Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 6: Liz & Courtney (USA)

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

In this episode I speak with Liz and Courtney from the USA. Liz has worked with immigrant survivors of violence for the past 20 years and currently works as a District Student Support Specialist in the public school system where she also provides clinical supervision coordination and supports a trauma cohort. In addition, she provides clinical supervision for the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and has her own private practice. Courtney is currently the Training Specialist for the Louisiana Crisis Hub which dispatches mobile crisis and behavioural health resources. With 8 years of experience in criminal justice, she has worked with a Statewide Public Defender’s Office and the Metro Public Defender’s Office in Kentucky. Together, they also host their own podcast, the Social Work Squad Cast.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:Vera Foundation - https://www.vera.org/On the Move Art Studio - Our Team – On The Move Art StudioProvide training and resources - Home - ProvideThis episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KnhX04v3k5mYc6UkYg4Q7I4vJR42OwAI7w24wkzLJ5E/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, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guests are Liz and Courtney from the USA. Passionate about combating stigma in healthcare and social services, Liz has worked with immigrant survivors of violence for the past 20 years and currently works as a district student support specialist in the public school system, where she also provides clinical supervision coordination and supports a trauma cohort.

In addition, she provides clinical supervision for the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, and has her own private practice. Courtney is currently the training specialist for the Louisiana Crisis Hub, which dispatches mobile crisis and behavioral health resources. With eight years of experience in criminal justice, she has worked with a statewide public defender's office and the Metro Public Defender's Office in Kentucky.

Together they also host their own podcast, The Social Work Squadcast. Hello ladies, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. looking forward to having a chat with you about your individual experiences, your life as social workers together, your own podcast, all the things. So thank you again for coming on. So happy to be here. Thank you for having us. Yeah. I usually start firstly with how and why. When did you start with social work? What brought you to the profession? Who wants to go first? I mean, I think seniority rolls, Liz. You've been doing it a little bit longer than me.

It's not very much. Well, this is my... 21st year as a social worker, which, wow, my social work career is legal to have a beer. So I started in social work. Initially, I wanted to be an English as a second language teacher or an art teacher. And I started working at a school part time when I was in college and realized that I really didn't love classroom management and like disciplining children like ever, especially in a group. And I really enjoyed working with them one-on-one, talking with them, helping them solve problems, you know, just supportive listening, all the things. And at the time, I was learning Spanish.

And my mom, who was like one of my social work heroes are probably my biggest social work hero, she was a school social worker and hadn't wanted to steer me towards that necessarily. She kind of wanted me to do my own thing. But I started talking to. her about like what I was enjoying at work and you know with Spanish and she was like I never really wanted to push you towards social work but it actually sounds like you might really enjoy social work. So I switched my major and started working primarily with our Latinx community here in Lexington, Kentucky, first at a rape crisis center and doing like court advocacy and accompaniment and crisis counseling and I just loved it so much, which probably sounds weird that you love trauma counseling,

but I just love being able to accompany people and walk alongside them in those moments. And I guess I got, I was hooked and I actually met Courtney around that time. So I'll let her jump in if she wants to. So yeah, when I think about my social work journey, it doesn't make sense because I didn't know what to do. after college, but after college, and I went to Brea College. So it was a service learning school. And when I first got out, I did AmeriCorps Vista, which is another service program. And so I was just like, okay, I'm just going to be in the do-gooding community, right? And, but I didn't really know, like, what that meant or what that looked like. So I ended up leaving Kentucky and moving to

California where I worked for a nonprofit lawyer. And it was a really interesting sort of view on what nonprofits go through and how to create one and what that looks like in terms of, you know, how all this sort of quote unquote do-goating and helping our communities. But I really wasn't, I just wasn't really satisfied. It really wasn't. I didn't see it being long term. I didn't, I really wanted to have something that was going to be sort of a career. So it was actually after President Obama got elected the first time that he he just brought in a lot of energy. You know, he just had to be there. So I was in San Francisco at the time when he got elected.

It was a lot of energy. It felt safer to start a career. And it felt like it would be something that I wanted to do. So I was getting ready to leave San Francisco. It was just too chilly. I know that sounds strange. It's a coastal city, but it's just, it was too chilly. It was about 60 degrees like every day.

And so I like seasons. I don't mind them. So I decided to apply to get my social work degree, my master's in social work, at Tulane University in New Orleans. I visited New Orleans just months before post-Katrina. And I decided, you know, fine. They accept that. I wrote the essay.

They accepted me. I didn't have to take the GRE, nothing scary. So, and I just, you know, I just jumped on it. And then it was a fast-track program. And I learned a lot being in New Orleans. I don't want to say anything about the actual curriculum, but I just, I was older than a lot of my peers. So I'd had a lot of work experience, you know, and so I was learning more and more about, like, my New Orleans community.

And I learned on this journey that really where I wanted to be was in criminal justice. And so I started my career in criminal justice. New Orleans and I ended up being in that criminal justice community for five years and then I moved back to Kentucky. So this would probably be my 15th year, I think, doing social work. So I'm a little behind Liz. I'm still a teenager in it, but the journey continues. That's part of what I love about social work is that not only can we learn new skills at kind

of any age, but we can apply those skills. then also as the community learns about new things, trauma therapies, different types of modalities, how to meet people where they're at, they get adopted by us and we can do that very quickly. And I love that sort of fluidity about the social work career. So that's where I'm at. Lovely. And while you were going through the master's programs, both of you, did you have many training opportunities, internships, curious to see how that differs from the Australian context?

Next? For me, it was a fast track program, so it was a year and a half, and a year of it was at an internship. So it spends, I guess, maybe 20 hours or so a week at an internship, unpaid. And we also had supervision within that internship. And I did mine actually at the counseling center at Tulane University with university students. So I was doing more of a clinical focused curriculum. And that was one long placement. You didn't sort of jumble that up into different stints. Okay. So you have to really get a good one. Yeah, they didn't really encourage us to move once we were somewhere. And I think a lot of that had to do with the, you know, internal free labor of it all, right?

Yeah. So not a lot of those nonprofits needed help. So by the time you get sort of trained, your time is almost up. Got it. I had a bit of a different experience because I majored in social work and undergrad. I did social work in Spanish. And in undergrad social work, you know, there were quite a few different opportunities kind of along the way, like pretty early on.

I think it's like Social Work 300. You had to do like kind of a mini internship. And then you do two different practicums in undergrad. So like two different placements, like one semester each. And then in the grad program, we did a year-long one as well. So kind of got to try on maybe. a couple more places like having done it as undergrad. But it was interesting because I focused on community social work at the time.

We had family and community concentration. I went to UK, University of Kentucky. And because I had done decently well in my undergrad, I was able to waive a lot of those first year grad classes. So I just got to do what they call advanced standing. So it was like a 37 or 38 hour master's. So it's very fast. It was very fast-paced because I was going full-time and working. I was working at the Re-Prisis Center at the time when I was doing that one-year grad program.

So I remember when I got done, I was like, what is this time block that now is available to me? I don't even know what to do on myself. At the time, I watched Grace's Anatomy, so that age just mean a little bit. But, yeah, it was just a big transition, I think, to go from, yeah, being so busy to, like, just, working, even though that work. And I stayed on at the Ray Price Center full time for a while after I got done. So yeah, a little bit different. Yeah. I'm also just thinking it's great to have those accelerated programs where you can get through things faster, be done with the unpaid hours that you're working. But do you feel like you missed out on university life to some extent because

you were on this fast track and you didn't get the chance to just sit and just sit and just. chill for a bit. Yes, and I think what was interesting, having picked like a concentration at the time, like I picked family and community because that was the work that I had done a lot of it, but I ended up getting really interested in clinical work. So especially because I had that shorter program and not as many courses, even as electives, I didn't really get that clinical foundation in my program. And so it was a lot of, on the job training and like kind of studying on my own. Of course, like clinical supervision was wonderful and I had some really great clinical supervisors. But I feel like in a way, I think honestly, like probably getting deep, but I think that fuels sometimes by a little bit of

my imposter syndrome because I'm like, but I didn't study this or like I didn't get the foundation. So I have like worked pretty diligently to like get that on my own. But I think especially when you're, even with internships, when you're kind of taking that first job, you just are like, wait a minute. Like, I remember being like, I need an adult to your adult here. Like, I need a more seasoned person than myself to be doing this work. And I think, I don't know if more time would have necessarily prepared me for that, but it probably wouldn't have hurt either. It's always hard when you have that transition from student to practitioner in the same place where you've been working because I would imagine it's difficult to tease that out and have people

start to think of you as a paid professional as opposed to, I mean, you're still constantly learning and that's the benefit of being a new grad as you got a little bit of flexibility and leniency. But yeah, was it really hard to transition for you? Apart from that imposter syndrome and feeling as though maybe you had enough support. Well, I definitely was bright and shiny. I feel like Courtney and I talked a lot about that, like being, you know, I'm, a very like relentless optimist still, which causes a lot of suffering sometimes. But I think when you're bright and shiny and you're coming into spaces with a lot of seasoned folks and honestly,

probably a lot of folks who have a lot of secondary trauma and a lot of burnout, it can sometimes be hard to make that transition because while you're a stubborn optimist, you know, or relentless optimist, you have to kind of meet the reality of the work that you're doing and also not try to like bridge that gap with your own mental health and well-being. I think that has been a huge growth point for me over the years because sometimes I think as social workers and just I think empathetic people, I'm among like empathetic folks here, It's like when you see something wrong, something that's not going well or someone that's in pain or suffering, your natural instinct is to try to help or fix it yourself. And especially for our clients when they're running into so many systemic barriers, we have to be really realistic about what we can actually do for folks, which I think was probably the biggest wake up call for me.

I think holding on to that, it's not right. This isn't right. Like, this is not okay and it needs to be different and better is like a really important thing to hold on to. And at the same time, balancing out what am I actually able to do to support this person, walk alongside this person and help advocate for them? So I think that was probably the biggest transition I had, like going from the theoretical to the practical and practical and application.

application was just kind of those contrasting views of the world, honestly, and of like social work in her role in social work too. Yeah. So I guess the main learning point was bridging that gap between what you wanted to do and what was possible within the agency, within the context, while not being dragged down potentially by some of the people that perhaps had been affected by the content or the issues that have come up for them in the role. Because, yeah, you could very easily fall into that. Yeah, it's everyone else is putting things down and talking about the problem with the system. How do I get out of that rut and start to say, hey, I'm a new social worker. I've got energy. I've got passion.

I see the capacity here. That must be really hard from a power perspective as well within an organization being brand new. I think, too, that some social work, probably almost all the social work schools, like, suffer from some like, polyanaism and like they suffer from this they're coming from a place that is genuine I think is honest like of course we have this like deep desire and want to help people and to grab skills and learn how to do things but we're meaning communities that are not in that place and we're meeting systems that have been broken for many years and we're not we're not putting them in their correct context so for example so I'm in New Orleans I'm

at Tulane University post-Katrina, I need a race analysis, right? I need an analysis of what has been happening in this community. And I need to understand where the nonprofits fit in versus, and there was an influx of people that came in, white people in particular, right? This like, white saviorism that happens, especially around communities of color and black communities in particular in the South. And so I would like feel like I was fighting myself sometimes being like, okay. So y'all think, okay. So what is it? Right? Because I'm a big thinker. I'm a macro person. And I went to school being like macro social work, nothing else. The micro doesn't matter, which is a personal problem that I can find out, right? Like, you know, like not focusing on,

not wanting to focus on myself as well. Right. But that's after 15 years of reflection. Right. But like understanding like, okay, you're asking me to go into this community to do this work. What does it mean for that person? And what does that conversation and dialogue really look like to meet someone where they're at really, right? I think that's a really complicated thing. And I think that if we approach it simply, I think it just does us all a disservice. So I think a lot of social workers will graduate feeling really great about where their career is going to go, you know, not understanding that self-care actually means therapy, right? Self-care actually means reflection. Self-care doesn't mean Botox or yoga, right? Like those things can matter too, but like there's a personal work.

There's a personal desire to get in. So in my mind, the curriculum should start at, why are you here? Where are you starting at? right? You know, and then we can keep moving. And so I don't have any desire to be a dean of a social work school, right? I don't have that. But you're graduating people who then have to pass an exam, right, in order to get another license. And in order to get the license, that's the access to the money, right? And we're already starting, you know, at our salaries at a very low level. So yeah, there needs to be a little bit of reckoning, I think, with social work schools

and where we're trying to go. And I would even posit, and this is like rambling a little bit, but like I would almost posit clinical going its own route, right, and macro going its own route. And if the two should meet, maybe at the end, right? But I do think that the clinical can get lost and then the macro can get lost too. And I think we're brushing over broad stroking a lot of things that I think people could do better when they graduate because I just, I have to say as a person who's been in trial by fire at every

single job, I don't think it's just the best way to train people, even though I can do it. So just because I can't doesn't mean that I should. Yeah. And it is tough because you've got people who it might take 15, 20 years to find your why. You know, people might start studying social work just because they think it sounds good and it's a good idea and that's sort of the thing that they want to do or it meshes with their values, but some of us take a while to figure that out. And if you only have one placement opportunity, you don't get to try a few different things and see if you do want to do the macro or the micro or the mezzo or whatever it is. So yeah, I think university can only ever be the starting ground, the launch pad, the foundation,

from which you then develop your own sense of who you're going to be as a social worker and what you're interested in doing. But I think it's hard to see that when you're, you know, 18, 19 years old of this is only the very first start of it because you don't have the capacity, the development, even the psychological development to be able to see beyond that anyway. What you were saying like the pathways, you know, of like macro micro.

I do feel like clinical work does inherently have to include that reflective piece a lot more than macro, because we talk about the dynamics a lot more transference and counter transference, which is like that's such an important vehicle for like looking at all of your own ish. You know, like why am I? What is happening here? What is happening inside of me? Why am I feeling so uncomfortable with this conversation?

Or why am I rescuing this person or why is this person make me want to pull away from them? Like there's just so much of that in clinical work that honestly I've had to like pursue to learn on my own because I didn't have that foundation in school. but the folks that did tell me they do talk about that. So that's good. But when I think about the macro piece and like what Courtney was talking about, there isn't as much, I think, sometimes focus on that self-reflection or introspection, like peace. And just like Courtney was saying, like you can't do great community work until you kind of understand yourself or seek to understand yourself within the context of that community. And those transference and countertransference

pieces play out in any type of social work that we're doing, whether we're doing case management, we're doing, you know, advocacy work, we're doing therapy, you know, it's like understanding those dynamics and being willing to dig in and like look at those parts of ourselves that we have trouble acknowledging or that are hard to acknowledge sometimes is I think just such a big piece. And I totally agree that there should be a lot more opportunity within schools. of social work to facilitate those conversations because you're never done, right? Like, I'm still in therapy. I'm probably going to be in therapy forever. You know, like we're never done. We're never fully cooked. But I think the earlier those conversations happen in brave spaces, I think the better,

because it makes us better. And that's one of the things I've loved so much about working with Courtney is that she makes me better, you know, and she challenges me and I get to grow. with her as a social worker and as a professional. And so I think those relationships too are so important within our community because it's like if we don't have each other, nobody's going to have us. So we have to have each other's backs and, you know, have some of those hard conversations, be able to consult with each other like, am I? Is this on point? Like, is this right? What am I missing here. You know, this is kind of what's happening. Can I troubleshoot it with you, talk through it with you? Like, I think that's so helpful to have those trusted people around us, no matter what area of

social work we're in. Absolutely. And I feel like at university, I don't remember ever having a discussion around what is supervision. How do you be a good supervisee? How do you provide supervision? I just remember it coming up under the banner of self-care. You should have supervision. This is your responsibility. And I think what then happens is throughout your placement opportunities that falls on your supervisors, your field education people. And I feel very comfortable with my students delving into the gritty and saying, no, no, no, I understand from a practice context, but how does this affect you right now?

How do you as a person influence what's happening? It's not something that we learn unless maybe in the US context you do a little bit more. of that in terms of therapeutic supports but yeah it is really hard to get a grounding on that and not have it just procedural or management focused and I think that's something that new social workers are missing out on because they're the ones who are more likely to burn out to have those issues with you know you've spent so much time getting trained up to do this and you've spent just as much time in the profession and then you've burnt out and that's a real shame so yeah I agree that focus needs to be done a little bit earlier on. It needs to be weighted differently.

I would also say that we're not calling it what it is. We should call a training. We should call school training in a lot of ways, right? We're getting trained to do this certain thing. And I just keep thinking like how much aggravation I've felt from case management work being the most popular, the number one job that anyone can have as a social worker, the easiest one to get, quote unquote, really, I think. and how we don't view it as clinical work, which is not okay because it is one-on-one work with a myriad of amazing opportunities to learn about all kinds of disorders, right, in all kinds of situations. And we're not preparing people to say, okay, like, if you get out of school and case management

is your only option, what is that? What even is it, right? What does it mean when we say we're case managing a human being, right? To me, I felt like I was, you know, following them around, right? And just harassing them to like do the things that they, you know, were set out to do. Right. And then how do those systems play in how we health care, criminal justice, all the different education. Education, right, how they all play in.

And then what, right? Because, yeah, you're sending people out and they're getting these jobs and they don't know where to start. Even though, right, graduated. had a practicum, got their supervision, ready to go, pass their exam, and then where are they? Right. I wish, I always want there to be a squishy place. That's why I like about Liz too. Like Liz and I can be a squishy place to be like, I don't think this is right or I don't think

this is working. I don't think this is okay. And sometimes in these jobs, right, especially when we graduate and we're all ready to go, right? There's not this place to go back and say to even to your supervisor like, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. You know, like, I learned this in class, right? I learned how to do cognitive behavioral therapy, right? But if I've never experienced it one-on-one, I've never watched it one-on-one,

and then someone's like, here's your first job, CBT, let's go, right? What detriment am I doing to this client, right? Who is showing up thinking that they're getting, hopefully they're thinking that I'm qualified, right? So anyways, I have a lot more opinions about school than I thought I did. But that's what comes with like the reflection, right? And also the frustration of wanting to do the work, wanting to do it well. And then wanting to have supervisors, right? And wanting to be able to usher in the next generation to do the work as well as it can happen,

given giant levies of failure everywhere. I was just going to say, I think, not to compare being a supervisor to parenting necessarily, that might be too strong of a parallel. But there are a lot of similarities, I think, in the way you supervise, hopefully, is kind of giving your supervisee what you didn't get. Or like, you know, like thinking about where your gaps were, what kind of experience you kind of wished you could have had, or looking at like what vulnerability maybe was needed to be able to ask the questions and so trying to create that safe container for your folks so they can have a squishy place. I love that Courtney said that to be able to process some of their things and of course maintaining

our role like you know we're not our supervisees therapists but there is that reflection piece that comes up and so you know are we kind of open to those deeper conversations and I'm very grateful my first clinical supervisor when I was at the crisis center, I was sharing with her that I was having some secondary trauma symptoms. And pretty quickly she was like, Liz, like, I want you to go get in therapy. And I was like, okay. Like I was just kind of like, oh, yeah, sure. But it was, I appreciated the directness of it. And I respected her so much. And it was so helpful for me because supervision isn't therapy, obviously, but I trusted her and respected her. And so when she said, hey, this is something that you might need to just work on, you know, I took her up on it. I went and got, had some great work

with the therapist I had for a long time. I was able to do that. So I think just it's important, I guess, to really just think about in that context of supervision, even if it's not clinical, how can we like create those places for the folks that we're working with so they can say, I'm so overwhelmed and not get met with that. Well, me too. Or like everyone's busy. like you're shutting that person down right and so how can we and obviously we have to take really good care of ourselves to be in a place to offer that to folks as well but yeah i guess that's just a thought on that no it's so important i'm wondering then moving on from becoming social workers and still working in the areas that you did your practicums in in criminal justice and at the

rape crisis center. What was the trajectory then for you to where you are now? What sort of skills and experience if you developed along the way? Well, I mean, after doing my practicum, I worked at the rape crisis center for a couple of years. I realized that I wasn't really, I was doing crisis counseling, but I wasn't really doing therapy there. And so I wanted to get more training in therapy. So I moved to a community health center here that worked primarily. It was called a farm worker health center. And so we worked a lot with migrant farm workers. We also had funding for just like regular community health centers. So anybody in our community that needed health care, including mental health care, could go there either for free or at a very

low cost on a sliding scale. And so I was there for about six years. And that's where I got my clinical training, had my clinical supervision or finished out my clinical supervision. We kind of had an integrated care model. So we worked alongside the doctors quite a bit and helped with like risk assessments and use motivational interviewing, trying to kind of help our folks with medication adherence for things like diabetes or hypertension or depression anxiety, kind of like helped support like those behavioral goals. But also I did a lot of trauma therapy work there. Unfortunately like so many of our clients had experienced really significant trauma. and so I really kind of dug in in terms of wanting to learn a lot more about trauma therapy.

And so I had to leave there, unfortunately, due to some personal things that happened and some grief and loss stuff that I had at the time. And I had my daughter and I took a break for about a year and then started back with macro because unfortunately I'd actually gotten pretty burned out in that clinical work environment. And so I had to take a step away. And I did some training and technical assistance for a national nonprofit around like healthcare, reproductive health care, unintended pregnancy, training social service providers and health care providers on how to have unbiased or non-biased all-options conversations with

folks when they experienced unintended pregnancy. And that's what I crossed paths with Courtney again because we got to train some of her social workers that she was supervising at the time. And then I worked for our state domestic violence coalition for a couple of years trying to bring more recovery services into our shelters across the state. So we have peer support specialists that were like stationed at shelters to just make those connections to our community health centers, mental health centers and get folks recovery supports and then I came to the schools and started working with kids directly as a mental health specialist in our school system. I moved to our district team a couple of years ago and we

provide support for all of our student support folks across our district, which is close to about 400 people. We're assigned schools to be kind of their liaison, but we also kind of have different projects we work on. So I was able to get trained in EMDR. Also, So crossing paths with Courtney once again, when she was at her former employer, they offered free EMDR training for folks that were working with young people and specifically trying to get more folks trained that were working with kids that were impacted by the foster care system or in the foster care system. So I got to do that training for free, was able to do that work in the schools. And then now one of the big projects I have been working on is getting our school providers trained in like the bottom of. brain-based trauma therapies to be able to provide that to our students, especially our most vulnerable students in school, you know, to address those different barriers that folks face when

they're trying to get to like outpatient mental health counseling and trauma counseling therapy. So that's kind of where I am now. It's interesting the kind of full circle moment then if you're doing something similar to what your mom was doing. She actually passed away about 13 years ago. So actually, when I left my clinical job, that was around that time. Gotcha. So you never really had to have those conversations around similar work styles, which is a shame.

So we got to work together some before then, but not a whole whole lot. But I did learn a lot from her. Amazing. And how about you, Courtney? What have you been up to? So if I think about it, if I really reflect on it, because I've had to, I've been asked a couple of these questions in a job interview recently about kind of like why I was only here for this amount of time or this and that.

It just comes down to the money and it comes down to the work as well as capitalism. I just, I just forgot to say that word. Capitalism is really running in this ballgame in the background of all things. And so when I left school, I ended up working for this amazing nonprofit, Vera. who is just like the most unbelievable nonprofit for criminal justice that's in the United States. And they're based out of New York City, but they were working in New Orleans. And I feel like I learned a lot about the policy work and what that looks like if you really want to work in a community, right? Like, then we have to work on our policies.

And then we have to figure out how to implement them with people that don't want to do that at all. and how to work together, I think is also an important thing because just because they don't want to do it doesn't mean that they're wrong. We're not wanting to do it. We have to kind of figure out how to have those conversations. So I really learned a lot about that. And then I left and I ended up at the public defender's office in Kentucky. So I worked in two public defender's office in Kentucky. And then I ended up leaving one of, you know, the one in Louisville to go into health.

health care because honestly, financially, that was going to be the best move for me. And when I took that job, I asked them about salary. I asked them about being able to move up. I asked them about the opportunities. And I was told that the salary was kept at this amount. And this amount was never going to lift me out of poverty, honestly, if we're going to be really honest. You know, I don't, there's no backing back here, right? There's no like mom and dad being like, hey, you know, like just do the work you want to do and we'll help you out right and at that point i was approaching my mid 30s you know so it's just like how long am i going to stay at this level to where i have to think about how much gas can i put in the car how much food can i get and i'm by myself at that point

right i don't have a family um and so can i even have a family right am i just going to be here at this level. So like we're working with people who are also at that same situation, right? So both of us, like we're both struggling. And I'm supposed to help this person who's, you know, also navigating these big systems. And there was just a lot going on. So I ended up jumping to this sort of like corporate capitalist managed care organization, which is also in America, there is all these private public partnerships, you know, with Medicaid and things like that. So that, it allowed me to move. It allowed me to get more financial stability and it allowed me to sort of work through my own secondary trauma. I mean, I've described it to someone else as like,

if you need a therapeutic burnout job, right? You should probably take something that may not fit with your heart and your desires, right? But if the money is causing too much stress to do the work, then you really need to figure out the money situation, right? And then, you know, I've been in this place where I can buy gas, why I can go to the grocery. And that's, that's a really important thing for me, as I'm sure it is for people. You know, I can go the doctor, those kind of things. So I'm still doing health care and managed care organizations. The thing about it is, is that they give raises every year. There's a retirement. They set it up, right, to where it feels like, I mean, you're kind of stuck, right? You can't, you don't, you can't leave right without finding, you know, something that's

comparable. But which means they're investing in their people, right? They want you to continue doing the good work. Yes. Yeah. And that feels good, right? Even if I'm not feeling like this is what I need to be doing with my life work, right? So yeah, it's been a little bit of a struggle. I've been in that place with managed care for about seven years. I'm reaching the point where I'm kind of over it. I mean, that's okay, right? Seven years is kind of a big cycle. That's kind of what happens with most of us, right? And so I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to reenter criminal justice, what that would look like. Would that be sustainable for my family? I became a mother a year and a half ago and like, that just want to be with him. Like, I just want to do that. And that's okay.

I really wish we had the first three years we could just hang out with our kids and then, you know, somebody would fit the bill just because it would cause a lot of. It's just really, it would be really nice for the kids to have a lot more attention. But anyways, so yeah, so I became a mother and things really shifted. So if it's about him, right, it's like about priorities, it's about my time. And before I had a kid, I was a career person. My career was my baby. My resume was, I was incredibly proud of it.

I still am, right? But honestly, like, you know, this kid feels like the legacy that, you know, I hope that continues, right? And the work will be the work, right? I always hope to make a good impression on people and leave them feeling like I'm a kind person, but you can't predict that. So I don't really know where I'm going some days, but that's where I'm going today. Yeah. I feel like it's probably similar in the U.S. to Australia where childcare is so exorbitantly

not to say it's not good value and that the people who are working there aren't great at what they do, but what ends up happening is it costs you just as much to put your kid in childcare as it does to go to work. And so where's the incentive? Do I want to spend time with my kid or do I want to go to work and feel part of that community? It's a decision that you shouldn't have to make, really. Yes. Yes, I'm straddling it hardcore right now. I just want to give Courtney a little bit of flowers because I think there's different, like there's a spectrum of everything. And there's some people who would say like, and I feel like people can be very judgmental about

someone going from nonprofit work to like a corporate setting. Like, oh, you did this. And there's a spectrum of course of how people feel about that. So believe what you want. But I want to say I think it's really important that wherever you are, you, you, can do really impactful and good work. And I definitely saw Courtney do that when she was with the managed care organization, like doing so much advocacy for LGBTQ kids in foster care, so much great advocacy for people with substance use disorders, mental health. It's that idea of like we don't want to

be of the system, but sometimes we do have to be in the system, right? Like we have to change it. I mean, I guess that's, again, philosophical conversation, you know, maybe for another time. But it's like, you know, sometimes you need those people inside the system to be able to like know what levers to flip, what strings to pull on to create change. And sometimes like it sounds like wild, but like one of our dear friends, Isela, who's also a social work hero of ours, she always talks about like policies and procedures. And she's like sometimes like those victories like are not glamorous. You know, they're not like sexy, whatever people don't call it. But like I changed a reg and now more people have access to something that didn't have access to something. Right.

And so I think there's always those opportunities like no matter what setting you're in to like affect positive change. Sometimes it just has to be done like quietly and strategically, you know. So I don't know. I guess just I think that's important to name me. that whatever system we're in, we have those opportunities and we need good people in all of the systems doing their best work, you know? Absolutely. With the support they need. Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. I feel like the systems that I was up against every single day was about the money. How are we going to make this company money? That's the bottom line, right? How are we going to

make the money off the people who need for most things, honestly, in healthcare. How are we going to divert them from using services that cost a lot of money? And so I spent a lot of time ignoring that. And I spent a lot of time trying to spend their money because they had money to spend and trying to make sure that we kept the focus on what really mattered in my mind, right, which isn't always what actually matters but I never I was always like what why can I move up like why and I just I never assimilated like I just it has nothing to do with my leadership skills I had to like come to Jesus with myself because it's just like I just never assimilated and you have to to move around that world and yeah I just it's just a really hard world for me and I it's okay I just have to like

let it go for myself. Yeah, but then you're running the risk of, is it moral injury, I think, is the term around if you're doing the work that doesn't fit with your values or the way that you want to be moving around the world. And so, yeah, again, you shouldn't have to make a choice between what you think is the right thing or what the world needs and being able to put food on the table. But it's just unfortunate that sometimes that's the reality of what's going on for you. But it sounds as though you've been able to maintain that integrity as you've gone along. I've tried. I've had a lot of help with Liz. We've had a lot of conversations about it.

And, you know, it's a nice reminder of the things that they have done, right? Because it seems sometimes the work is very slow in this arena, where it's very fast outside the corporations. Corporations are very slow and the outside systems are very fast. And that's part of the reason why. they don't get along. Yeah. Tell me about your friendship because it just sounds amazingly adorable. So you met at college and then you just keep coming. There's a hundred sliding door moments where you've come back and have you maintained contact through that time or was it kind of a chance coincidence that you came into each other's worlds again? So we met kind of right after college.

I was probably like 20 or-ish, I think. And we met there was an amazing woman who's still around, but she's just not around here. Look late named Majabin Rafudin. And she did really beautiful community organizing and youth organizing work in our community. And she would host like these really beautiful camps and events for young people to really dig into kind of social justice work and that being part of who they were as people and part of the community that we all wanted to live in and create together. And so we both met

kind of through her, I would say. Like I feel like we went to like a dinner or something with her or there was some sort of dinner or something. I can't remember exactly the day or the event. But I know we met like socially kind of, but through both volunteering with her work. And take it, Courtney, and then I'll pick up. Actually, yeah, Majabine made a very deep impression on my social work world where I was living and then doing AmeriCorvista, then being in her community. She's one of those people that just pulls people in. And that's just a wonderful way to be. And I want to be that. I aspire to be more like Majivine every day. And so then I think the next thing I remember is just you coming to do a training for Provide. And it was a really sticky situation. Of course, you know, Provide does a

really good job of training around the word abortion without saying the word abortion. And, you know, I wanted the social work students that I was working with, my interns, to have as much information as possible to do the best work that they possibly could. And she was just such a dynamic trainer in person. She's just a really dynamic person. There's so much to learn from her. And we just, we realized throughout our conversations after that training, too, is like how ethically aligned that we were in a world that, like, ethics are funny.

And people don't, they don't talk about ethics very much. And it just sort of magically kind of came together within our, conversations and as social workers and I was growing as a social worker at that point and this is 2016 right 2017 and then you know I decided that she would be the perfect person to start a podcast with which started around I think 2017 kind of after you know we turn the world on fire and allow Donald Trump to become president and so I just feel like that it was such a nice way to do social work without having to deal with bosses and the politics of the job and you know we could speak freely we could really talk about what we were feeling in our hearts and you know there was a lot to

talk about especially with how things were changing in so many ways so it was just a really wonderful part of my life that started to just be bigger and bigger and bigger and I was like this is really cool right we can just sit around have a great conversation put it online I I'm not very techy, you know, we just figure it out. They make it easy to get on and then that's how it goes. And, you know, we never said, oh, this is an thing, right? We just sort of like pick it up, put it back down, pick it up, put it back down. And that's just the nature of life.

And that's kind of the nature of social work. So I appreciate that a lot, a lot, a lot. Even when we've had to like put it down, you know, I think just solidify our bond and our friendship. And she recently relocated. And so I'm missing her. a lot but we do talk and we do phone calls and we text and send each other memes and outrageous news things and then just videos of cats or you know whatever funny sweet things as well and i've also

just gotten to like be part of or like walk alongside her a bit during her like motherhood journey these past couple of years i've loved listening to the episodes just the friendship really shines through. I can really tell that you guys have this special bond and it's really beautiful. Oh, thank you so much. We need more people. We need a tribe, right? We need people that understand what we're doing. Absolutely. Yeah, you got to find your people. I think that's, you know, some of the best advice, I guess, that we can all give folks. It's just like, this is tough. Life is even tougher, I feel like, right now than even ever before in terms of the rate and pace of change and stress and violence that we're seeing everywhere and folks feeling like just a complete

lack of control. And so, yeah, like holding on to your people really tightly, even when it's just to be able to say, oh, my gosh, everything feels so chaotic right now or everything is so tough right now. I think those honest conversations are so important. And also just like people that help you stay in touch with your own like humanity, right? Like just being able to kind of cry when you need to cry and laugh when you need to laugh. And sometimes you laugh and you cry at the same time. So, you know, you just need those people around you. And I do feel really encouraged like when I think about like all of the people doing social work around the world at any given moment, right? And like I thought about that. I feel like one of my classmates said that in grad school

that like obviously we can't like be in every corner. We all can't work on every issue and everything. But just knowing that like different people are in these different corners like working and trying to make things better, you know, for other people and for ourselves and for our kids and for, you know, our communities and we can't do it alone. Even if we could, though, I wouldn't want to, right? Yeah. Well, Beyonce. We forgot to shout out, Beyonce.

It's my birthday today. It is. It's really. Yes. And it's also my boss's birthday is also today. She shares the exact birthday with Beyonce and she's a huge Beyonce fan. So I don't know she'll see this, but happy birthday, D.D. That's nice.

Good for her. Are you going to see her today? I feel like you need to serenade her. We maybe did earlier and we may be doing another number later at like a team thing. That's amazing. Yeah. But yes, if we can talk about the podcast for a bit, it is real talk. It is what's going on in the world right now. Why is it relevant to social work? Why is it relevant to us? And there's a lot of grounding. There's a lot of just supporting each other and feeling

as though we're going through this difficult time together because as you said, you started it when the states were blowing up and then the world was blowing up and then it was probably really good to have that solace or a comfortable place to come back to to talk with someone when everything was locked down and you just didn't have easy access to the people that you needed to support you. So was that kind of your experience and how is it developed from there? Being able to be so many times we have to be in spaces. places that we don't get to co-create with anyone, whether that's at work or sometimes family or just different places or spaces that are hard. And so getting to be in a space that you get

to like co-create with somebody and get to decide what you want that space to be and feel like is just a beautiful thing. And when we were doing our podcast more regularly, I remember just thinking like, I sometimes I would forget we were recording because it really did just feel like talking to one of my dearest friends. And I think within social work, that's what we need, right? It's just to be able to be honest and real and, you know, be able to say, man, like, I'm really, I'm upset. Like, I'm having a really hard time with this or, you know, this is insane. What's happening right now and just feeling that sense of community, even virtually, you know, or even like it helped me feel, I think, less alone. And when I think about somebody,

listening to it. I'm just still like honored honestly. I mean that you even listened to it. Like I kind of surprised me when you reached out that you had listened to it. I've neglected to mention it's called the social works squad cast. Sorry. Forget about that. Yes. And we're all in a squad now. So it's exciting. But just thinking about if someone even listened to like a little bit of one and was like, oh, like I've experienced that or I felt that. Like just I think helping people feel less alone is something that social workers do well. And just honesty makes people feel less alone. So any time we can have like brave and honest conversations about the hard things, I think that is always just something worthwhile. And in the absence of like a real dialogue, right?

Like an absence of community dialogue, like being able to come together with, you know, at least one other person, right? And sort of like, when I first started, I was like, is this selfish, right? Is this, oh, mine, like put out my ideas, right? But like, that's the journey, I think that it's nice, right? Because like, literally you can listen to a podcast about anything under the sun. And that's why I appreciate, I think about podcasts. So people can just, I mean, I've turned them on, turn them off. I'm not doing this or like, but I'm not judging the people, right? I'm just judging the content, right? And that's really nice feeling like you can just bring people on your journey or not. And we've had several people kind of reach out and that's been really fun to think, hey,

like someone was listening and then they heard it and it made any sort of like impact for them. And then because really I think it's more therapeutic for us, right? It's allowing us to kind of like clear the clutter that's sometimes in our brain that's like this social work thing happened and this social work thing happened and my manager is way inaccessible and like this politics thing is happening at work so I can't talk to these people right like it's just messy at work sometimes so it's nice to have another place to like have real conversations and then maybe somebody will be like that's cool that happened to me right like Liz was saying What would you say it would be a favorite episode or a favorite guest that you've talked to for the show?

I know we did a couple interviews that I really enjoyed and I don't know when we did like some transferring to different platforms. One of them, I don't know if it made it, but it was probably one of my favorite interviews. And it was with one of like a really great young man who's like a community leader here in our area. at his name is Josh Nadsum and he founded the nonprofit on the move art studio. So they take art classes to neighborhoods and places and kids everywhere and it's really beautiful. And he was actually in my very first social work class that I taught at UK. And I don't know if he'll listen to this either, but he was so authentic and genuine. I thought he was messing with me like the way he would answer questions.

I was like, is he being sarcastic? because he was just so kind. And then to see him go on and start this wonderful nonprofit and just be the amazing human he is, like we did a really cool interview with him. And I remember him saying all poverty is violence. And that has just, I don't know, the way he said it or maybe it was the context of what we were talking about. Like it just really, really stuck with me. And so yeah, that was probably my favorite one.

Is he still running that program? He is. I'll put a link in the show notes so people can have a look. Yes, yes, they're doing, I think they're celebrating their 10th year right now, which is awesome. Good for him. Yeah, they're doing a big fundraiser, I think, for their 10th year. Yeah, in true, like, chaotic social work style, I think that was really hard to, like, continue doing interviews, you know, as much, too. And so, and I think we started out really wanted to, like, highlight people we knew, right, that were doing amazing work.

And we wanted to make sure that they got their flowers. But sometimes, you know, things just start starting to a conversation. And so I think the best times, I think, is when, like, we, when we pulled together an episode where both of us were, like, just, like, overflowing, right? We just needed to, like, talk things out. We needed to, like, talk about the state of the world. We needed to talk about Beyonce. We needed to talk about all the different things.

And so some of those, like, ones in 2019, 2020, like, the world. Those kinds of ones, I think, are also really special because these conversations are a little bit of a time capsule, but also they definitely helped us through kind of a really difficult time, which, you know, continues. You know, we're not a news program, right? I mean, we're just kind of a reaction, social work ethic program. But it definitely was a nice place to land when there was too much going on. And as we're well aware, around the world, the political environment is really challenging and especially in the states. And I can't even begin to understand the full scope of it. But neither. Neither can we.

What are you finding as much as you're comfortable talking about it? How is it impacting your work, basically? So I see clients privately too, like I see private practice clients. and people are always going to have a lot of like the same problems. Relational problems, family of origin problems, you know, a lot of those problems, you know, that our difficulties are there. But it just feels like we've added this constant like hum of anxiety in the background and stress and just hopelessness that takes.

times, like, I definitely feel like I've been trying to, like, just hold space for that while experiencing it myself. I think just that uncertainty of what's next, you know, is so hard to pause because it's just the onslaught of information and change and, you know, awful things happening, things that are bearing conflict with our social work values and our human values. I think that uncertainty is impacting social work in a lot of ways to, and across industries, you know, like people feeling in health care, in working with elderly folks, working with people with disabilities, working with our LGBTQ youth, our immigrant and refugees, anywhere that with people basically is I think experiencing that heaviness, that insecurity, the stress of just the

unknown, the stress of the known and the unknown, right? And just what you were saying as mean, the fact that we don't understand the full impact of it and how that's kind of coming in waves and the changes are happening in waves. And I think it's just a lot. It's just a whole lot on the personal and the professional level. What about you, Courtney? I have so many struggles, and I don't know if it's, I don't understand why I have these struggles, I guess, but I think it's just like a very white Appalachian perspective that I have from Kentucky, like very focused on it, kind of like the community, but I just,

it's just so hard for me to hold space for the worldwide thing. that are on fire, right, literally, and the famine and the starving and the genocide that's happening, especially in Palestine and Africa, like all these different places, right? And then have this hunting of people also in my own community. And I then have this like discourse that it's fine. This is what we signed up for or whatever. And then it's really hard. to hold both things. I love it when people remind me that I'm not sure we're supposed to know everything like this. I'm not sure we're supposed to have the capacity to know this much. You know, I definitely sound my age when I'm like the internet was a good idea. Some days and some days it's not.

And I was looking at some news yesterday and I heard that in Kentucky, I guess, Jefferson County schools went cell phone free inside their schools and it has very quickly changed the dynamic of how the kids are interacting with each other and I think can we start there like can we start with like this connection right and then can we also explain to them what's happening in Palestine right can we also explain to them what's happening with ICE can we do that in a way to where they understand it right and also understand why sometimes kicking it with your friend in the hallway without a cell phone is actually pretty fun. You know, like, it's just there's a lot to hold.

So it can feel, especially right now, I think everyone who is doing this kind of work feels very heavy and doesn't necessarily know how to react to even each other. I mean, I could think of a few people who I think are amazing people and I kind of want to argue with them about certain things, right? it's a very argumentative environment for so many reasons. And maybe given the context of we're just trying to get along in this world and we don't really have the bandwidth to be doing all this extra stuff, maybe this is that opportunity where things have expanded so much

just to kind of bring it all back in and go, what is the purpose, what is the meaning, what is life right now, and what are the things that are most important that we can focus on, and that are in our control and just keep that sacred, I guess. And then as we feel a little bit more confidence, we can start to branch out and feel a little bit more in control. But yeah, I think at the moment,

it's just a bit of a consolidation phase. Everything is so fast. And everything, like when I think about like our young people, it's like everything's just like one direction, right? Like it's like it's coming at them. But there's nothing really that they can reach back out to, right? it's all just, you know, in their face. Yeah, there really isn't.

And there aren't a lot of intentional spaces or places for them to even process and talk through it, right? And so I think one thing I think about a lot as a parent too is like, if I want my kiddo to not be on screens and be relational and have these like meaningful interpersonal relationships, I. have to model that, right? For her, too. I have to slow down. I have to leave the phone upstairs when I'm hanging out with her. I have to model like having friends over for dinner just to talk, right? And so I think it was, was it Mother Teresa? Don't at me for misquoting Mother Teresa anyone, but I think she said if you want to change the world, like go home and love your family. and I feel like that feels really true for me right now. And when I think of family, I think bigger than my like immediate family.

I think of like my family, as some people say, my chosen family. But what does it look like to really intentionally show up in micro ways, right, for our people to kind of check on each other and hold space for each other and take turns losing our minds together? Because I think that's how we're going to get through this. I honestly think that's the only way that we can get through this with the current just onslaught of all the things. So I really appreciate getting down this conversation with you and with Courtney and getting

to slow down for a little bit and think and process and listen. Yeah. And I appreciate your time as well. I'm very conscious that you've got to get back to your busy lives, but just really grateful that you could talk about your beginnings in therapy and clinical training and sort of the evolving, you've hinted at social work as being an evolving profession. So we're always learning new modalities and you as professionals are always learning new ways of doing things or trying to improve what you've already built on in order to find your place

and figure out what your impact can be. And you've highlighted the importance of really figuring out who are the important people to you and holding on to those important relationships in your community. and we've talked about the impact of policies and legislative changes on both your personal and professional lives. The only other thing I wanted to comment on is we were talking about the students and poverty. And my big thing is how do we support more people to join the profession? And often it's people who are more marginalized or disadvantaged, people on the outskirts who either have had exposure or who would be wonderful social workers because they get. it, they're the ones with the student debt or they're the ones who don't even enroll because they're concerned about the student debt, right, and the unpaid placements and all the things

that they need to worry about. So how do we try to promote the profession to these people who are our future while we're still holding people back so much and making it really hard for them to progress? Yeah, I don't have an answer to that. That was just, I guess, something I was thinking about as you're talking as well, of these are the people who are meant to be doing this work and we're making it so difficult for them. I will say that I do think that even though they may not end up being social workers, I do think that like we can promote a social work attitude and the tenets of social work within any job. It's a little bit like how there's a lot of conversation about how to implement trauma-informed care as a whole on the system level. And I think

that if there is a trauma-informed care system, whether it be a school system or healthcare or a doctor's office, whatever it is, that promotes social work. So integrating those systems, I also think of people, the trainers, all the trainers of the modalities, they may not be social workers, right?

They might be LPCs, licensed professional counselors, or they might be just someone with a bachelor's level social work, right? But they've been trained to be a trainer, right? And I think those people are incredibly valuable, because they can teach, right, outside of the education system and then hopefully, like, get us to a different place and have social work look a little differently, right? I want social workers to be financially stable. I want them to be able to feel like they

can do the work and then go home and then eat five cassidias if that's what they need to do and then go to work again tomorrow, whatever it is they need to do, right? I think that we just have to put a different structure in place. But it's really hard to like say, hey, why don't you join this rank, right? When for all intensive purposes, it took me 10 plus years to get my clinical license, you know? So yeah, the more honest, I think we are about the barriers. I think the more apt we'll find the people who need to be there, you know. I was speaking with someone actually this morning who's in Sri Lanka and they were interested to know how they might be able to come to Australia and work there. And I said, look, here's the information officially.

Here's the information about getting your qualifications recognised. But that's a whole big process and you might have to start from square one. Do you really want to do that? Do you really want to be recognized as a social worker or do you want to just do social work in a different country? Because unless you want to work for a statutory body, say child protection or in a hospital, you can do social work without being a qualified social worker. If you've got experience and you've got, not to say that our training isn't important and our profession shouldn't be protected, but as a social worker, I've only ever had one role that was a designated social work role. So you bring your experience and your skills and your values to whatever role you have. And I think

that's important to highlight for people who are not going to be able to go through the grueling hours and amount of money that it costs just to get to this point where you, then you start from a very base rate and hopefully you can develop from there, but there's no guarantee. I'm so grateful again to you both for making the time to do this. And we're in the same time zone pretty much, which is fantastic, so easy to coordinate. But yeah, thank you for highlighting the United States context, at least, and the world context and what that all means and your individual experience. And look, if you continue to make content with the squadcast,

I'm very much interested to hear about it, but just keep in touch. Let me know how you're going. And yeah, we've got a band together in this whole process. So, yeah, thank you again for reaching out and hope we can stay in touch. Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a real honor and pleasure to hang out today. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Liz and Courtney,

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 Dan, who's more than 30 years of human services experience has seen. him serving both children and adults in multiple settings and in various capacities. He has worked at four different child welfare agencies in Ontario, Canada,

in frontline supervisory and managerial roles across different functions. Along with work in the youth and adult mental health and addiction sector, Dan developed and facilitates the hero model, focusing on moving this forward in Canada, the USA and further internationally. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you're notified when this next episode is available. See you then.