Social Work Spotlight - Episode 94: Calum

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

In this episode I speak with Calum, an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and Psychotherapist, with 10 years of experience across specialist mental health services both in Australia and the UK. Calum also runs a small private practice, Stoa Therapy, and is undertaking further education in Family Therapy.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Calum’s private therapy practice, Stoa Therapy - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stoa-therapyStoa Therapy on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wearestoa/Headspace - https://headspace.org.au/NSW Health Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) - https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/mentalhealth/Pages/services-camhs.aspxDBT Skills Manual for Adolescents (Rathus & Miller) - https://www.guilford.com/books/DBT-Skills-Manual-for-Adolescents/Rathus-Miller/9781462515356Growing Yourself Up (Jenny Brown) - https://exislepublishing.com/product/growing-2nd-edition/Family Evaluation (Kerr & Bowen) - https://murraybowenarchives.org/books/family-evaluation/The Bowen Center on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheBowenCenterThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yNDpZ0bOnHxfv-EeKgASKmJCBz8eB-0DQ-RXgU7m9J8/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

in each episode. I'm your host, Yasmeen McKee Wright, and today's guest is Callum, an accredited mental health social worker and psychotherapist with 10 years of experience across specialist mental health services, both in Australia and the UK. Callum also runs a small private practice, Stowa Therapy, and is undertaking further education in family therapy. Thanks so much, Callum, for joining me on the podcast today. Really happy to have a chat with you about your experience.

Yep, no problem, as I said. Sorry, it's taken so long. Looking forward to it. I'd love to know, firstly, when you started as a social worker and what drew you to the profession? So I qualified back in 2016. I qualified in the UK. I did a Master's of Social Work. I suppose it's a difficult one in terms of what drew me to the profession.

I think I did my undergraduate, which is a master's. like a bachelor's in Australia in psychology. And in the UK, in terms of treatment through psychologists, generally it's through clinical psychologists. And to have the title of a clinical psychologist in the UK, you have to have a doctorate, which is different to Australia where you can do it with a master's or you can be a registered psychologist and treat clients in the UK. You have to do a full doctorate.

So it's a lot of study. And I kind of knew I wanted to do therapy. even at that point, I was being dissuaded by people who were therapists, but I felt like that's where I wanted to go. I mean, I don't think I had any idea what was involved in it, but I knew that I was interested in mental health, and I knew that I kind of wanted to go down that route. But even so, I wasn't really that interested in doing extensive amounts of study and had lots of friends who were working, and I was kind of feeling like I want to get some money in. And so I just started doing little bits and bobs into, you know, various jobs and started applying for jobs. And I was just

finding that it wasn't energizing me, the kind of the work, even job descriptions. I didn't feel excited by any of the work. I didn't feel interested, really, in a lot of the jobs that were available at the time. So then I kind of quickly decided to start having a look at further study. And at the time, in the city that I was in, I mean, there was a shortage of social workers in the UK for lots of different reasons. And so there was bursaries available for master's students. And I looked at the course in my local city and like the look of the modules, I felt like it aligned with like my values, I suppose. It kind of fit with how I saw the world. And I think that's what kind of led me to go for it with doing the master's. So yeah, I enrolled in the masters and the rest is history

basically yeah and is it similar to the masters in australia where you've got your two years where in each year you've got some practical placements is it similar to yeah yeah yeah so yeah you do two placements i think it's structured differently at different universities but at the university i was at gosh gosh so long ago now that i can't remember but we had a short placement and a longer placement yeah and generally how the placements were structured was that you tend to do one in the public sector and then one in an NGO or a charitable sector generally and hopefully one across adults and one across children's yeah cool i did both of my placements in the public sector one of the reasons that they i was told anyway by my tutor one of the reasons that they tried to do one in the NGO and one

across the public sector was that the public sector placements tended to be a little bit more intense and a little bit more kind of difficult and i think part of it was not wanting to scare people off the work maybe. That's fair. But I mean, he expressed to me that he felt I was able and so they'd put me forward for two public sector placements. I actually think one of the reasons that I was kind of viewed as able at the time is that there was a lot of mature students on the course. And although I did very well academically on the course, I think there was a lot of people who had challenges to deal with at that time that I just didn't. I was able to just focus on studying and focus on my placements and people had part-time jobs. So yeah, I don't think it was necessarily

anything to do with capability. I think I was probably just able to have a bit more headspace for the work at the time. So yeah, I did two placements that I actually really, really, really enjoyed. I did one in a children's home. That was my child placement. That was the longer one that I did. And the shorter one, there was not much difference in them, I say a month difference or something in the length of time I was there. And the shorter one was in a drug and alcohol service, which I really loved. And were there aspects of those two placements that you feel made you a little bit more excited or energized to look in those particular areas when you finished the course?

Yeah, look, I think, I think in some sense I have my mindset on mental health. That was what my thesis was in. That was what I was interested in. And of course there's elements of that across both of the placements that I did. And there were skills that I learned from both of those placements that were helpful in the work that I ended up going into. But in the UK, I suppose, social work is slightly different. I mean, it's different area to area even. But a lot of statutory social work roles are, I wouldn't say there's as much of a focus in mental health treatment as there is in Australia.

I think. But it does differ. area to area, but quite often social workers in mental health in the UK will be in like community mental health teams. So there'll be a lot of management and a lot of care coordination and a lot of activities of daily living stuff and advocating for people. So really great role to have, but I was interested in doing the treatment. And there's not a lot of, I think generally social workers in the UK, if they're going to be doing treatment, might go and do further training family therapy or a psychotherapist, but one area where there is social work is doing treatment,

to my knowledge anyways, in CAMs teams, in child and adolescent mental health teams. And so that's where I ended up after going around the houses a bit, coming out here for a year, going back to the UK, doing some of the roles. But yeah, I think I had my heart set on mental health from the beginning, but I think there's some really great stuff that I took from both of those placements. And from working with people, within those placements, I think it schooled me in terms of my social work education and it shaped the way that I do the work I do now, I would say. So, for example, you know, working in the children's homes generally, that was a local authority

children's homes. So like an LGA children's home. There'd be no way to kind of equate it to something in Australia. But there are private companies that run children homes in the UK. And there's also, they're few and far between. now they've been sold off a lot of them, but there are some council children's homes that are run by local government. And so that this was one of them in the city that I grew up in. And I think it just really opened my eyes to the challenges that a lot of young people will face. It was kind of

not on my doorstep, but 15 minutes away from where I grew up. To put that into context, I grew up in a fairly affluent village. I had a nice life in the countryside, really, and 15 minutes down the road, there was stuff going on that you just, you could never envisage. And I think it just opened my eyes up to a world that I had no idea about, really. And to children faced with challenges early in their life that I had no concept of. And I suppose it made me think a bit more about how that impacts the trajectory of their life. And so it has definitely influenced the way that I work with people from a mental health perspective. You know, I think because I've done an undergraduate in psychology,

I think I was thinking a lot about attachment. I was thinking a lot about human growth and development. I was thinking a lot about early experiences and how they shape people. And I suppose I was applying that. The other thing that happened in the other placement, in the drug and alcohol services, is I was doing a lot of assessments for residential rehab. And they were what we were calling at the time narrative assessments. So these would be done over three sessions, sometimes an hour a session.

So they were really kind of life course. Let's stop from the beginning, get to know everything about you. And this was, again, a service that's, I don't even know if it's still going now. I'm surprised it was going at the time. But this was access through the government to residential rehab services, this is what was called a Tier 4 service. So the way that people were able to enter these rehabs and have these rehabs paid for them was that they would have to have had multiple attempts within the community to get on top of the drug or alcohol use.

And those attempts having not worked, they would have to have had, period of engagement with the service that was consistent. So they were showing the kind of a readiness, I suppose, to change. And then the final stage was meeting with me and doing this kind of lengthy assessment and from the beginning until now. And I suppose it just gave me an idea of the fact that lots of people's idea of normal is really variable. And quite often there was very similar stories for a lot of the people that had ended up, I don't want to say reliant on drugs and alcohol, but using drugs and alcohol to excess, a lot of their life had been filled with challenges again that they thought were just normal and were normal to them, but I suppose

were not common, I would say. Yeah, yeah, but I guess you have a skewed vision of what normal is working in that environment, and I wonder if that starts to become what you expect to be normal. Did you find that that kind of warped your idea a little bit? Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, I think it gave me, it made me realize there's nothing that is normal, you know, and I think that normal is subjective. But I think what it did help me to do is develop my assessment skills, I suppose, because often people would come in with this idea and we sort of say, so where did you, know, where did you come from? Tell me, tell me who was in the house when you grew up and they would tell you and you sort of say, tell me a little bit about your childhood. And they'd say, oh, it's pretty

normal. Quite quickly, they would say it was pretty normal. And then you'd have to dig into that. you'd have to really kind of establish a report as well, you know, and explain, I think, why you wanting to find this stuff out and come from a place of non-judgment and sort of say, well, what is normal to you and what does that mean for you? So what was your relationship? Who was important to you in the household? Who did you get on with best?

What were the challenges? And you'd really start kind of unpicking. I mean, one of the ones that sticks with me is that a person who said they were normal, must have been in his 50s, was using heroin and crack quite regularly, and started off the same. So, you know, pretty normal, pretty normal childhood, pretty good. And sort of talked to him about, well, what does normal mean to you? And he started unpicking.

He sort of said, oh, we had an uncle that lived with us. My dad's brother lived with us until I was 16. And then he was gone. And I said, well, what happened when he left? He said, well, he went to prison. I said, well, why did he go to prison? And he said, because he raped and murdered my mother. And this happened in his house.

And this, and he grew up with this. kind of this massive weight that he was carrying and and it started off by saying pretty normal yeah that was a big bombshell for me i think when as a student that was probably like my second or third day and so you know you kind of landed you landed with this bit of information that's that's just huge and so emotionally impactful and it's like how do i how do i manage that and how do i ready myself and how do i not come across us feeling sorry for this person also because that's demeaning and disempowering and just, you know, so it was a challenge in terms of learning to manage myself as well, some of the stories that I would hear and to understand that maybe I would end up on heroin

and crack if I'd had that to deal with. That's a lot of pain. And maybe there's nothing else that has been taking that pain away until this point. So yeah, I suppose it just gave me a real respect for people and their life course and the things that a lot of people have to deal with that they will think is normal until they get an outside perspective. And still them might think it's normal, you know. Yeah, right. It's just their experience, isn't it? And how did you process all of that? Did you have really good support? What was the supervision like? And yeah, like, how did it not affect you as a student? Well, I think if you think something's not affecting you, then that's a dangerous headspace to be in. If you think something's not affecting you, you know, you're on the way to burn out,

basically. And it's the same with therapy. When I do therapy, it's, you know, you've got to connect to it. you've got to connect to whatever came up for you there and talk it through with someone. Yeah, so supervision was a really, really key part of placements and doing that work. So you'd have your on-site supervisor who was generally a social worker, a senior social worker within the team, if you were lucky. And I had an absolutely amazing, that was a really small team that was kind of tucked away a little bit. So it worked within health, but was run by the government.

And I had a great supervisor called Steph who'd been around for years and years and years in the drug service and just was really, really, really. one of those social workers you meet that's just so, so knowledgeable, real fight the power, kind of, you know, inspiring so much knowledge, always calm, always very reflective. So she was great. And then we had an external supervisor as well who was employed by the university to come in and do supervision with us through the placement. So Maggie and she was great as well, just absolutely lovely.

So I was lucky I had really good supervision and they were really kind of supportive and helped me to step back. and reflect and think about what it was bringing up for me and how it was influencing my responses and reconnect to the values that are important to me within this and also to focus on what's the aim of this assessment, what are you trying to get out of this assessment and how are you going to do it, you know, non-judgmentally in a non-oppressive way, respectfully of people's differences and opinions and that kind of thing. So yeah, it was a really, really, really helpful learning experience to have such good supervisors at those key points actually. And such an incredible foundation, really, for any kind of social work that you might have wanted to do after that.

How did you decide the next steps for yourself? Well, actually, so what I happened is, following on from graduating from the Masters, I, for a really short time, considered doing a PhD. And then... In social work rather than psychology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was kind of being encouraged a little bit to, again, like I's kind of said, my grades were high, because I only had that to focus on, I think.

And I was interested in the topic and when you're interested in stuff, it doesn't feel like work. And if you've got the time to do stuff, like I was just reading constantly and, you know, just getting my head into every little bit of information that I could. So when my work was coming out at a high quality, and so some of the lectures on the course were saying, you know, we need more academics in social work. We need people to push the profession forward, which is definitely true in the UK. At the time, the College of Social Work was on the cusp of becoming a Royal College, like you have the Royal College of Physicians. the Royal College of Nursing and actually ended up getting disbanded because not enough social workers joined it. There wasn't enough social work specific research that would come out, you know.

So I think they were really kind of keen to get bright minds in. But I had to think about why I would have been doing that and whether it was something that I was actually interested in doing research or was it for validation to kind of get a doctorate. And I think it would have been the second if I'm being really honest. And so I decided not to do a PhD and I actually thought, you know what? Before I get into work, I'm going to come to Australia. So I moved out here for a year, did some work in the homeless sector and traveled around a little bit, which was a really, really great experience.

And then after a year, I went back to the UK and I looked after children's team. So out of home care. So structured differently in the UK. So there were child protection teams and then once the children are in care, it's different in different areas, but it looked at. after children's team that works with the children once they're in care and you're allocated to children until they turn 18, whatever age they come into care. Right.

Yeah, so that was my first role back in the UK. And I stayed in that role for probably a year and a half. And there was elements of that role that I really enjoyed. Elements of that role that I perhaps didn't enjoy so much. So that kind of led on to me leading. I suppose, you know, actually it's important to kind of understand why. One of the reasons that I suppose I didn't enjoy it was perhaps the same here. I've noticed it's similar in some respects.

One of the things that was happening quite a bit was that there were deficits in the system, I would say. So, you know, politically you can't cut essential services. The public won't stand for it. And we've had 13 years of a conservative government in the UK, 12 or 13 years. And they've decimated public services over that time. and just stripped it bare. And I think it wouldn't be politically sensible or palatable for a government to say, we're getting rid of child protection, right?

They'd be awful, you know, because people will sort of, it won't sit with people's sensitivities. They'll say, well, hang on, there's children being abused. You can't just cut these services, right? So they won't do that, but they will cut all the children's centres and the youth services and all of these kind of preventative, non-crisis type support services that can and help people not get to the point where child protection services have to intervene. Or could help your service refer on because they've got to a point where they can be managed by those step down.

To kind of step them down or sideways or work in conjunction with us. So there were still some of those services around, but there were few and far between. And, you know, I was the point after child protection services essentially because children would go through court proceedings or they'd be involved with child protection. and then once they would come into care legally, they would then sit with our service for ongoing management, ongoing case management and support and identify their needs and care planning and that kind of stuff. So they were looked after at that point. It's kind of a legal status in the UK. And are those kids that have been placed in, say, a foster home, or are they living in institutional

care? What was that looking like? It depends. It could be either. I mean, there's two types of looked after child broadly in the UK. There's another type, but not to get, we don't want to get into legal kind of proceedings too much. But, Essentially, there are ones that have been through the court proceedings and there's a care order. And so those children are in the care of the local authority and a judge has decided that, following on from child protection proceedings, a judge has decided it's in their best interest to go into care. They can't be at home with the parents. So that's section 31.

Then there's section 20 that's voluntary. So parents or children of a certain age, if they're over 16, can sign people into care. If there's challenges in the home, maybe they can't manage the behaviour, are, we'll have to be pretty serious. Or maybe the parents are, you know, there's maybe a single bump who's terminally ill and can't move or something. And there's a 13 year old in the house who's not, you know, being neglected because of that. The parent might choose to sign the child over into care. So generally, they're the two statuses of children that we would work with.

And then they would be in care until they're 18. And then they would move into the leaving care team. And so in that period, the local authority, the council, has an obligation to provide them with services and care and accommodation. And that's exercised through the social worker. So you're responsible for delivering that service, essentially. But you were separate to the leaving care team, as in you weren't actively involved in supporting. Yeah, well, the leaving care team, they sat under our umbrella and they were in our team,

but they were a separate service. So they, again, another thing that happened with the government, there was lots of uproar about kids leaving care and then kind of dropping off the edge of a cliff with services. And so the government extended the requirement of local authorities to offer care to carelevers up until I think it might have been either 21 or 24. So they said you've got to service these young people post leaving care, which is great, but they offered no additional resources. No resources. Yeah.

So you've just suddenly got a demographic of. you know, thousands and hundreds of thousands probably of carelevers essentially, quote-unquote carelevers who have had really kind of complex histories, complex trauma, perhaps not functioning very well, have had lots of support, which just dropped off the edge of a cliff, will have been housed until they're 18 and then maybe put into a hostel, you know, and left offender for themselves. They were suddenly ringing up and you have to provide them with a service legally. I personally, I think got to the point where I didn't feel useful in that role. You've got to feel like you're doing some good for the people that you're working with, I think.

And I didn't feel like I was able to function well in that role. I felt burnt out, actually. And also, I think the systems around the young people, I didn't think were serving them very well. I thought there was absolutely fantastic social workers and people, schools and people around that were doing their best. But I think the system itself, outcomes for care leaveers are terrible in the UK. Absolutely terrible. Something's going wrong. And I think, you know, there was lots of different reasons why for me the job wasn't

tenable. I didn't feel like I was doing the work I wanted to do. I didn't feel like I was able to affect change. I felt like I was firefighting all the time. And I didn't feel like it was the right way to be supporting the people that I wanted to support. And so ethically, it wasn't fitting for me. And on a personal level, I was feeling quite burnt out about it. And so that's a thing for me. I think when I notice something doesn't align with my values. I find it really hard to be flexible around that and I can get burnt out quite quickly. And then I realise, well, I'm no good to anyone burnt out. So I started exploring other options, essentially.

Are you still in touch with any of the social workers in that team? Has anything changed? I haven't asked. No, none of them are working in that team specifically anymore. None that I'm in touch with. I don't know if things would have changed. I assume, I mean, since I left there, there's been another X amount of years with a conservative if government further cuts and probably higher level of need.

So I would assume. So maybe not. Maybe not. Yeah. But I don't know. And yeah, look, I think it was, I worked with some really great people there. But it was a picture of a lot of burnt out staff and trying to do their best in really difficult situations with legal obligations that made the job really difficult to do in a

happy way. And I know from some of the social workers that had been there for a longer time, It hadn't always been like that. Okay. And they felt like they got to do the work that they'd like to do. You know, engaging with young people. A fast amount of that work, 75% of that job was spent on admin. Right.

You very rarely got to spend time, real time with people. That doesn't align with what I think social work should be. That's one of the reasons I left. It's just paperwork constantly. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know that things have changed. I think that social work in the UK can be a really difficult space to be in at times for lots of reasons.

And that was so early in your career and that must have been so disheartening to think, have I made the right choice here? Yeah, look, it was difficult. It was really difficult. And I think, well, I think the other thing that attracted me to social work to kind of go back in the story was the broadness of it, I suppose. You know, there are lots of different aspects. A lot of social workers wear lots of different hats. And so I was aware of that, that I could probably tap into things that were important to me

and try and do some work in those different spaces. Like I said, when I came to Australia, I worked in the homeless sector. That was something that I saw a lot of rough sleepers in Sydney, and it kind of led me to looking into jobs around that sector. And so, you know, the same. I really, I do have a passion around substance misuse drug and alcohol. That might be something that I go back to in the future. And I always knew, like, you know, it covered mental health.

And that was the passion from the outset, really. So, yeah, all of that stuff kind of combined to. And, you know, the other thing was that we had a CAM service, child and adolescent. mental health service that worked kind of worked with the team the looks after team that I was working with so the children in care had a specialist team within the CAMs service who they would work with and they used to do some training with us here and there and again I just found it all really really interesting I like thinking I like working stuff out and I think I felt like the therapy side of things was a little bit more of that from what I was seeing so that was a

another kind of influencing factor for me trying to look for jobs in the mental health space. It's particularly ones that had a therapeutic element to them. And was that easier in the UK or harder than you found in Sydney? It was hard in the city that I lived in at the time. I moved up to Manchester. I found it was easier there. And it's certainly easier in Sydney yet. It's easier in Australia generally.

There's a lot more social workers working across mental health. But of course, they're viewed differently in different roles. I think in hospitals, maybe social workers are viewed. in a different way. I suppose it depends on the rest of the MDT and it depends on the culture of the service. But I've always worked in mental health, kind of community mental health services, outpatient mental health services. And so a lot of the social workers that I've worked in have worked as part of an MDT and are often under the umbrella of a, I don't know, a mental health clinician or therapist. So the roles have been the same as that of the OT or that of the psychologist. It's just

that the service might be delivered in slightly different way with a bit of a social work spin on it. So I suppose I've been looking in that respect. And that was definitely the case up in Manchester. I work with psychologists. I work with that family therapist. And I work with the social workers. I work with nurses, mental health nurses.

But we're all doing a similar role. So just maybe just doing it in a slightly different way. But not always. You know, not always. A lot of it was training that was delivered to as a team. and so we'd work quite holistically even the psychiatrists and the psychotherapist everyone was working from a fairly holistic perspective actually so that was an absolutely wonderful induction into the mental health space for me back into the mental health space actually missed out a little bit whilst i was waiting to do my master's i worked on an eating disorder ward which actually i don't know how i've forgotten it because that was largely influential for me in terms of again wanting to do therapy because it was just a gap fill of role really while I was waiting to do my master's. I just went and did some casual work on this eating disorders ward.

And sometimes I would sit in the ward rounds in the MDT meetings. And I just found it fascinating for people, you know, people talking about their formulations and the treatment that they were doing with people and their ideas about what's going on for this person or what's going on for that person. How are we going to support them to kind of get around that difficulty? So just being across some of those discussions and just being around those processes happening, that was another influential factor for me going into mental health.

So I had experience of inpatient and then, yeah, experience of community kind of coming up. And yeah, that's kind of led me to where I am now, I suppose. Within the multidisciplinary team in those settings, though, yes, you've got a multitude of professionals who could fit into that because of the common factor. But was there a real obvious example for you where you thought this is a place where social work can do great work? Like what is that secret ingredient? Do you think that we would bring to that role?

So if I speak to CAMS, I mean, again, it's a little bit less. Definitely in the UK in the team that I work with, I mean, I can't speak to every team. But in the team that I work with, I think it was a very supportive environment. and there was a, I feel like, an onus onus on systemic factors that were influencing a young person's presentation, for example. And I suppose there was a few social workers around in that team. But there was also, like I said, nurses, family therapy and psychiatry. Because it was a child and adolescent mental health service.

There was an attachment lens, I think, attached to the case formulation and what was going on for the cases. And so I think what I was able to do as a social worker And what the other social workers in that team were able to do Was to look at look at young people who were coming in And to do an assessment from a social work perspective That didn't just look at the individual who was coming in And say, okay, it's you know, it's anxiety or it's I don't know OCD or depression it was what's going on in this the rest of this person's life

What's going on for their parents? What's going on at school? How is the whole system? supporting this person. I can't take credit and say it was just me that was bringing that and that I was bringing that from a social work perspective, but I would say that it fit with how I worked as a social worker. And I was able to build on that and take that further and work flexibly within that system. I think it was all senior clinicians in those services, the grading, for example. And so there was an expectation that you would, I suppose, be creative and work independently and autonomously to some degree. There was a guideline in terms of how you should assess and how you should treat,

but there was a lot of flexibility within that. And so I think that was helpful for me. And from a social web perspective, again, I'm thinking about not just looking at this individual as an individual in isolation, but looking at them from a systemic perspective in terms of what's going on around them, how the parents coping, how are they being responded to at school, how is the stuff that's going on environmentally reinforcing the presentation? for them. I was able to think about all that and work from that perspective, from a systemic perspective, and I was encouraged to do so by other social workers within the team, but also other

members of the MDT. And I think, you know, not only that, I was able to, say, for example, a young person would come in, I was able to do just sessions with the parent and not pathologize the child. You know, there was a real strong social work element there where things would come in. There was a couple of social workers in the intake team, and it was great because, you know, let's say there was a case coming in it would be you know the mum's a victim of domestic violence and there's been lots of violence in the household and now the young person's feeling anxious and it was kind of like well you know are we going to place the problem with the child there is that ethical is that helpful so i think there was a lot of social work values being bought into our formulations and how we

treated and how we assessed and how we provided feedback and how we supported people you know within teams and from a clinical perspective. So I think that was really great. And I think that's continued in terms of the way that I provide treatment. I think it's natural for as a social worker's to look at more than just the individual. And I think that's kind of guided the way that I've worked, particularly in children's services when I've worked with young people, but also with young adults as well in terms of looking at the wider system for them.

I think that's been helpful for me in terms of the way that I treat people, or the way that I view, quote-unquote, presentations of mental health and mental illness. I think the other thing is, you know, in public health, you are always working in a medical model. And it's the degree to which you're working in a medical model is variable. I think probably from service to service. That's been my experience. But I think bringing our social work values and speaking up from a social work perspective, I think is something that I've found valuable.

And generally, my perspective has been supporting. in the roles that I've been in. Some people will get annoyed at it. But I think generally, I've found that within those teams, within a medical model, we do have a unique perspective to bring. Even down to, you know, just simple things like language.

I remember being in a service and someone, I don't think it was a, I think it was a nurse saying, this person has bipolar. My view is this person has a diagnosis of bipolar. You know, they might not agree with that as a label. And, you know, it's not something that they should, have to carry if they don't agree with it. It's just a group of symptoms that have met a threshold in a book. So just things like that, I think from a social work perspective, I suppose, is some of

what I've been able to add. And I think, yeah, generally it's been absorbed pretty well, but not always. And sometimes there is a defensiveness around that. And I suppose, you know, that's, that's up to me as a social worker to navigate and try and speak from a place of empowerment for people and respect. but it can be a challenge I think working in a medical model but again like working in the children and youth kind of space generally my experience

has been that even if it is well it will be a medical model in public health that's the reality where there's a focus on diagnosis and a focus on pathology really you know this is a problem this is how you treat the problem and so you know how to navigate within that is something that I think I've had to learn

but I think there's always space to come from a social work perspective and how you navigate that, I think comes with experience. Yeah. And how did you then transition to where you are now? You're back in Australia. What did that look like? Well, I had an Australian partner, so we've been doing long distance and eventually after

a long period, we moved back to Sydney. And I went into a child and adolescent mental health team within Sydney. So child and adolescent mental health is the service generally within communities that that serves the most complex people, children, families from zero to 18. So often when the private sector has struggled to manage them or they're being discharged from an inpatient hospital unit, mental health unit, or when they've tried lots of different things and nothing's worked, they'll end up with CAMs.

And that's the work I'd been doing in the UK, the model was similar in the UK. And so I went into the CAMS service and I worked there for a little bit and I worked as a CAMS clinician there, providing therapy, care coordination, running groups, ran the DBT group within that CAM service. And it was a really great experience, worked with some really great people. And then I did an assertive outreach role within that CAM service. So that was servicing young people who, for whatever reason, couldn't get appointments at traditional CAMs. So, for example, working with young people who had been through, like, significant amounts of trauma,

were living in a hostel and were struggling to, let's say, for example, struggling to leave their room, I would go out and do assessments and provide a brief intervention to them with a view of getting them to a place where they were able to kind of engage with a traditional CAMs model for a longer term service. And so I did that for a little bit and that was really great. So it was the ones that were too complex to get into CAMs, I suppose. I found that really, really interesting, really great. But after a period, I mean, I'd done CAMs for.

about three years and I felt like it was a little bit of a little bit time for a bit of a change. And so I ended up where I am now, which is senior mental health clinician at Headspace. And so Headspace is a youth mental health foundation that services people from 12 to 25. And there's lots of different stuff that happens within Headspace. You know, you can see a GP, as you can see an exercise physiologist, you can sexual health clinic and lots of different bits. but I specifically do mental health treatment. And my job is changing a little bit because the people who fund it won't be funding it long term.

But at the minute, my day to day is five patients and that's my kind of KPI. Okay. For one of a better word. And so I'm just doing therapy nonstop basically all day. But I suppose there are other elements of things that I do within the role that aren't necessarily. considered part of my job, but that I do anyway. And so I'm doing stuff like I do a lot of consultation. I'm involved in service development. I do presentations within the community, schools, that kind of stuff. I'm the lead for a group for an OCD treatment group that's in

collaboration with the University of New South Wales and Griffith University. So we're running that at the minute and I do a lot of supervision. I do formal supervision with a senior social worker from another service that's joined to our service, which I'm absolutely loving. And I do a lot of informal supervision for all the staff within the centre. So there's a leadership element to my role, but clinically my day to day is seeing people for therapy, which I actually, I really enjoy. I really enjoy the therapeutic element of it. I find it interesting. And my role is specifically the way that Headspace is structured is that there are private practitioners within Headspace who see people through the MBS, so the 10 sessions through Medicare.

Everything in the Headspace is bought, build. But there are private practitioners who operate on a kind of a contract basis. So they will see people for their 10 sessions through MBS. And they tend to see the kind of mild end of the spectrum. And my role specifically outlined to meet the what's called the missing middle. So it's the more moderate to complex. kind of presentations that maybe won't get into a tertiary service, won't get into a specialist community mental health team, for example, maybe not risky enough or they just don't meet

threshold for those services, their presentations, but they're still in need of support and there's still lots of stuff going on for them. And my role specifically is to meet the need of that population and also within that what I call priority population. So there's a lot of things that are included within that LGBTQI, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, and youth generally, you know, is considered a priority population. So that's my days, largely around doing therapy at the minute. Yeah. Do you get an opportunity to supervise students as well within that? Yeah, yeah. So I've done, since I've joined, we've not had, we only had one student. She was there before I joined, so she had a supervisor. But that is

something that we're doing in the next few months is that we are, we're going to be starting to take on students. So yeah, part of my role is to start supervising students. And actually, I think I supervised students back in the UK. And actually, I find the process of supervision. I really enjoy both obviously being a supervisor person, but also being a supervisor, I think I've found it really, really, really useful because I think one of the main things, well, it's helped me to reflect on my own practice. But I think the other thing that happens is lots of the time when we're doing stuff over and over again, it becomes second nature and we don't actually think about the process that's involved in it. And I think one of the things that's come up when I've been doing supervision is that it's made me think about the process a bit more and made me think through the steps that are involved in doing that kind of work.

Yeah. So that's been really useful. And then the other thing I'm doing is I do private practice is also one day a week. And I think that's allowed me to generally, one of the things I'm doing at the minute is training as a family therapist. So the model that I work from isn't included within the strictures of the way that I have to work within health necessarily. So there are a set of therapies that are deemed as appropriate by Medicare and deemed as appropriate by health and that kind of thing. And so you're expected to deliver from those therapies and often they're evidence based. And I suppose that's fine. You know, I've always worked from an evidence based model. But I think the family therapy that I'm learning, I'm seeing. that have really great effects with people. And so the private work is allowing me to kind of

explore that in a little bit more detail and get to grips with that way of doing therapy, which is very, very, a completely different way of doing things to the way that I've been trained and just even to the way that I think. So that's been really useful. And it's allowed me to also be really selective with who I see and who I work with, which you can't be in a public health service, which is fine. I think it's a pleasure doing therapy with people who are ready to do the work from my perspective as well. Yeah.

And I find real value in that. And there's no judgment against people who aren't ready to do the difficult stuff. It's not that they're not deserving of help. But I think my experience is sometimes particularly young people, I bought to therapy, let's say, for example, by their parents. And it's kind of like, here we go, you know, my child needs this, my child needs that. They're struggling with this. They're struggling with that.

And then you might speak to the young person, sort of say, well, what do you want? want to get out of this and they'll they'll say well don't know mom's told me to come or dad's told me to come and so you have to kind of navigate that a little bit in the public sector and kind of consider the service and consider the policies and processes around the service whereas in the private sector i'm able to kind of just say well actually i don't think that if you're not motivated to do the work i don't think it's helpful to force you and actually maybe some of the work that i can do is with mom or dad. And I can express that to my more dad and maybe they or grandparents or foster carers, whoever they're living with. And they might be on board with that. And if they are great,

generally I see really, really good results with people that are motivated to do that stuff. But if they're not, then, you know, it's a kind of a, okay, great. Well, you know, if you feel things change, come back to me. Here's some recommendations for people who will work maybe in the way that you want to work. But I don't work in that way. And I think often what people are hoping for is diagnosis and an expert who's going to say, here's your problems, here's what you do about them. I don't think that aligns with the way that I want to work. People are people and they face challenges in life and we all, you know, me as a therapist, I face similar challenges and it's about, you know, how do we deal with it?

And I think that I don't want to be the expert on people's life. And I think it's slow and painful, but I think there's something really empowering and important in finding your own answers. rather than getting them from a therapist because what happens when the therapist isn't there anymore. And so there's an element of maybe private weather would sort of say, well, people see people for years. And I think, well, is that helpful?

You know, are we fostering a dependency on us? And actually, how are we encouraging these people to become empowered and find the answers for themselves? Because I believe everyone has capacity, but it's not easy. It's not easy and people want a quick fix. Yeah, right. So, you know, that's a challenge. but that's something that I've kind of been getting into a little bit more and a model that I've

been working from a little bit more. Yeah. Do you think it's that balance that's made this sustainable for you? Because you've had so many changes as you were alluding to. Like you've moved multiple times. You've started new roles. You got this gorgeous Bubby as well who's very young and needing a lot of attention. How do you sustain that?

Yeah, look, that's a real challenge. And again, like I said, people are people. and people face challenges in life and I'm not immune to slipping into habits of behavior or thought or emotion emotional process that are unhelpful for me you know I think we have to be aware of our own automatic reactions I think and I know that an automatic reaction for me is just to work work work work work you know to just plow on so you know supervision I've got great supervisor that process is absolutely vital for anyone I think doing in any kind of social work, but particularly therapeutic social work, where you take on what's

going on for people at their worst moments. And if you think it doesn't affect you, I mean, emotion is contagious. That's the reality. And so, you know, if we're not keeping one eye on ourselves and one eye on the client, then we're not doing the job properly. And I think that in terms of balance, supervision has been absolutely vital for me. I think the other thing has been, yeah, like I said, being aware of my own automatic process. So that urge to just plow on, I need to be aware of that and think about whether that's helpful for me and actually seek support from the people that are around me, use my network, make sure that I'm engaging in activities that I still enjoy,

make sure that when I rest, I do rest. I don't think, okay, well, I've got half an hour now, so I'll do this bit of life admin or I'll do, you know, but actually, you know, taking the time out to rest. But look, there's no easy answer. There's no perfect answer to an imperfect situation. and I think, you know, life in itself is imperfect. I think we have to just try and roll with the punches

and be aware of what's going on for ourselves to make sure that we're useful for the people that we're trying to support and serve. So, yeah, it's been a delicate balance. I think that private work has definitely helped. But I think that there is lots of flexibility within my role in health too. And I think I've got a really supportive team

that really supported management structure around me who are happy for me to be flexible within my role, happy for me to think of ideas of different ways that I can serve the community that we work with that doesn't just involve consistently doing one-to-one sessions of therapy all the time but you know might involve some consultation to the system or some parenting groups or you know different things so I'm allowed to be imaginative I'm allowed to be creative I'm lucky that I've got that space to do that but sure there are there are definitely challenges within that as there are in all health services, unfortunately.

There's rarely the funding that you need to do the jobs that you need to do. And you're often doing the job with one hand tied behind your back. That's the nature of working in a public service. And there's also obviously a lot of admin. That's probably the worst bit about working in a public service. And that takes away from the client facing time. And that is a real challenge navigating that. But you can only do the best you can and operate within the system that you're in.

So I think mindset has been a big thing. focusing on the changes and the good that I can do rather than on the things that I can't change and the things that are going well and I kind of will share that sentiment with people that I supervise as well because I think a sure fire way to get burnt out is focusing on the things that you can't do as a social worker

and the things that you can't change and I think we have to reorient our perspective onto the good that we can do and getting alongside people and supporting them as best we can I think we have to reorient ourselves to that and definitely as a young social worker I wanted to fight the system and everything about it, and I found that burnt me out. But having said that, there are social workers about who just have the energy for that.

I've worked with them and I've met them and I know them personally. And I've got so much respect for people that just don't stop doing that. But I think I found that really challenging to constantly be focusing on the things that the government need to change, for example, or the structures that are in place that oppress people. I think about how can I support this individual? how can I support them to support other people? I think that's the change that I try to orient myself to. That's the change I feel like I can make.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting going back to the almost PhD that hasn't happened in the sense that you're in a position where you have now had so much experience and could probably more now than ever find a problem or a challenge that needs a solution and that would be a perfect opportunity for a PhD. But really, social workers are constantly doing research. We're always having to do research in order to make sure that we're delivering

the best work that we can for our population. So it might be in your future, but it sounds as though you've got a fantastic mix, a really great culture where you are at the moment. And honestly, like a dream job with a mix of leadership plus supervision, plus clinical, plus not 75% adjutant. been it just sounds wonderful yeah yeah well look yeah no it's great and i um i'm lucky in the positions that i'm in at the minute and like i say i think it is mindset it's about you know accepting that there are going to be challenges and that's just part of social work we support the

people that are often trodden down and forgotten by society and society doesn't care a lot of the time i've come to acceptance about that and thought how do i create capacity within myself to care and i think getting angry about how society doesn't see what we see and doesn't care was not helping me to support the people and do the good that I needed to do and be useful to people. So yeah, things are good at the minute and I think I'm hoping to kind of continue to expand on the family therapy elements of the work that I'm doing. I'm finding that that's been really useful challenge for people to get their heads around often, particularly parents who are bringing children in wanting the children fixed, for example.

Yeah. But I think I've found it to be really, really helpful. And I've seen real change for people who can get on board with the process. And families have seen real improvements in not only the children, but their relationships as a whole and their own mental well-being. So yeah, I'm hoping to do more of that in the future as well. Are there any resources that you'd want to shout out if someone was interested in knowing more about the types of work you're doing or even just the approaches like the CBT,

they they take kind of stuff. Yeah, there's loads of stuff out there on DBT. The Ratheson Miller Handbook is a really great manualized approach. I think that's the child and adolescent one. I think from the theories that I'm working from at the minute, there's a book called Growing Yourself Up by Jenny Brown, which is a really great book. She's based in Australia.

I think the main book that espouses the theory was called Family Evaluation, and that was by Murray Bowen, who created the theory. that I'm working from, Bowen Family Therapy and Michael Kerr. But I think that's probably a bit more of a heavy read than growing yourself up. So if people want an introduction to Bowen Family Therapy, growing yourself up might be a good one. And there's lots of resources online. And there's a series of YouTube videos by the Bowen Centre in America, I think,

that kind of talks about the theory and talks about how the theory works. But as a bit of a warning around that, it'd be very contrary to how most of us will think of social workers. particularly from an attachment perspective. It's a different kind of theory, but a really interesting one and one that I've seen really great results with. So hoping to keep my head into that and do some further training and in the next few years become a family therapy,

I'm on the pathway now. So yeah. Nice. And before we finish up, Kalam, is there anything else that you wanted to mention or talk about that you don't think we've quite covered? No, no. I think that's everything.

I think perhaps been a little bit all over the place. That's sleep deprivation from the baby. and work. But yeah, no, it's been good meeting with you. And I think the work that you're doing here is great. I think it's good to give exposure to the different bits of social work that exist. I think quite often we can't talk about the good work we do because of the sensitive nature of it. And I think people off the bat will know what psychology is and will know what psychiatry is and, you know,

what nurses do generally. But I think if you ask people generally in the public, what social workers do, well, I know in the UK it would be, or they take children away, right? But I don't think there is that much information out there in terms of what we do. So I think this is a really, really great thing that you're doing, great platform. And thanks for having me on. Thank you. It's been my absolute pleasure.

And I love having the opportunity to get really nerdy and talk to people about what they're passionate about and especially fields like this where I've never worked directly. You know, similar to what you said earlier about mental health is across all spectrums, all kinds of social work roles. Similarly, you know, you get some of. of child protection and family work and that sort of thing, but nothing directly. So it's always enlightening and inspiring for me. But yeah, I love that you've found this work that really fits with your values.

And even from an early point, you were hoping to work with those disadvantaged or those people that had had those adverse childhood experiences, people whose expectation of normal was coming from a place of trauma, which is horrendous, but you've been able to do great work with them and to help them realize that actually things can get better. And you had the opportunity, even as a student, to develop your assessment skills through that community mental health casework you were doing.

And you've always really wanted to feel like you're doing well or doing right by the population that you support. Absolutely. And having worked within the multidisciplinary teams, you've also been able to speak to the broadness of the systems as a strong social work core skill of what's always in the back of our minds and the strength that we bring to any role. But you're also now working in a workplace culture, it seems, where the medical model means less top down. You've got a lot more influence that you could potentially provide where you're listened to and you're trusted

and you're acknowledged for being able to make a fantastic contribution. So I love your devotion to supporting, I'm going to call it the meaty middle or the murky middle where there's more complexity. There's actually a bit more happening here. How do we unpack that and how do we support you through whatever you're experiencing? And I love that you have the opportunity to support the next generations of social workers. So I love to see where that takes you and how your private practice. develops as well and seeing how that evolves. I think it's going to take you great places.

Absolutely. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks for joining me this week. If you would like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Callum, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or you can email SW Spotlightpodcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please also let me know if there is a particular topic you'd like discussed, or if you or another person you know would like to be featured on the show. Next episode's guest is Rihanna, a registered social worker with the ASW, certified humanist, play therapist, and interplay practitioner with Play Therapy Australia.

Rihanna currently works as the Women and Children's Crisis Counselor with Coast Shelter. She values walking alongside her clients in their journey and supporting them to achieve better mental health and life outcomes after experiencing trauma. Rihanna has a passion for outdoor-based therapies and using creativity in her approaches to working with clients. 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.