that critical analysis lens, that ability to look at what are the values, what are the frameworks going on behind the decision making of the agency, of the worker that are informing this thinking. As social workers, we refuse to just narrow in on the presenting issue. We always want to look at it in its context. Yeah. How does one become a capacity assessor? Do they have to have worked for DCJ? I'm just thinking there might be people out there who think, that sounds like something I'd be really good at.

I'd be really interested in. But I imagine it would help to have that experience with the statutory agency. But do you get training? How are you supported to do that? Good question. Now, you don't have to. There are certainly people on the list who haven't. You do have to have a pretty decent amount of experience.

So it's a fairly rigorous application process. You have to provide assessments you've done elsewhere. De-identified, you usually have to have beyond a bachelor or qualifying levels qualification. So to be an independent assessor on the DCJ list, I think there's about 55 or 60 of us across New South Wales. And it is retended for every few years. And you have to be able to meet the criteria for being an expert witness at court. So it's definitely something I enjoyed it. I mean, it's stressful at times.

And I never ever, I can remember, and this is possibly another influence on my thinking, but very early on as a caseworker, I can remember being told by another caseworker, because they had equivalence of independent assessors back then. They were called something different. But I can remember someone say, oh, if you want an expert opinion where they're going to recommend removing the child, go to this person. And if you want the children to stay in the family, go to this person.

And I think, oh, that's awful that you can tell. So I never, I was really determined I never want to be, I want to take each case on its merits. I want to think it through, like independent assessors get paid reasonably well. But I wouldn't say, if you broke down the number of hours I spend thinking about the matters I'm involved with and how much I agonise over decisions and have to be able to be ready to justify them in court, then I probably don't get paid that great, like in terms of an hourly rate.

But it is, it's important work to really, yeah, be thorough with and be really clear on, I'm going to use a psychotherapeutic term, just when I worked over in the UK said I went to a place that was very influenced by this and really being clear on my alignment, who am I there for, who am I aligning to why, what's that about? is a big part of thinking. But yes, so independent assessors, to become a carer assessor doesn't require quite the same level of qualifications and things.

So it's often a stepping stone for people. They become a carer assessor first. And then down the track, look at things like parental capacity assessments and restoration assessments and things like that. It depends on the complexity of the matter, but usually you'd be involved for someone like five, six weeks, eight weeks maximum.

So you're talking to as many other professionals as you can, know the family well, you're doing observations of families together, you're spending lots of time with them individually. So most assessments would be somewhere in the region of 35, 40 hours worth of work. And it sounds as though there are people who fulfill that role who are perhaps on that same panel of workers who aren't social workers. So they're looking at people who have a wealth of experience elsewhere. Yes, that's right. Interesting.

Tell me about the conference that you're organising. That's an interesting. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about that, actually. I don't know if I'm allowed to say. How did you get into it? So I've been running training. It's in the domestic and family violence arena, and I've been running training in that area for a long time.

So this is actually the third or fourth time I've been involved in running a practice forum slash conference for this particular government department. So it's for auspice services. So it will be orientation training for the new programs that have come on board. It will be a practice forum at which, they share best practice and ideas, and we're getting in guest speakers, university evaluation of the program, we're getting in someone who's done in a Churchill

fellowship in a specific area of domestic and family violence. So I guess even in the way, so the first two days, myself and a co-trainer will be facilitating a lot of that. The third day is very much part of the last few weeks of my work have been about supporting some of the direct service providers to be brave enough to share their practice on day three. So to different degrees, supporting them to put together presentations and to be able to share their learning with each other on that third day. Okay.

So very consistent with your practice interests and values of not just research as a conference sort of outcome or a goal. You've very much got those workshops and those practice implications coming. Yes. Yes. So there was talk of having a panel on day three, but we've managed to get enough people being willing to present that we're not having a panel. which I love because panels can be useful, but they can often be about giving the answer of

what everyone thinks would happen rather than what would really happen, whereas we've got some really good sessions planned on things like staying in the work, looking after yourself in the work, the dilemmas of working with a family law court framework, for example, in domestic and family violence and just the realities that those two systems clash. We've got some sessions on coercive control. We've got sessions on safety audits and how to assess safety and your own safety. Yes, so all kinds of interesting things. Big focus on First Nations practice, which I'm really thrilled about. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to it, even though it'll be hectic. I can imagine. Yeah, do you have some time off afterwards just to regroup? That would be

nice. I've got some time off a few weeks after that. Okay. Not quite yet. I love that a panel implies practice experts, right? And it sounds as though you're trying to really position that as the participants as the combined learners as the holders of that knowledge. I really like that. What do you love most about the work you're doing? I can really feel like there are so many things. The variety, definitely. I love the variety of what I do.

I love that I get to take ideas from one part of what I do into other parts of what I do, whether it be the study I'm taking, whether it be ideas that come through in individual supervision sessions, whether it be aha moments I have while I'm doing training in something quite unrelated, So it might be leadership training. And I go, oh, that's why the organisation over here that I'm working with is struggling with this issue because they haven't got this happening. Yeah, for me, I'm always looking for those.

There's an adult educator, Palo Ferreira, who talks about conscientization or those aha moments where you have a breakthrough in your thinking and you join the dots and you can never go back to not knowing the new way of seeing the world. And so I look for those in my work and I love finding moments where I can. encourage or watch others have those moments in their work. I realize I've completely skipped over. You mentioned you've just finished one master's. Is that in the neuroscience of empathy?

Is that what that surrounds? Yeah. So I've done a master's in applied neuroscience, which has been very sciencey at times for a social worker that's been challenging or learning all the different parts of the brain and looking at, you know, slices of mouse brain and all kinds of things. But yes, I've managed to make it social worky by focusing my thesis very much around the neuroscience of empathic engagement

and how we do engagement with people differently and different parts of our brain light up and we engage in different ways. Yes, it's really helped me understand concepts like vicarious trauma and burnout very differently. And I'm finding that being able to share that, I'm seeing those aha moments for people when they realize that there's actually really clear reasons.

why they struggle with compassion at times, while they find themselves detached from the work, why they might find themselves overly engaged in boundary breaches. So, yes, I've loved that neuroscientists all around the world are talking about empathy as a key human skill, and they can prove on an MRI scan what's going on when we empathically connect with another person. So it's like they're finally cutting onto what we've been doing as social workers all along. Yeah. You talk about boundaries. how do you divide your time?

How do you maintain that separation and keep yourself interested and motivated in what you're doing? Having supervision myself is a help. Gradually over time, because I've now been running my own business for more than 10 years, I've had to learn what jobs to say no to, which is hard sometimes when you're like, gosh, where's the next bit of money coming from?

Trusting that the work that I enjoy will come and looking for work that fits with my value set rather than just this person says they need me and therefore taking it on. So that's part of the boundaries. It is a challenge working for yourself in that every person wants their job to be the most important job and you've got to give your full attention when you're with that person. But I've learned which kinds of work engage and enthuse me and provide energy. And I've learnt to let go of work that doesn't.

What's the hardest part of your work? What do you find most challenging? So fitting it all in, particularly I think, looking forward to it doing, being a bit better now I've finished studying. That will be helpful. Fitting it all in, and probably, I wouldn't say in any way the isolation in terms of I'm connected with a lot of different parts of practice. Where the isolation comes in is in the direct practice. When I'm doing the independent assessor staff, they're big decisions on your own. And so being able to talk those through with a few key other social workers is really important

to not feel isolated. And have you seen many changes over time, whether it's, I'm guessing there's been a lot in terms of child protection and violence, abuse and neglect, but even just for social workers who are running their own businesses or doing research, what's been developing out there? What's the sense I get of that? Yes, changes and some things still, some of the challenges are still the same. So one of the things I would say is the challenge of the organizational dilemmas that people face,

of not always feeling valued in their workplaces, of not always being provided, conditions, not always being able to do the kind of work they want to be able to do. So that has remained almost, I would say, probably one of the consistence things, that the rules around it changed, that whether it's being funded, internal, external, NGO, government, that sort of stuff changes. But I think we're a profession that wants to do well by the people we work with and for, and as a result, we can at times find ourselves almost being taken advantage of or pressured to do more than is possible.

Other changes, I guess, over the time, probably one of the big differences is the diversity of social work training now, I find is interesting. So there is less consistency at times in the way people are coming out from different social work degrees in terms of what's been focused on. And different stages, different approaches being really popular. And I've watched students come through who've been trained in one or two particular approaches and models.

And haven't been in that. same critical analysis kind of approach and then struggling in the workplace when they it doesn't fit for everybody and it doesn't have to rethink. So I'm a big avid for keeping that critical lens on everything. I feel like I think we use that word a lot, but yes. You mentioned you're doing some teaching as well and some education. I'm wondering if the masters of social work as you completed it still existed, what would you like to see as part of that? What would you like to see as the intensive learning for the practice areas? Like how would that be different now to when you today?

Yes, good question. So I think there's still, I mean, the areas that are growing and changing all the time. So the domestic and family violence space, which I'm probably doing a lot of thinking about at the moment with the conference next week about some of the emerging thinking and changes around that. I also did some work with New South Wales Police a couple of years ago, which really challenge me to think about how do we assist organisations like that do better in that space. So topic-based, I can see there's topic-based issues.

So even whether we think about it as trauma-informed or violence-informed, context-informed, practice within the mental health sector, I feel like there's a lot emerging there as well. Certainly, though, in terms of Masters of Social Work, being able to utilise supervision well and being able to provide it well. So I find far too many people end up providing supervision just by virtue of the role. they're in. There's not much out there in terms of training and support for people to do it well. And so they're kind of doing it based on what they've had done to and with them, which isn't always ideal and it certainly isn't the best way to get the best out of practitioners. So I think that's

an area I'd like to see a lot more investment. We say it's one of the key ways that as a profession, we keep ourselves safe and we make sure our practice is high quality and yet we don't train social workers in how to get the most out of their supervision and use it well. And don't train them to be good supervisors. Gosh, there's probably a whole lot of other areas I haven't even thought of, but that initially and yeah, the other area I guess, which we've not really touched on, but I've got some amazing First Nations social work colleagues who have just so much to teach us as a profession about the way to do true connection and listening that I'd like to see that more front

and center of our practice as well. Yeah. And there are some supervision. modules and training and resources out there like the Heddy Superguide and I know that there is separate training you can do in supervision but as you said it is almost an afterthought it's something we engage with as undergrads but it's not until we leave uni and start practicing that we really get a sense of how that enables us to stay fresh and stay grounded and stay true to the profession so yeah I think that's something really important for people who are training as social workers

is to even have an opportunity to supervise others or even supervise other people being supervised, if that makes any sense. Like maybe just having an opportunity to watch how that works or even if you've got an agency that has more than one student, there's an opportunity for group supervision. Yes. I feel like that's really valuable.

Absolutely. And just being made aware of what you can even require from supervision, what you can ask for, if it's not what you need, how can you shift it to be able to request more of what you need? But I find the dilemma with that is a lot of supervisors are quite fragile about that. They're not sure of themselves. There's a bit of imposter syndrome going on there. So it's tricky.

But I would really encourage, I notice a huge difference, actually. I will say this. I notice a huge difference in people who've had good quality supervision. They will always seek it out. Whereas if you don't get good supervision early in your career, people will actually often avoid it or they don't value it because they've not had those experiences. So early in your social work career, shifting who you get it from,

even if it means peer supervision, even if it means finding someone that you can say, look, can I just have a few sessions? I really like the way you practice. I'd love to try supervision with you, even if we can't keep going, you know. But knowing what it can look like means you'll continue to seek it for the rest of your career. Yeah. How did your work in the UK come about and what brought you back to Australia? Yeah.

I went over there originally for 12 months with a previous partner. We were just going to do 12 months of lots of travel and things. And I went over at a different point in my career to a lot of social workers. So I was already in my mid-30s when I went over. So I initially went over there and just basically took a social work job and then realized, so that relationship break down and then I realized I was going to be staying in the UK. So I then moved into more senior roles and worked at quite a senior level in the health system over there. I managed a large fostering service for a number of years in London.

and then moved into it. It's called an assistant director role at the Tavstock and Portman, which was a fascinating place to work. So I ended up being over there just under five years, all up, and I moved back here for family support once I had a family of my own. So that's how that happened, brought my English partner back over here. But it did have an effect on my practice, but I think it was interesting being that first year just kind of going, I'm here to travel, I'm here to go to Europe every months a month and have a great time, versus going actually, no, I'm here for a career now and having to overcome the perception of Australian social workers,

which is generally very positive. But once I got to senior management levels, not so much, I had to really prove myself and work quite hard. So you were less of a novelty by that point? Yes, possibly, possibly. And also questions about are you staying, which is understandable, but also different understandings of social work practice. But thankfully, the final place I worked was very open to those kinds of,

discussion. So it's the most senior role I've held in that I reported, I was on the senior executive team of a large mental health trust. And I remember, but they were very big on thinking. So we were all required to go every fortnight to a lunchtime conference where people presented papers to each other. Everyone, no matter how senior, CEO down, carried a small caseload that was part of their philosophy. And everyone had a lot of supervision, influenced by people who'd worked there. So John Bulby worked there, Sigmund Freud had worked there. Kau Jung, people like that. So there were statues when you walked in every morning of all these people to intimidate you as you walked in. But it was a real place of thinking and, yeah,

analysis, which was great. Is that something that you'd consider in future? Would you like to work overseas again? Definitely a possibility. Yes, I'd have to convince family that it's a good idea, but definitely a possibility. I feel like on some way, there is my time there is not done. Although the world has changed and opened up, the master's in neuroscience that I'm doing here is through a university in London. With COVID, it was all online. I had to do some lab work here,

but the world is changing in terms of how we access things from different places now. Given that you've had such varied experience, I feel like you've had an opportunity to try a little bit of here and a little bit of there, but is there anything you haven't done in social work that you'd be really passionate about trying it? for a little while there I thought I did want to moving to academic kind of work so I did try that out for a little bit and then went I love the teaching side hated the marking side so that was the end of that in terms of other areas of practice I think probably working out how to if I'm getting to a stage of my career of working out how to give back with the most humility in some ways and being a part of shaping things so that has led to me being involved with some people

body kind of organisations and things like that. So I've found myself on some boards and committees and things like that of late. So it's more about trying to encourage practice, but at the same time, realizing the more I know, the more I don't know constantly, there's always new areas of learning and growing. I feel like not so much social work practice, but yeah, I've dabbled in stepping into other professions and I always come back here. So, yeah, in continuing to support others to do their practice well and being a resource and being that lifter of others remains my passion probably. Yeah. And are there any other programs or projects that you're involved with at the moment that you can talk about? Yes, there would be. Let's see. What else have I got on the go at the

moment. So yeah, a fair bit of some training going on in the emotional intelligence and empathy space and leadership training. So I think social workers have a lot to offer in terms of how to be good managers of people and leaders. So I'm doing a bit around that. I have got some training coming up that I'm writing and running in relation to theory to practice kind of sides of things. So how do people uncover their theoretical models and thinking? Because I find for a lot of social workers and practitioners in this sort of work generally, if you say to them, watch your theoretical framework, they panic. Some people are really good at naming it, but a lot of people just panic because we get out into the sector and we're busy.

learning how to do the doing. And our models change and we're not quite sure of our ground. So I've been putting together some short courses and some longer courses around helping people articulate what it is they're acting from. So building our theory from the ground up rather than from the other way around. Gosh, what else is going on at the moment? A couple of other pieces of work and doing some perinatal infant mental health work, putting together some policy work for them.

It's bound to be other things I can't even think off off the top of my head. But I've got a whole, I'm looking around trying to, look around. I've got a whiteboard over there that maps all my current projects and tasks. I feel like you need three whiteboards just to keep up to date. I probably do a little bit. That's incredible. And never a dull day, clearly. No. Having said that, is it really hard to take time off, given that you're all over so many things? Yeah. It can be, definitely. And I'm probably someone, I've realized, I went through an experience. Late last year, I had a loss in my family. And a number of people who are,

saying to me, why are you not pausing your studies? Why are you not saying no to some work? And I realized that in a bizarre way that not everyone gets my studies was actually a form of self-care for me. I really enjoy that. And yes, it comes with its stresses and things. But I do really enjoy the variety. So yes, I have to work quite hard. I am very thankful that I have a partner and a family that are very good at play as well. So we do a lot. We travel a fair bit. We go out a lot. We joy of a wide variety, and doing dance lessons at the moment. And we like to do things. And so I'm not very good at sitting and relaxing in front of the TV, that kind of thing, because I'll start doing more thinking and writing, but I'm good at going out.

Yeah, using different parts of the brain. Yes. That makes sense. You've mentioned some really great resources and other neuroscientists who are doing great work. You've mentioned trauma-informed work. Are there any great resources that you'd like to shout out that people should go and have a look out? I do think there's some really interesting stuff coming out about empathy and concepts like visual empathy. I'd really like to help to what degree when you're talking to a client and hearing a story. Are you visualising their story and how much is that affecting vicarious trauma? Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have both got some really interesting stuff around that. I do like some of the work of Vicki Reynolds around resisting burnout, just as doing that kind of thing.

what are the resources? I'm bound to think of them all when we finish talking, but I'm happy to send some through. I've got a whole list of favourite articles that I've either read or I intend to get to just keeps growing. Yeah, perfect. And I assume you have a website

for tuned in consulting as some of the resources on there? I do have a website. I'm not always good at keeping it up to date. My own publications are listed on there. Whether other people are, I don't think so, but happy to send some through. that's helpful. Great. Just if anyone is interested in getting in touch with you, if they like what you're putting out, then they can get in touch with you that way, I'm sure.

And is there anything else, I'm conscious of time, I could talk to you all day about your research and about the wonderful work that you're doing, but anything that we haven't mentioned that you really want to say about your social work experience, or even just your experience in your work that hasn't been focused solely in social work, but you've been able to draw from, and gain energy from. I don't think there's too much. I mean, sure, we've gone a different direction to what I may have even thought we would, but that's totally fine.

Probably, I guess the final thing I'd almost want to say is just encourage people to be proud of being a social worker and working to be able to name your approach and name what it is and the value of what we bring as a profession and that we do bring this wider contextual lens, that we do bring a social justice lens, we do, ask what's happening for someone, even though I think the irony as a profession that we train people for the big picture, we train people for the systemic and the organisation, and then most of us end up working in very individual ways. But we constantly bring that broader perspective and it's something to be really proud of and it's different to what a lot of our colleagues bring. I love that

lifelong learning that you're bringing, but also that problem solving through the writing process. That to me is saying for you, it's okay to be stuck in your head sometimes, not just practicing automatically, which I think is a rut that is easy to get into. And then sometimes it's hard to step out of that and explain why you do what you do. So being able to really reflect, it sounds like to some degree it's an automatic thing that you do, but it's also a real skill that you've developed to be able to make that you're automatic. So that's a, really great and you're working really hard to expand the lens of social work perspectives on everything so making sure that social workers can identify and feel proud of what they're doing

and you've not seemed to be one to work in spaces that are easy you know you want to be challenged and you really want to feel like you're flexing your social work skills which I think is really me and I keep coming back to in my head what I'm hearing is how can we be support to articulate our practice frameworks. How do we know what we do and how do we do what we do and how do we do what we do in order to be trusted, valued, respected for what we bring to the profession and what the profession brings to these very interesting and interdisciplinary realms? So, yeah, I think incredible example of how social work can be influenced by practice.

practice can influence research. It all works together that culminates in this really interesting role that you have of almost like a, that you are a consultant in different fields that bring different perspectives. So yeah, I'm really interested to see what comes out of your work around that interdisciplinary supervision and how perhaps social work supervision can be influenced by supervision from other areas because that's something that we don't talk much about either we kind of hold social work supervision as gospel as the sort of ideal, whereas other professions are probably doing something quite different that we could take little bits from as well.

Yes, absolutely. And then it bumps up against where's the boundaries between coaching, mentoring, supervision, counselling, that's some of the thinking I've been doing a bit about some courses I'm working on at the moment. Of course you are. Getting better at articulating those boundaries. Oh, look, there's loads of things there that we could keep talking about. I'm sure, but, you know, that's just a little taster of your experience, of your expertise,

but also your curiosity and your understanding that mine is one perspective. And here is how I can help you to understand the practice that you're doing and what the different people in your team might be bringing to a particular situation. So, yeah, fantastic work. I've enjoyed hearing about it. I've loved meeting with you. I think it's an incredible honor. and yeah, send me through any resources, anything that you think of, that people can go off and

have a look and get to know you and your work and what has influenced you, and I'd be happy to share that. Great. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope it's been of use. It's incredible. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Carolyn, please visit my anchor page at anchor.com. FM slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at

gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Chantelle, owner of Reach Well-Being, a private practice offering supervision to helping professionals. Chantel has experience working across the lifespan, primarily in the area. of trauma and mental health and has a keen interest in education as well as how social work

more broadly can exist in the world of media. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notify when this next episode is available. See you next time.