Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 24: Theo (Greece)

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

In this episode I speak with Theo in Greece, with experience in refugee settings and now supporting people with disabilities. Theo is passionate and motivated to work with people in need, believing strongly in the power of community, working next to people and for the people.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) - https://pecs.com/picture-exchange-communication-system-pecs/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bFHrk9IdTg26k0HiGobKdEJqyffptQQQ9ZRaQ37OgPE/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Jasmine Lupus, and today's guest is Theo, who growing up in Greece facing difficulties in his immediate environment, was motivated to work with people in need, and feels now that becoming a social worker was inevitable. Theo has worked in refugee settings and more recently supporting people with disabilities, believing in the power of community, working next to people and for the people, and creating a better world, a step at a time. Thank you, Theo, for joining me on the podcast today. Looking forward to having a chat with you about your experience in social work in Greece specifically. Thank you very much.

Yasmin, I really appreciate your invitation. I'd love to know, firstly, when you got started in social work, what brought you to the profession? Okay, that's a good question. I think actually, from a younger age, I knew that I wanted to do everything I was looking. for us part of studies was in humanitarian sector or even paramedical. And I mostly wanted to work with people with actual social problems, actual issues, you know, out than the ordinary. And in high school, I had a teacher that she had a conversation with me one day and she said,

you know what I think you would be a great fit if you become a social worker and she talked me through a little bit about what a social worker is so I started searching and when I gave my final exams in high school the way it goes in Greece is that you choose a list of faculties you can join in order to get accepted and I got accepted in social work. Actually, it was my first choice. Nice. So that's what I wanted to do, I think, the most. And what was further down the list? It was speech therapy and nursing, even some physiotherapy. Although, to be honest, I feel extremely lucky I got accepted in social work because during my university years, I had the opportunity to meet people from the other

fields. Although I was also kind of excited with speech therapy, I don't think I would be a great thing. Okay. It's too clinical for me. Yeah. Yeah. And did you want to do something helping people, working with people, because of some experience in your life or exposure or how did that come about? Kind of, kind of, yeah. Actually, I think it has to do with my family, with my upbringing. You know, my father left Grace when he was 10 during the 70s. In a day and age, that there was extreme poverty. So I had all this experience from him and his family talking about me, about the rough upbringing that they have like zero help and they had to migrate

to Canada for a couple of years and then to Australia. And then they came back during the early 90s. late 80s, early 90s, because they could afford it. And the financial situation in Greece back then was much better. So it was an ideal opportunity. And in general, I grew up with some difficulties, some financial difficulties and also some health issues that my mother and my sister had to face. And also I had a very positive experience because my sister,

had a surgery. She was in the children's hospital in my hometown for like two months or less. And I remembered that she was more and more depressed as the time goes by. But then that started changed. And one of the reasons that happened was there were social workers. There were social workers in the hospital, helping her out, having a quality time for her. There are some. supporting her to feel better to recover and have a better experience. Yeah. So these are like very little exposures and also as a teenager I was very curious about life, about social issues.

I started reading, I started watching movies and TV shows that were kind of related. So all these accumulated to me. to me choosing to become a social worker. And are there any TV shows or things that you watch or read or listen to now that are kind of social work related? And do you feel as though knowing what you know now about the profession that they're accurate? That's a funny thing. I think that in most TV shows, you can find a part of social commentary.

Sometimes it's like in the heart of the show Sometimes it's more more difficult to point out I'm actually a comic book fan I read comic books a lot like superhero stuff And for example the Daredevil TV show Has a lot of social commentary And not only social commentary Also commentary about the human nature

What is good and what is not And how the ethics of justice this work, for example. All these are great social issues. And I also point out this show because I also think it's well acted, well directed. And Derek Devin, although it's a superhero, is a street-level hero. Yeah. Person that decides that he can do more to seek justice.

Yeah. So it's kind of relatable, in my opinion. Yeah, nice. Yeah, I used to love comics as a kid and would read very widely. there was, did you ever read Asterix and Nobelics? Yeah, of course. It was so much fun. And there were some actual films that were made out of some of the comics,

and there was this great one that was the 12 tasks of Asterix. And so he had to complete some feats that were meant to be superhuman. And there was one which is particularly relatable to social work, but also just to life in general, where he had to go into a government building and it had multiple levels, and he just had to get one form. And that was his task. But what you learn is that he'd go to one window and they'd send him to another one and they'd send him to another one. And the ideas it's supposed to weigh you down and supposed to completely destroy you, just trying to get through the bureaucracy and the layers and things.

And he almost goes insane in the process, but he then flips it on his head. And by the end of it, everyone who works in that building has completely lost their marbles and he's come out with the piece of paper that he needed. So it's just stuff like that. It's relatable on so many levels, but it draws you in. And I think that's such a good way of communicating social, political, any sort of issue to someone who maybe wouldn't engage on it on a different level. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, it's amazing how the arts, anything with acting and performing can transfer a message of a social issue in a much more friendly way. Yeah. Your friendly way than using all these professional jargon and all these terms and terminologies and philosophical ideas because the common people don't understand. And they don't need to have that deep of a knowledge in some issues in order to understand. That's something I've learned from.

That's actually something that my studies and my professional life taught me that we communicate with everyday people, that they have like normal jobs, live normal lives, like they have families, they have menial jobs or whatever. If you try to communicate with a professional manner that you have to use professional language, you lose them, you lose their attention. You miss the opportunity to actually communicate in an effective way. Yeah, that's all right. So the simpler the language, the easier to get the message out.

Absolutely. What's the structure of the social work degree in Greece? Is it similar to in Australia and many other parts of the world where you spend the first little bit working on theory and understanding the context and then you have blocks of placement opportunity at the end? Look, there are some things that have changed through the last decade or so. But the main thing is that it's a four-year degree in four different universities in Greece. And you have theory and we call it lab practice.

I mean, after the second year of studies, you go out in services twice a week as a social work student in order to learn in practice. And there is also supervision from a teacher during that time. But on the same time, you have all the lab classes that they focus more on specific parts of discussing social work issues or social issues in general. Although every university doesn't have the exact same way of teaching social work. They have some different curriculum. The first from university to university. And for you, what were your practical roles that you were put in? Okay, so when I was studying social work,

my lab practices were the first was in a daycare center for children with disabilities. Yep. In a child protection center. In like a setting with the elderly. And the last one. a kindergarten. But my final practice, which was mandatory back then, now it's not so much. It was in an NGO working with refugees, an accompanied minors to be specific. Okay.

And that's what made me work with uncombanded minors for the first few years of my professional life. And was it the same agency, the same agency, the same agency? that you then found work in? No. Unfortunately, although I had an invitation to get a job there, in Greece you have to go through military service. It's mandatory. So I had to reject the position in order to go to my military service after gaining my degree.

Okay. But I worked for the Greek society of Red Cross, like the Helix. Benigrates Gross. That was my first setting. I worked there for two and a half years in an accommodation center for an company minors. Okay, so help me understand this because in military, do you do sort of infantry work? Is it sort of generic and then you have the opportunity to work within the military or is it just standard military service and then you move on to your profession? No, it's standard military service. Okay. In some cases, you may have the opportunity. to work there and I kind of used my degree during my military service because I moved in a

military hospital. Okay, yeah. After the first couple of months, so although I had all this patrol duty and guard duty as everyone else, from time to time there was a military officer that was in charge of the psychosocial social support group. So we would have intakes for young soldiers, let's say, and actually do something like Czech if they have some risk factors that could lead them to face mental health issues during their military service. Yeah. So it's still relevant. You're still gaining experience. Yeah, but to be honest, I wasn't a fan of the same.

setting. Yeah, yeah, that wasn't your passion. So you managed to find your way back into social work proper in the NGO and how is that transition from being a student then having to go out of that sector for a little bit and then going into your first role. Nothing can prepare you for this experience. Yes. Just to say that. I mean, there are some things that only experience can teach you, okay, no matter how many books you have read. Sure. No matter how, how, much have you communicated around the issues with your professors or with other colleagues or whatever. Nothing can prepare you for the experience. And it's both in a good way and a bad way. Right.

Because it's in a good way because you can see first hard without having someone to supervise you or protect you in some way. like you're not a student anymore, you're a professional. You get the chance to do what you wanted to do. And then you learn that also some things during your studies looked ideal or easy. And then you get the experience that they're not that ideal or not that easy. I mean, for example, in some cases we thought that, okay, we have the person in need, that he has this request, and then we help them and everyone's happy. Usually that's not the case.

Yeah. Because you can help at a certain point you cannot help with everything. Because you work in a service, you work for this service. You have restrictions on what you can do, which it's a good thing because then you don't lose your professional role and you actually help in the part you know how to help. you don't have this generalized idea of help. Yeah. But that can also hurt your professional experience, especially in your first steps.

I think supervision in that first period is so important because that person who's supporting you needs to be able to find that good balance of letting you experience and allowing you to build the confidence that you do know what you're doing, but also be able to be a able to step in and notice when perhaps you don't notice that you need a little bit more guidance or a little bit more support. Yeah, the thing is that supervision is not very popular in Greece. Okay. Unfortunately. In many organizations, the higher up management offers the supervision, which, okay, it's helpful, but it's also something extra for them to do. Yeah. And also,

So if you have supervision out of organization, you have the opportunity to communicate in a different way. Sure. And your issues are in a different way. Although I was extremely lucky because my superior was a social worker as well. And she was like a veteran. She was like so many years in the profession. She had a tremendous amount of experience and empathy. So I felt support.

That's great. So that helped my experience in a certain way. Although we were in the different parts of Greece, so our communication was mostly through phone or through Skype. Okay. And it's even more challenging, I think, in an NGO setting where, if it's anything like my NGO with the refugee support, I was the only social worker there for a long time

and the management didn't have any health experience or background or training and it becomes a bit more of a managerial administrative process than anything. That's true. Actually, that was my experience because for like the first year or so, I was an only social worker. I was the only professional. Okay. Like the only scientific professional. Yeah.

It was me for caregivers and the cleaner. That was for 30 an accommodating minors in a building. So you see the challenges and also with unstable funding at the same point. Yes. Because that's also a huge issue in refugee settings in Greece. Even in the good old days that it was like between 2015 and 2020 for this kind of humanitarian sector. Yeah, there were like tremendous delays in funding. Yeah.

For my first couple of years, I would get paid like every three months. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I do it all four months. Wow. And that was rough. The thing is that although that back then things were kind of easier in Greece, I mean, things weren't great financially, but I was living by myself. I could get back.

Yeah. With the right management. For the other people, it wasn't that great. And also, I was passionate. I mean, that's what kept me going. I really loved what I was doing. I would have my mind working all around that. I feel like you have to be passionate to put up with that.

Yeah, I was very passionate. It didn't help with my own mental health after a certain point, to be honest. because it came too stressful and always overcame my whole personality kind of. So I was social worker. I wasn't Theo anymore. Yeah. It felt like that, which is no matter how much you love your job, okay, you need a certain balance with your personal life.

Other than that, our personality, our experiences define our professional life. Yeah. But if your professional life overcomes your personal life, you neglect yourself and you become a bad professional in the end. And you start to resent it, which is not what you want. Look, I decided that I cannot keep doing that. That's why I quit in the end and I went to another setting. And then the rest is a setting, okay, in another city, in another organization.

Yeah. I was again in a program for an accompanied minors. But the thing is, I was in a bigger city. I was in the Salonecke, which is like the second largest city in Assarath. And it wasn't an accommodation center. It was supported independent living conditions. The organization would rent apartments all throughout the city. And then the miners would live there with supervision.

and they would go to school but also learn how to live by themselves and fend for themselves and get better for adult life, which was a much better experience in general. Yeah. So you're having to get used to a whole new area of Greece with new services, new structures, new everything, new friends? Yeah, it was quite different. I have moved around Greece, to be honest, looking for better jobs. of opportunities or trying to choose different things and experience different things. Saloniki was a nice experience because I loved the place. I love the people. I love the food. Yeah.

Saloniki is more influenced by the Greek people that used to live in Turkey. Ah, of course. So you have this food that is from Greek people of mine or Asia that lived to Istanbul or Ismary during the 1920s with the separation of groups between turkeys and Greeks, they moved to Salomeg. So it was a great experience. And things were going well as well. I stayed in this job role for a little over two years. It was an experience. I had great colleagues. The setting in general was much better. Thing is that after a certain point, there was also a problem with funding, but in a much worse way.

Okay. I left my role because I was unpaid for six months. Wow. Which wasn't great. I mean, I scrapped with the bottom of the barrel. I couldn't survive. And the thing is that, at least according to Greek legislation, if you are unpaid for over three months,

you get, I'm not sure about the term in English, but through a lawyer, you send a, an official document with your employer and say that until you pay me, I'm not coming at work. Okay. And then you have to pay me for everything. Yeah. So that's what led me to leave this role because it was unlivable. I mean, not only for me, for everyone.

Yeah. Okay. It was bad. It was really bad. And also it made me lose hope for the profession as well. Mm-hmm. And even for the migration and refugee sector. in Greece because nowadays this sector is massacred.

I mean, it's like funding is almost non-existent. There were too many anti-migration and anti-refugee laws that really hinder you from doing anything and it's a zero-sum game. Right. And I felt that back then we're talking about like four years ago, like in 2022. 22. So yeah, even nowadays, it pains my heart because I really loved it. Okay. I love the refugees. I mean, I could still do it if it wasn't that bad condition because it's not bad for the refugees and the asylum seekers. It's also very, very difficult for the professionals to get through

this experience and have a decent living and actually contribute in a central way. cause the legislation and the funding and everything at the moment just create the condition that you just treat refugees and migrants as kind of a livestock I mean it's degraded I'm getting based even by thinking about yeah there's no respect for the work or for the people that you're supporting exactly exactly it's getting worse it's getting worse by the mean so who would want to work in that area. That's horrible. Yeah, look, there are very few refugee settings at the moment.

There are few. And they just barely exist. They have to exist because there is the population. Someone has to do the job. But the job getting done is very low effort. You just offer some very necessities and then you apply for asylum, but it's very difficult. for someone to get asylum at this point. So it's almost like, you have to matia, like it's the visuals of I'm providing support, but there's very little that I can actually do, right? Yeah, exactly.

And the thing is that it's the government that is not supporting the migrants. But they want it to seem as though they are because they have programs, but they're not actually following through. They don't even care, actually. They're very right wing. they don't even care. Sometimes they will say something

but it's very obvious for many ministers that they are racist I mean there's no other way to explain it. I mean, the Greek government at the moment has zero care or respect for people from other countries.

Okay. Unless they have a lot of money. It's not the case with refugees. Of course not. No. Wow. Oh, that's so disappointing. It is. Unfortunately, it is.

So what was the next step for you then once you realized that that wasn't sustainable? So I had to look what I could do. And so I was open in moving to another part of Greece. And I found a daycare center for adults with disabilities in the Greek island, in Kefalogian, which is in the west part of Greece. in a town of 3,500 people. Yeah. So it was a much different setting altogether.

From the second largest city, yeah. Yeah. And I was there for like three years. That was my first time I would work with people with disabilities. I mean, I had some general knowledge, but I didn't have an expertise until then. Yeah. It was a different experience altogether because, first of all,

I had to work not only with Greek-speaking people again, but with Greek-speaking people that they had poor communication skills. And it took me a while to understand the neurodiversity part of the job. I mean, communicating with someone that is in the ultimate spectrum or having Down syndrome or having some mental disorder. It's a much different experience. And also you see that things that you thought there were like, let's say normal or very common. They are not common for people with disabilities. It was a very formative experience for me because these are everyday people. They are Greek citizens.

They grew up in the same environment. But they have much less opportunities. They have very different experience. And also you see how their disability affects their families, perception of the local community, especially if we talk about a small community. Okay, because we're not talking for big cities anymore. We're talking about town. Everyone knows everyone.

Exactly. Okay, so it's very formating. It's a very unique experience. I really liked it working with these people because there weren't many. It would like 15 to 20 people. from age 20 until 60 and it was like a different kind of community from the one I had experienced that far

and yeah it got me more into researching and reading about neurodiversity and mental health and disabilities and even a bit of neuroscience but also about the human rights around people with disabilities that they are very easily overstepped. I mean, it's very easy to ignore the rights of a person with disability

because you think that they will not understand, they will not fight for it. And you ignore their experience and you ignore their families. You ignore their community and you ignore everything. I mean, if you consider that even nowadays, in some places, there is no access for people with disabilities. Yeah. And I'm not talking about people that are wheelchair users, for example. And their exterior of a building is not designed for them to help them enter.

I'm talking about people with hearing issues, with vision issues, even people in the spectrum. I had to study a lot about the autism spectrum. Yeah. And they have their sensory perception. it's vastly different from a neurotypical person, but also it's very difficult for each other. It's a spectrum. The DSM-4 used to categorize,

if I remember five different types of autism, but nowadays it's considered a spectrum because you can have like 10 different people in the spectrum in one room, and they have 10 different people in the spectrum in one room, and they have 10, different experiences, but there is a category that covers their experience. Yeah. Many of them are hypersensitive in sounds, for example, and some of them are typosensitive.

I mostly work with the audience people in the spectrum back then. That's also a part of the disability sector that is like the most research and taken care of in the last decades. If you consider that people in the spectrum until 1970s or 80s, they were considered that they were just schizophrenic. They were misdiagnosed right and left. So when the scientific community was able to realize that, no, we're not talking about schizophrenia, we're talking about something else entirely. The research moved towards that direction and it's something that is still built upon.

Yeah. And imagine the over-medication or mis-medication when someone's mis-labeled, misdiagnosed, and how that would affect people's opportunities. Yeah, that's actually very, actually that's very difficult. And also it's a good thing that in the last decades, we care less about the medication and more about offering psychosocial support and working their behavior instead of just giving them medication

to actually immobilize them. Yeah. I mean, as medication nowadays, it's a part of the process but it's not that much treated as a cure as a way for them to control the symptoms, some symptoms. so they were able to function more easily. Yeah.

Speaking of media, have you seen the film Awakening's? It's an American film back from the early 90s, Scott Robert De Niro. It doesn't recommend it. No, it's Robin Williams as well. But I'd highly recommend it because I think given your background, you'd really resonate with, it's a film that tells the story of, there's a fictional neurologist whose character is based on someone who was actually around back in the 60s 70s,

but he discovers the beneficial effects of a drug, L-Dopa, and administers that drug to catatonic patients who had encephalitis back in sort of early 1900s. And one of the patients who Robert De Niro is played by is awakened after decades of having been in this state of not responding to anything, not being able to do anything, and then has to acclimatize to a life of, I've been basically catatonic for three decades,

how do I make sense of the world? And it's so incredibly powerful and interesting and very much sort of, I'm drawing a parallel between the people with these disabilities that you're supporting to make sense of the world in a place where perhaps it's just not supported for them. They're not given the opportunity really to, or they're so heavily.

medicated that they're just so dulled down and numb and can't really engage in things. Just, yeah, interesting stuff. Yeah, it sounds too familiar, unfortunately. And the thing is that many people that had any kind of disability, back in the day, and I'm talking about like 70s and 80s in Greece, until then, they grew up in the environments, especially in families, in traditional families, that they were even ashamed of them. Yeah, there's a huge stigma. I know it sounds hard and sound insensitive and sounds rough.

Look, in one hand, I cannot blame working class family back in 70s that they had almost no education and no access to education. And they were roughly getting by having a child that they don't know how support and a community that would fake back class because they just had a child that was different in some way. Okay, and I'm not talking just about people in a little spectrum, even motionary issues or even the mental disabilities. And the thing I experienced in Kefalonyate was that there were people in like their 40s and 50s

that for the first 20 years or so, they hadn't accepted any kind of professional help for their issue. So they were lacking in skills in so many ways that you were even surprised how they got by after a certain point. I'm talking about not knowing how to write their own name, how to hold a spoon properly. How to keep basic communication for more than a minute. That's a very good example, why the scientific community says that, if you talk about early detection for disabilities in a very young age, and then receiving a very young age, like at the age of four or five,

I think the earliest you can receive like in actual help, even earlier in some cases. And I mean, I see that all the time with people in Australia. It's not specific to Greece, but I guess I had an older cousin who was born with significant cognitive difficulties and his mother would never accept any help. to the point where they were both so sheltered because she needed to help him with everything and would never really go anywhere other than church or cemetery or whatever, where both of their opportunities suffered, I think, because of the stigma, because of the lack of support.

Not that the support didn't exist, but that there was such a significant shame associated with seeking or accepting help. And you think, I'm glad to hear that the service that you worked within existence, the carers were able to for instance go and do other things while their loved ones were being supported through the daycare center. Yeah, actually what hindered people back then to even think about asking for help. It was the stigmatization. It was stigma.

It was like, oh, I'm the parent of a child that is that way. I feel ashamed. I feel that I fade. I'm stigmatized. Unfortunately, that still happens. That still happens in a certain way. I've met parents that they're in denial about the condition of their child, which I sympathize. Okay.

I mean, when someone becomes a parent, they have hopes and dreams for their child. Of course. They want to see them like succeed in life, have a happy life, like have their own friends and family. and unique experience in the world. And then you wake up one day and you learn that all your hopes dreams were completely wrong. Yeah. And you are not going to have them. And the thing is that family support is not something that really happens in Greece.

Unfortunately, professional help mostly focuses. It's a clinical practice, first and foremost, mostly. And second of all, they mostly focus on the child, but they ignore the experience of the family. Even if you take your child in the best professionals on their field, if you are not able to receive help by yourself as a parent, then you are also not effective in supporting yourself, first and foremost, your child and also the rest of the family, because it's not only parents or the child with disability in the family. There are also siblings. But they are also greatly affected in many ways that, unfortunately, in many cases, they are ignored.

I mean, they became like de facto third or fourth parents, which is not great. Yeah. To grow up being a parent in a very young age because you have a sibling. that has any kind of disability or syndrome. Of course, yeah. And I think there's a huge misunderstanding that people with significant cognitive or communication disabilities

don't still absorb a lot of information or don't engage still. They are listening, they're seeing things that you don't see. And you probably had some incredible conversations with people. I'm just thinking back to my cousin who you'd think he's not really paying attention to the conversation and then you just turn to him and say, George, do you remember blah, blah, blah, or a date? He'd tell you which day of the week someone was born or his attention to detail was so significant. So you could always turn to your

encyclopedia at the other end of the table and just, can you help us here? We're missing some information. So you must have had some amazing conversations. Yeah, I've actually had some very interesting conversation in my current job position that is in a daycare center with children with disabilities here in Athens. For example, we have a boy. He's around like 15 or 16. He's in the spectrum. Okay. He remember every date, usually around birthdays or significant dates. But then he can also guess the day that happened. For example, I asked him yesterday, what day will be my next birthday? And he said it is going to be on Monday.

And I checked it and it was on Monday. I asked him when I will become 40. What day is going to be my birthday? And he answered and it was correct. That's amazing. I asked him that date 15 years ago, what date was? And he answered correctly. And he would even know that when the Orthodox sister is going to be like five or ten years later.

That's incredible. I asked him, for example, when I will become 50 in what year and what date exactly? And he was great. Actually, that's his special. It's a superpower. It's a superpower. Yeah. And I cannot fathom how he does it.

I cannot understand it. Yeah. But that's a. A unique situation. I mean, many people think that people in autism spectrum, there are some kind of supergeny disease. That's a very small percentage, actually. Many of them face a lot of difficulties. They have cognitive issues. They have mental health issues. I mean, they have a much harder experience. Sure. But they can always surprise you. Actually, every child with disability can surprise you in some way because you understand the rest of them.

because you underestimate their abilities and they have some abilities that, not abilities, I will use the word strengths. They have some strengths that they are mostly ignored because they are people with disabilities. They are on defense dismissed. The main perception. But for example, many of them are great in kitchen. We have a person that is also in the spectrum, but also he's non-verbal. So he's using cards to communicate. He's using the PECS method.

And he doesn't communicate. Maybe sometimes he will answer with yes and no, but he mostly communicates with PECs. But he's very involved in the kitchen. He cracks eggs like professional. He can cook really complicated meals because his mother involved him in a very young age. in the process. So now that he's almost 18, he's great at it and we have some cooking classes

in the daycare center that I'm mostly involved in because I also like cooking a lot. And he's great. I admire him because I cannot even crack an egg without making a mess sometimes. But he does like it's nothing. Wow. Yeah. So do you work with a lot of speech pathologists now and it sounds like there'd be a lot of interdisciplinary work there? Yeah, there are a lot in the daycare I'm currently employed. There were a lot of professionals. There is an interdisciplinary team of speech therapists, psychologists, social workers, special educators. Okay. I think that's the term. Or even the musicians or dance therapists, art therapists. These are the main...

There are a lot of different disciplines working together in order to have a better experience because you need that. You need that. I mean, sometimes every professional can get in their high horse and be like, oh, my profession is the best because I love it and because it has this effect. The thing is that people have a lot of different needs

that they cannot be met by one profession. That's right. Everyone needs a social worker, a psychologist, a speech therapist, a physiotherapist, et cetera, et cetera, to have the best possible outcome. So why do they need a social worker from your perspective? And is that different from when you were working with adults with disabilities versus working with children? What's the specific social work role, do you think?

Okay, so first of all, I believe social workers are able to see the bigger picture. Most other professions like psychologists or speech therapists, they are more clinical. They have the individual, they focus on the individual. But social worker is trained by its very nature of the profession to see the bigger picture. They don't focus on one individual. They focus on the team, on the environment, on the community. Yeah.

So the center of information for the service, they communicate with exterior sources like family or the community or the municipality and they are able to communicate this information back and forth to the team. Yeah. And to the other partners. I think that's a very important thing. That's a unique trait of our profession because we are trained for that. That's part of our job.

We are the link between our service recipients and the community. Sometimes we're stuck with bureaucracy and we forget about it. Sometimes we lose our hope because we have to face tremendous difficulties. But that's organic in our own. This ability to connect the individual with the community. what makes our profession special in my opinion. And have you seen a difference in how you work with the older people versus the younger people? Yeah, that's a big difference because the purpose is kind of different

because when you work with older people with disabilities, you just try to offer them a better experience. Unfortunately, it's not something you can get much further. But then you can focus more on community work. When you have to work with adults, it's better if you focus on making the local communities more sensitive and more well-informed around their issues. How to help them understand and accept their unique experience. And actually help them understand how to make this person, how to make this experience. to make these people more accepted in their community.

Whereas when you work with children, it's much easier to help them develop in a certain way. Yeah. Because they are still in their formative years. So you can contribute with that. You can also do all this community work. Okay. And it's always important to do so. But you can also provide them with unique experiences that will have.

help them act in the community, it's easier to make a child feel more empowered than a 50-year-old person because they are fully formed adults that unfortunately they didn't have the proper support earlier on. Yeah. But there is still time with children and adolescents. That makes sense. And I'm guessing in the area you are now with the younger people, in addition to having your interdisciplinary team around you, you probably have a lot of external teams that you work with, so they might go to school. They'll probably be linked in with some sort of health services. So you need to have all of that wrap around support for each individual chart. Yeah, actually there is an open communication line with many schools they attend to or even

professionals of other fields. Like if they have joined. the sport, maybe we communicate with the coaches there, or if they receive personalized help in a therapy center, we can communicate them as well. With their families, that's an essential part, but also with the local municipality, the local authorities. Sometimes we offer outdoor activities. So we go to cafes or museums or even to theater. So that's also a connection with the community because they go out in the community.

That's also part of community work because if you don't facilitate their ability to be among other people, then just staying in providing information to the public is not going to get you that far. No, you need to build their confidence as well. Exactly. Yeah, and maintain the confidence that they might already have through positive experiences. That's also important. You were mentioning mental health issues that go very close in hand with the disability work. Have you had to do any additional training to be able to respond to or support people?

I know you work with psychologists, but there'd be a lot of the support that you provide that's to do with mental health. Yeah, actually, I've had training in psychological face aid. Nice. Is that specific for children? Because there's an adult one and a children's one. If I remember correctly, the one I had, it was mostly for children. Yeah. Yeah, nice. And at the moment, I'm also trying to further my skills and knowledge by having a master's. Mm-hmm. I saw that. In special education. Yeah, tell me more about that.

Okay, so actually, unfortunately, because of my work schedule, it's not in person, but it's online. I would love it to be in person, but I'm unable to do so. Actually, my master's program is in the University of Nicosia is up in Cyprus. Okay. And it's really important because if you learn about, it's a mixture of learning about inclusivity, but also about the education settings, but also about mental health and psychopathology.

So there are all these three parts mixed in this master So it has helped me understand How they process things more Which is something that of course Someone with clinical practice Mostly can kind of understand more But now I'm getting both sides You know

I had the bigger picture I'm getting the more focused one So I think my mind Is unlocking certain abilities at the moment. That's so great. But also in general I'm trying to stay to keep up with the scientific knowledge. I mean, I'm reading books. I'm having some seminars. For example, I had a seminar a couple of years ago about the human rights of people with disabilities. The human rights has an approach for social change.

Nice. Which it was also very informative. And also, I'm just, I'm just. getting trained at the moment in early detection. Okay. And early access to professional help for children with disabilities. That's so great. I don't know how you find time though. I don't have a lot of free time, to be honest.

Okay. I mean, I have times that I say, okay, I have to advance. And sometimes I say, okay, I have to stop. Yeah. Now in the process of advance. After this turn is completed, I will get some rest. Okay, so you're in a green light situation at the moment. Sometimes it might be, and the light, sometimes red light.

Yeah, exactly, because yeah, I think earlier we talked about balance. That's also a balance. To have some part for some time to focus on advancing and studying and developing and sometimes to stop learning and start doing all. doing or focus less on your job and more on your personal life. Thank God I have personal life. I'm lucky for that. But the thing is that one mistake that I used to do back in the day,

I would leave my job and keep working at home. Right. That's not the case anymore. As soon as I leave my job, I'm at home. I'm not working. Yeah. Do you want to communicate something to me? Do it tomorrow?

Mm-hmm. Send me text and I will. check it whenever. Yeah, yeah, you're not an emergency service. If it's a crisis, go to the hospital. Well, in the day care center, you have children that they have families. So unless you are present in an emergency situation, you don't have to act on it. So that's the benefit of my current job position.

But in general, sometimes they could, I remember in other cases, in my previous job positions, they would call me or text me. Oh, you know, that has to happen and that has to happen. Now that's not the case. I've established my boundaries for this to not happen, but also my coordinator is not a kind of person that is trying to make you work all the time. Yeah, good.

Yeah, they're not taking advantage. Exactly. The one time she had to do it was a very last minute change of plans. So she apologized a lot of first. And this is asking me something about that was okay because I knew it was once. Yep. And that's still the case. And it's so important, but also so difficult sometimes to realize where those boundaries are for yourself and everyone's going to be different and your boundaries are going to be different now to two years time.

So it's so much a combination of that awareness within yourself, but also your supervisors or your team leader or your manager being able to respect that and acknowledge that. Yeah. And it sounds like you're in a really healthy place at the moment. Yeah, because first of all, self-awareness is something that every social worker has to practice since day zero, not even day one. Every human being has to try to be self-aware. Yeah. But if we want to talk about social workers specifically, of tremendous importance, because if you're not aware of yourself, you will not be able to be aware of other people's feelings and ideas and behavior. here. So you are kind of disconnected with the recipients with the people you need to work with.

It's something that a professor during my university years inspired me to do more. I was always an kind of introvert person, so I would work on my feelings and my ideas and my way of thinking. But she made me understand that this can also make me a good professional, It's not just a function in human being. So I think every social worker has to work on themselves, not just become like super knowledgeable or be able to take care of everything. No, that's not self-aware. That's pretty burned out.

Yeah. Yeah. But you have to be aware how you're feeling for a certain situation, for a certain condition. how you are able to use empathy for people to get in their shoes to understand how they are feeling, how they are seeing the world, how they are processing things that happen around them. That's really important. And that's what I'm trying to do because in the end of the day,

we have to try to take care of ourselves as professionals as well. I have to specify, though. I think we're talking too much about self-care. And we don't talk enough about the social change that need to happen. Yeah, it shouldn't just be our responsibility. Because, yes, it's important to practice self-care, but when institutions cannot even allow you to relax for the minute after the end of your shift, self-care can get you that far.

Of course. We need social change more than just taking care of ourselves. We have to work with institutions to change things from the inside. We have to understand that social change involves ourselves as well. What do you find most difficult or challenging about the work you're doing at the moment? Do you find that you're bringing anything home or do you find that the system, the structure, is making things more challenging for you? The structure does make things more challenging because, again, there are some things that they are mostly surface level.

As I said earlier, family is not that involved even nowadays. And that's not the fault of the family. They think that professional help mostly focuses on the person with disability, but not in their environment. That's something that we're trying to change all professionals together, but mostly social work, to evolve the environment more. But still something under process. And the thing is that Greece tends to be late in some trends. Okay. For some reason, scientific experience travels more slowly in Greece. I feel that our current scientific situation is the situation that happened 10 or 20 years earlier in other parts of the world.

For example, in the training I'm having on early detection and support, actually the approach is family-oriented and routine-based. That program started in the US more than 30 years ago. Yeah. And that's what I'm training in 2026. that's a very good example of the difference. Especially these days when there's no excuse for lack of communication or things not getting through to the right people.

It's just a perhaps philosophical issue or a conceptual issue. I think it's a conceptual issue but also a welfare state issue because the Greek state was never really a welfare state. Right. Unfortunately. If you compare Greece with other countries in Europe like Sweden or the Netherlands or Spain even, we look more similar in some ways. Our welfare state is far behind and is very minimized. And unfortunately, the state does much less than the private sector or the NGOs or everything.

I blame that as the main reason why the scientific research is that far behind in Greece. The trends tend to come later. Okay. Because even if there are some professionals that try to bring the brand new experience, they are much less in numbers than the rest of professionals that they just follow the same old trends. Okay. what do you find most rewarding or enjoyable about the work you're doing? I don't know how to answer that question without sounding like an internal optimist or something.

But I just love working with people. I just like, I feel that affecting one individual at the time is enough to bring you and all the rest of the community one step closer to the social change is necessary for everyone to lead a better life. Yeah. I feel that just a thank you is enough to empower me for days. Which is really lovely. It's kind of indicating that you don't need to be making huge waves. You don't need to influence hundreds of people.

Just one is enough. And then the ripple effect will continue. You can do both. If I was able to be in a job position that I would affect like a larger amount of people, I would really love it. But that has to happen both ways. I mean, you cannot only focus on the individual or just focus to the larger community because the individuals are part of the larger community.

And the larger community is the environment that the individual moves around. So you need both. Community work and working in community in a larger scale can happen also in other ways out of the service. For example, the National Association of Social Workers in Greece is very active. That's the case for the last seven to eight years. That is very hopeful. So you get to connect with other social workers. They support our professional rights, but also they talk about social issues.

social justice issues. So that's also part of what a social worker can do in order to better the community in general. As a professional working in a certain service, you have to provide the best possible experience for the service recipients as well. And I find our job is meaningful. I find that working with people in need has a purpose and this purpose is to offer a better life in any way for any person you can have communication with to help them to have a little better life than when they have before they meet you that's rewarding by itself of course okay It's not easy and it's not, maybe it's not a big change, maybe it's small change, but I wouldn't do it any other way.

Yeah. Being a social worker is my colleague, I'm not going to down plate. I have other skills, I have skills that I could use in any other way, but I wouldn't enjoy it. I know I wouldn't. This is what you're meant to do. Exactly. I mean, I'm great at computers.

I could go be an administrative officer, for example, much less stress. you'd be bored I wouldn't just be bored I would be aimless yeah I couldn't live by myself if I could be aimless that's what I feel and what I'm feeling right now

discussing it with you I've always wanted to do something help people and also something with purpose I feel I'm having a purpose working on a social worker I get that yeah I feel that

If people wanted to know a little bit more about the work you're doing or even about the things you're reading or viewing, you're having to read widely now doing a master's, are there any resources that you'd recommend for them? Anything you'd think that they should be looking up? Look, there are tons of scientific articles in Science Direct. Even there are articles as recent as like a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. I mean, you can find the latest scientific research. But I do recommend a specific book or whatever. But if we're talking about social workers, more specifically,

I would encourage them to read more about the radical social work. I think that's something that really needs to be acknowledged because it's a movement of social work that is very focused in social change. and social justice. Yeah. And it's going much further than the traditional role of social worker. If we want to talk about community, radical social work is probably the future. Yeah.

Also, I would encourage every social worker to read books according to their roles at the time or according to their interests. Okay, maybe we work in a certain group of people in one day and then we work in another group of people the next day. We have to be able to keep up and also keep up your knowledge. I mean, you cannot rely your professional experience in 2006 reading books from 1970s. Yeah, so right. That's absurd in my opinion. Yeah.

You have to go after current literature. Because 1970s was a different time. Of course. 2020 is a different time. In 40 years, 2016 are going to be a different time. You cannot rely in past knowledge. And sometimes we forget that because we just, as we gain experience, we are setting our ways in some ways.

Yeah, sure. I'm not a fan of that. Yeah, the world has moved on and so should we. Exactly, exactly. You have to work with the current standards. Is there anything that we haven't had a chance to discuss or anything that you wished, I'd asked. I'm very conscious that I've taken so much of your time and I could talk with you forever about this stuff because it's fascinating to me as well, but is there anything else that

you wanted to talk about in relation to your experience or social work in general? I don't think so. I think I've covered everything that I wanted to discuss. I think that The last thing I would like to say is that social workers often tend to become discouraged after a certain point. There are moments that we say, what are we even doing here? Because there are these systems that hold us down and put us in little boxes and we chase around our tails. We can always be more. And for that to happen, we don't know. only have to advance our knowledge or keep up with the trends. We also need each other, which is often undervalued because for some reason in some services, there are only a couple

of social workers where there would be more. But there are other types of services that also have other social workers. And if you communicate with these social workers, then you get different feedback and then as more we meet and gather and we discuss our issues not even in an organized setting like group supervision or whatever but or something like this what we're doing right now yeah yeah exactly exactly something like this i mean we didn't know each other before you approached me okay to have this conversation but i had the opportunity to communicate my experience my experience with some other social workers around the world. Maybe it will motivate some of them to change something in their ways

or maybe they are dissatisfied in their current role and motivate them to find something else. Which sounds great, okay? We don't have to stay in our current job if we don't enjoy it. It's nice to be open to new opportunities. Or even reassure them about the importance of our profession. That is also something people need. I mean, I've needed it from that time.

to feel reassured that what I'm doing is not wasting time away. Of course. Okay. Unfortunately, sometimes there are conditions that make you feel that way and think that way. It's nice, no, but it's human. We also have to be a type of community that we can rely on. And that can happen by sharing our experiences and our ideas and our hopes and fears. Okay.

Yeah. And we build each other up. We become stronger. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Build each other up because we are not competition. We don't have to compete. Who cares if you are the best social worker ever? There's plenty of work out there.

Who cares? No one cares other than you. No one cares. But people will care if you support them and they support you back. That's right. Yeah. And that's the best legacy. Yeah, exactly.

Your achievements, your accomplishments are important for you alone. But if you are able to use your advancements, to also advance other professionals and our profession in general, then you have offered a much bigger support and impact than just becoming the best social worker for you. We don't need to be individual players. Let's be group players and group leaders. I think that's so important for people to hear. And also, there might be people who listen to this that aren't even social workers, but perhaps you've been able to motivate them to study, to begin, to even know where to begin and what the options are that are out there that are available for people once they do study social work, because it's an interesting field.

It's not child protection. It's not healthcare necessarily. It's things that people don't necessarily think of when they think of social work, but it's such an integral part of working with people and supporting people, especially people with disabilities. So you've been able to demonstrate really clearly why it's a specific social job and why it's so important. Yeah, unfortunately, not all people are very properly informed about our profession. That's also nice to raise awareness and also motivate someone that might listen to this discussion, this conversation, that these people may be able to be able to.

try to figure out what they're going to do professionally, what to study, and might lead them in a certain direction. Yeah, yeah, you can only hope. But I'm glad that you had that early exposure to helping professionals, because perhaps without that, you might not have ended up where you are now. And you've been able to find a balance, which is really difficult between the professional and the personal. And it's such a shame that you had that disappointment early on, with the government work because for a lot of new career social workers, that would have just worn them down completely. And you might not have had the impetus to continue and do what you did. And yeah, just the government priorities. And they're not sort of working in a way that will support

you as a professional, but then support the people that the services are meant to protect. But that led you to learn about a whole new cohort of people. You learned about disabilities. and because our profession allows us to see people in their context as a big picture, you've been able to then work with people across a spectrum, pun intended, of adults, childhood, all sorts of people at stages of life where they've needed your support. And I think you've been continuously developing yourself as a professional. So you've had lots of opportunity to build experience. and you're building awareness of yourself and your profession within doing that.

So yeah, I think you said facilitating social change one step at a time. I can definitely see that. And I'm just so appreciative the work you do. And I love that you've been able to talk about it. And thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for sharing all that. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share this much. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Theo, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm slash social work spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight Podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Sophia, a social worker, sexologist, and relationship counselor from Germany. She has worked in child protection and youth services in both Germany and Australia, including child and family welfare services, therapeutic residential crisis care for children and young people, and specialised crisis support for girls who have experienced sexual violence and abuse. Sophia has worked as a lecturer in sexology and is the founder of Sexology Hub, where she offers sexuality and relationship counseling, individual coaching, as well as educational programs, workshops and professional training for diverse audiences. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll

notified when this next episode is available. See you then.