AASW Social Work Podcasts

For Margarita Frederico, AM the core of social work is its drive for social justice and its respect for human rights; and its richness comes from the way it is constantly evolving. Social work has taken her from seminars with Anna Freud, to anti-Vietnam war protests; from The Royal Children’s Hospital to Myanmar; from childhood trauma to environmental rights. Through a lifetime of change she has held onto the values, the rigour and the knowledge at the core of social work.

SHOWNOTES

A more detailed version of Margarita’s story was published in Social Work Focus, Autumn 2021

Take Two, Berry Street

https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/mmfrederico

Margarita’s writing:

Margarita Frederico, Maureen Long, Nadine Cameron, Leadership in Child and Family Practice, Routledge, United kingdom, 2018

Margarita Frederico, Maureen Long, Janelle Young, Educating Social Workers for Leadership in a Highly Differentiated Society, International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change, Vol 3 issue 4, pp61-72, 2018

Evaluations of therapeutic foster care programs:

Margarita Frederico, Maureen Long, Patricia McNamara , Lynne McPherson, Richard Rose, Improving Outcomes For Children In Out-Of-Home Care: The role of therapeutic foster care, Child and Family Social Work, Vol 22 Issue 2, 2016, pp1064-1074

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cfs.12326

Margarita Frederico, Annette Jackson, Carlina black, Ric Pawsey, Allison Cox, Take Two- Implementing A Therapeutic Service for Children who have Experienced Abuse and Neglect: Beyond Evidence Informed Practice, Child Abuse Review, Volume 28, Issue 3, 2019, pp225-239

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/car.2563

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the lands on which this podcast was recorded. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to the Elders of other communities who may be listening.

When Norma Tracey AM started working in Sydney’s Children’s Hospital, the children were tied to their beds and their parents were allowed to visit for an hour in the evening. Norma was already drawing on the psychotherapeutic insights of John Bowlby and attempting to make changes to the way that the children were cared for. So she was excited and honoured to be given the opportunity to meet him and to discuss her plans to reform the whole hospital.

The discussion did not go as Norma had planned. Instead of encouraging her, he told her that the most that anyone could hope to achieve was to add one good brick into the edifice of life.

That was more than 50 years ago, and Norma has been applying her understanding of attachment theory ever since. She is currently the CEO of “Strong Mothers”, an organisation supporting marginalized women and their children. Now that she has been recognized with an Order of Australia, we can ask whether Bowlby was right, or did he underestimate her?

SHOWNOTES

A more detailed version of Norma’s story was published in Social Work Focus, Autumn 2021

Strong Mothers website

ATTACHMENT THEORY:

The original text:

Bowlby J., 1965 Child Care and the Growth of Love , London, Penguin Books

A general introduction:

The School of Life: Psychotherapy,& John Bowlby

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-great-psychoanalysts-john-bowlby/

How it applies to social work education and practice:

Harlow, E. 2021 Attachment theory: developments, debates and recent applications in social work, social care and education, Journal of Social Work Practice, 35:1, 79-91

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02650533.2019.1700493

ALSO MENTIONED BY NORMA:

Dr T. B. Brazelton

Phenylketonuria

Coeliac disease

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the lands on which this podcast was recorded. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to the Elders of other communities who may be listening.

When Ellen Beaumont was in the Young Matildas, she trained every minute that she wasn’t working, eating or sleeping. She put her education and career on hold, she missed family events and had no social life. All the while she knew that if she’d been a man she would have been well paid and sponsored, whereas Ellen was paid nothing to work this hard and represent her country. But for Ellen this was a life of privilege.

So when her sporting career had come to its end, how did Ellen make the transition out of this privilege? How did she end up in social work? And which aspects of her former life help her now as a social worker?

SHOWNOTES:

“Young Matildas Selected” SBS: ‘The World Game”, 30/04/2014

Wikipedia summary of 2004 FIFA U-19 Women’s World Championship

Crawford F, and McGowan L, Never Say Die: The Hundred Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football, New South Press, 2019

Beaumont E, Chester P, and Rideout H, ‘Navigating Ethical Challenges in Social Media: Social Work Student and Practitioner Perspectives’, Australian Social Work, Vol 70, 2017

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0312407X.2016.1274416?journalCode=rasw20&

‘You Can’t Ask That: Ex footballers, ABC iview 05/05/2021

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the lands on which this podcast was recorded. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to the Elders of other communities who may be listening.

The theme for National Reconciliation Week 2021 is ’More than a word, Reconciliation takes action’. It recognises that many of us are aware of the issues, but that is not enough. For Reconciliation, we need to take brave and impactful action.

To help us understand what that action might be, today we bring you a conversation with Ms Pat Turner AM. Her long and distinguished career in public and community service includes the renegotiation of the Closing the Gap initiative which resulted in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. For Pat, understanding the difference between the two is the key to understanding the brave and impactful action that Reconciliation requires. Pat is currently the CEO of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, and the Lead Convenor of the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Peak Organisations.

SHOWNOTES

Biography of Pat Turner AM (from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth Century Australia).

https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0239b.htm

Reconciliation Australia website

https://www.reconciliation.org.au/

AASW reconciliation page

https://www.aasw.asn.au/social-policy-advocacy/reconciliation

AASW’s 2004 Statement Of Apology

https://www.aasw.asn.au/document/item/618

AASW Media Release “Reconciliation: A time to move forward together.

https://www.aasw.asn.au/news-media/2021

2020 “Australia and the World Annual Lecture: The Long Cry of Indigenous Peoples to be heard – a defining moment in Australia”. Ms Pat Turner’s address to the National Press Club, 30 September, 2020.

https://www.npc.org.au/speaker/2020/722-pat-turner-am

Learn more about the Coalition of Peaks and the new National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

https://coalitionofpeaks.org.au/our-story/

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the lands on which this podcast was recorded. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to the Elders of other communities who may be listening.

From the day she graduated from Queens University Belfast, Mary Jo McVeigh OAM has maintained her absolute faith in her social work profession. She established Cara Care and Cara house where she has been working with children who have been recovering from trauma. For that work, she has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia.  For Mary Jo, our imagination is the storehouse of our wisdom, and she learns as much from her conversations with her ‘wee half-pinters’ as she does from her anti-oppressive social work textbooks.

SHOW NOTES

• https://www.carahouse.com.au
• Anam Cara Wikipedia entry:wikipedia.org/wiki/Anam_Cara
• John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World, Bantam Books, London,1997
• Convention on the Rights of the child: https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-text
• Mary Jo Mc Veigh, Are We there Yet? Children Australia, Vol 42,Issue 3 (Sep2017) https://search.proquest.com/openview/ee1ebf5b5b52549b0547c8777542186f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1586358
• Mary Jo’s most recent publication is a literature review of group work with children over the internet: Beyond the Dawn: A literature review on technology assisted therapeutic group work interventions for children and young people who experienced maltreatment, Social Work With Groups, March 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01609513.2021.1892564

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the land on which we meet.  We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to Elders of other communities who may be present.

As she was observing the consequences of the millennium drought on her rural community, Margaret Alston realised that there was hardly any discussion of the social consequences of the drought and almost nothing that examined the experiences of rural women. For Margaret, a focus on social justice means that you can see what is in other people’s blindspots, and this points the way to a new area of social work practice.

SHOW NOTES

Margaret’s career summary is on the University of Newcastle website: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/margaret-alston#career

Publications:

Rural Women and Leadership, Breaking through the Grass Ceiling, Harwood Publishers, UK, 2000.

Innovative Human Services Practice: Changing Landscapes, Pan Macmillan, 2009.

Social Work: Fields of Practice, Oxford University Press, (3rd edition) 2018 and

Research for Social Workers, Allen & Unwin (4th edition) 2018.

Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate, Springer Books, 2012

Women and Climate Change in Bangladesh Routledge 2015

Women, political struggles and gender equality in South Asia , Pan Macmillan, 2016

Ecological Social Work: Towards Sustainability , Pan Macmillan 2016

Social Science Research Ethics for a Globalizing World: Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives Routledge Advances in Research Methods, 2016

Social Work in Post-Disaster Sites, to be published by Routledge in 2018

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the land on which we meet. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to Elders of other communities who may be present.

Although she has two Ph D's, Dr Lorraine Muller considers herself only one among many knowledge holders. Her book proposes a process for decolonising our work in the human services and contains many messages for social workers. In this conversation, she describes why and how we can all commence this journey with hope and respect.

SHOW NOTES

Muller, L. A Theory for Indigenous Health and Human Service work: Connecting Indigenous Knowledge and Practice, Routledge (2014

AASW : Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Actions

AASW: Acknowledgement Statement Aboriginal and Torres Islander People

AASW Preparing for Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Social Work Practice in Australia: Working with Aboriginal and Torres Islander People

AASW Reconciliation week 2020 interview with Linda Ford

Archie Roach: Took the children away

Archie Roach’s’ Took the Children Away’: How one song galvanized a nation. The Guardian, November 12 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

The AASW respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners and on-going custodians of the land on which we meet. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, their ancestors and families, and to Elders of other communities who may be present.

Like many people we at the AASW watched the January 2020 bushfires with horror. In late January 2020, host Angela Scarfe contacted a member, Jo, who was living and working in one of the areas that was badly burnt, and they talked about what Jo thought her community needed. They have kept in touch throughout the year, and it is fair to say that they didn’t anticipate some of the events that 2020 had delivered.  This episode was recorded at the end of 2020, as the weather was warming and the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements had released its report including a section on Mental Health. It was a good time to check in with Jo about what she had noticed since they first spoke.

More information

• Social Work Focus Autumn / Winter 2020
• Phoenix Australia’s Guide for Treating PTSD; Chapter 9 deals with stress caused by Natural Disasters (NB the guidelines include material that relates to the needs of people who volunteered.)
• Report of the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements. Mental Health is discussed in chapter 15
• Solastalgia: Social Work’s Role in Addressing the Impacts of Climate Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrvJ2jouKoM&feature=youtu.be

When members of the public complain about homeless people in their local park to Kate Incerti she thanks them.  It’s her way of demonstrating what it means to take a human rights approach to homelessness.  In this episode she tells us what human rights mean for homelessness, how it connects with our colonial history and what COVID-19 has shown us about providing more housing. Leonard Cohen helps us make sense of it all.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Victorian Charter of Rights and Responsibilities
• AASW policy position on Housing and Homelessness
• The Scope of Social Work Practice: Social Work in Homelessness
• Social Work Focus Winter Spring 2018 containing several articles on social workers in housing and homelessness
• Council to Homeless persons
• Everybody’s home campaign
• The Right to Housing in Australia
• Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
• Leonard Cohen: There is a Crack in Everything, That’s How the Light Gets In

On Friday, 19 June, the government announced proposed changes to higher education funding.  AASW National President Christine Craik is interviewed about the implications of increasing fees for social work degrees with ABC Radio Adelaide Mornings host David Bevan. Hear from others in the field as well for a lively discussion.