Welcome to Social Work Stories, a podcast exploring social work practice through stories and critical reflection.
This podcast is recorded on Aboriginal country, lands which were never seeded.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians and cultural knowledge holders of these lands and pay our respects to Aboriginal elders past, present and emerging.
We offer a warm welcome to any Indigenous listeners who are part of our podcast community around the world.
If you have thoughts or feedback for our team or just want to find our whole back catalog of episodes, check out our website, socialworkstories.com.
But for now, on with the episode.
And welcome to the Social Work Stories podcast.
Hello everyone, I'm Liz Murphy and I'd like to welcome my wonderful friend, Dr.
Min Fox. Hello, Min. Hi Liz, hi everyone.
Happy new year. We're getting to the end of the year Liz.
Creeping there. It's so close.
Oh my God, limping. I feel like I'm limping to the finish line, Liz.
I bet you do. Oh, the end of the year is welcome.
I bet you do. Min, this is our last episode for the year.
It is. The last, our very last one.
And we're going to take, I'm so excited, we're going to take a trip down memory lane.
Yes. This is the episode of Reminiscing for me.
I've gone right back to episode number one, our very, very, very first one together, my friend.
You know, we've been doing this podcast for what feels like a really long time now Liz.
It's like three or four years, yeah?
Well, this episode was recorded on the 17th of September, 2018.
So over three years. Over three years.
Over three years. Over three years.
And what a little adventure it's been, hey?
This little side project that we started off doing has really become something, huh?
Yeah. Just an excuse for you and I to talk about all things social work.
And look what it's developed into.
A wonderful project that we get to share with so many friends and colleagues.
And of course, my parents.
Of course. And just the community around the world, right?
Getting to be in touch with so many social workers and social work students all the time.
I love every review list.
I love every comment. I love every email.
It's just amazing to hear from everyone.
So near so far, doesn't matter where they are.
It's so great. It has been one of the things that you and I have talked about that has really kept us going over the course of the year because it has been challenging sometimes to, on top of everything else that's going on in our lives to crank out an episode.
But the connection that we have through our community of listeners and fellow social workers just makes it so much easier.
It's like it motivates me to do it when I read reviews.
And listen to our social work stories.
Yeah. I agree completely.
It kind of keeps your boy doesn't it keeps you up there because it has really been a hard year.
Like it's been a hard year for us.
It's been a hard year for all of our colleagues, right?
Just out there on the ground working with the tough impacts of 2020 and 2021 every day.
Like I think everyone just needs a rest now, hey?
Totally. Let's take a breath.
Totally. I think my sense from the social workers in the hospital that I work in is they're just barely creeping to having a break.
Having a break. There is a lot of enthusiastic holiday form filling in a few weeks ago.
Yeah. I think it's one of those delightful forms that people like filling in the Lee form.
Well, they're all there.
There's a pile of Lee forms and it's all been sorted.
So everyone knows that they're having a break over the first period.
That's a great period. Who knows what's going to happen in 2022.
So I want to encourage all our social work community to take this time to just have a breath, have a rest.
We know that it's not going to be perhaps the type of holiday that you have had years ago.
Yeah. Many of us can't get to see our families and it's tough.
But I'm hopeful that you at least get to have a time to restore a replenish.
Yeah, I love that list. So this next episode, or the very first episode, when I listened to it this afternoon, it reminded me of a couple of things.
Can I share them with you?
Yeah, of course. So I'll remind you, this was the episode with the social worker that we coined the term a master.
You and I call masters. Masters are the people who have been working in their field with passion, with compassion, with compassion who stretch the edges of their learning continually, still have fire in the belly like they did when they first started.
And this is one of them. So this is an ICU social worker that I've worked with, you know.
And who talks about an on-call that she receives for a three-year-old who dies as a result of adrowning.
Okay. That's right. And so, yeah, look, it is heavy going to listen to it for those of you who haven't.
But the role of the social worker behind the screen, the stuff that most people never ever get to see is revealed in this episode.
And we love that, don't we, Mim?
Yeah. And the point of phrase, that magic behind the curtain, that's it, all the thinking that goes on behind all the interventions and all the activity.
I love it. Yeah. You know what, Mim?
We actually said that we wanted to have another episode with this particular social worker.
And I think one of the things that we thought of is to get her to articulate how she languages some of these conversations, these really brave conversations that she has day in day out.
And I've made a commitment to touch base with her in 2022 to listen to what have been some of the conversations she's had over the past year, because I know that in her ICU, they worked with a number of COVID patients and had to work, I guess, in quite different ways with the families of these patients.
Yeah. And I'm really curious about how she did that and what was some of, again, some of the conversations and what they sounded like.
Yeah. Okay. I think that's fantastic, Liz.
I love that we made that, we said that we wanted to do that in our first ever episode.
And over three years later, we still haven't.
So I'm really pleased that you've made that commitment for 2022 to do that.
And listeners, we make that commitment to you, that we will revisit this social worker.
And hear more about how she really languages those conversations and thinks through her interactions with the families and the loved ones in the intensive care unit.
I think that's really, you know, that was an idea three years ago, Liz.
But actually, how pertinent is that now given how many, I mean, the world knows so much more about how an intensive care unit works and functions than it did when we started this podcast, right?
Like everyone now feels like they understand the inner workings of an intensive care unit.
Thank you, COVID-19. Yes.
You know what? Up to a point.
I think, again, if I listen to mainstream media talk about hospitalizations, the often the focus will be on the medical staff and the nursing staff and look rightly so to up to a point.
But I don't know about you, but I've never heard anyone actually say, I'm mainstream media, what would we have done with that, our social workers.
So that's our role. That's true.
That's true. You were not.
That's the gap we feel. I love it.
Yes. Hey, listen, the other funny thing that I noted on this episode was that Justin was our student at the time.
Yay! When Justin was all young and little.
That's right. And he's actually, you can hear him interview these social workers.
So it's really nice. That's great.
So, listen, as you will be familiar with Justin's desk, our producer.
And he did start with us as a student on the podcast way back when we launched this thing.
So that's great. That's a bit of a throwback, isn't it?
Yes, I think so. I'm sure he'll have a chuckle.
And it reminds me of how many wonderful students we've had since Justin.
Yes. Yes. We've now had eight students in total.
Liz, haven't we? We currently have two students with us, Rommie and Rommie and Deep.
And they've been doing an amazing job behind the scenes on the podcast in the last few months.
But that's, yeah. We're now at eight students in total.
It's always great to have that interaction with them and get them involved, right?
Yes. In fact, I think Rommie and Rommie and Deep are going to do a recording for us.
So that's another thing to look forward to in 2022.
To share the stories of our two wonderful students.
Actually, the more I think about it, 2022 is going to be a big year for the podcast, man.
It is. We've got a lot of things planned and, you know, a lot of different projects on the run.
So it's going to be, I think we're coming into a different sort of year next year.
Liz, I'm feeling hopeful.
I'm hopeful. Now, there's a word that I love.
Great. Great. And, I guess I'd like to say it's been an absolute pleasure working with you again this year.
And I know. You've worked so hard, my friend.
So I really hope you enjoy.
It's just some time off and some rest.
And you as well, Liz, I love doing this podcast with you.
Love doing everything.
So it's great. Thank you for the year.
It's been awesome. Well, of course, next year I'm taking nine months off from my clinical work.
And I'm not leaving my podcast buddies, of course.
But I'll take every one.
Don't worry, everyone.
Nine months. I'm calling it the soul and psychic pregnancy.
I love it. So it's the longest amount of time I've ever taken off from work and I'm not producing a human.
So, you know, this is hopefully a time just to kind of reflect, do some other projects.
And so 2022 is going to be a different shape for me too.
I love that so much. Well, listeners, enjoy this episode.
So go back and listen to our first recording now.
And we'll see you in 2022.
Thanks, everyone. Take care.
Bye, everyone. Bye, meme.
Welcome to the Social Work Stories podcast.
This is a podcast about the everyday experience of being a social worker.
We're with Memman Lears and we're looking forward to sharing some stories with you.
Welcome to the Social Work Stories podcast.
We're really pleased you've joined us for our first episode, which is our pilot episode.
My name is Mem Fox. And I'm your host along with the wonderful Liz Murphy.
By thank you, Mem Fox. It's lovely to be here.
I'm very excited to be joining you on yet another adventure.
It is very exciting to finally be here having these conversations, Liz.
And I think for our listeners, we should maybe let them know a little bit about what we're doing and why we're doing it.
Sure. So this podcast is aimed at understanding the everyday experience of the social work practitioner.
You and I have had a lot of conversations, Liz, over the years about what it means to be a social worker in the everyday.
Would you say? I think so.
I think so. And often the unsung heroes of the world, really, in my mind, the practitioner.
We often don't get to hear them and their stories.
That's right. It's like I often think of the magic behind the curtain.
The invisible magician who's standing there, making it all happen.
And yet in times of trauma, you can guarantee that a family would never even be able to remember that they saw a social worker.
So true. Very true. So I think it's those stories that's really important to get out there.
But also the inner workings of the social worker, how they struggle with their everyday dilemmas, with how to put their ethics, moral skills into practice, and why they do what they do.
It's not a busy job in that one.
No, it's not at all. God knows we don't do it for the pay either.
Well, that's right. But I think I really like that idea of the person in the role and understanding, like you say, their motivation, but who they are, who they are.
And I also want to see what they're like when the tables turned on them.
But when we actually ask them curious questions about why they do what they do and unpack it more, that's what I'm really interested about.
Yeah, it's sometimes hard to get social workers to be honest.
On that way. They really are.
And they get a bit protective of the professional self.
And I think one of the things we've talked about wanting to do on this podcast is give social workers some anonymity to actually give them the freedom to be able to say, well, actually, this is what I was really thinking about in that moment.
This is what I was looking for.
This is where my priorities lay.
Or these are the struggles I was having.
I think you're right. I think that whole idea, and I don't know who came up with that one, but to actually encourage them to be anonymous in it, was a stroke of genius.
And I think it will free up a lot of the people that we speak with.
I think so too. Yeah, so that they can be more candid?
Yeah. So that's really important because social workers are constrained every day.
I mean, the organisations, they're working with the laws and policies they're working within, the rules, professional rules around how we are with our clients, how we are with each other.
I think really it's actually sometimes so restrictive that social workers can be a bit scared to be honest.
True. And then I think the title, I like that idea of stories coming into the title of podcasts because we swim in stories every day of our lives.
And sometimes I know I've gone home and I've thought, oh my God, that is one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard.
And I will be the only person in the world that's ever heard that.
And so everyone must feel that as a social worker, right?
And so this is an opportunity for them to share with others, special stories.
And I know you're really keen or we're really keen for social students to be our audience.
Yes. And my mum and dad, of course.
But I'm in my wildest dreams, I think it could also be really interesting for the non-social work person because some of these stories, I think, you know, you would probably hear people say, oh, it can't be right.
Yes, it can't be right. You'd think people might think we dramatise the stories.
You know, we dreamed them up somehow and made them more interesting or more tragic.
But actually, that's the real everyday experience of social work because we get to the nitty-gritty with people.
We see them at their most vulnerable, at their most distressing.
And I'm always wondering, how and why do we do that?
Like it's such an odd choice.
But what's, I think one of the things with this podcast, what we're hoping to do is a bit of a combination of ways of delving into these stories.
So one of the ways is that Liz, you and I are going to sit here and really debate and analyse what is happening around us, what we're seeing, what we've learnt from our experiences, situations that we've had that have posed questions or resonated.
But what we're also going to do is something we like to call case study walks, where we're going to interview social workers in their practice, in the setting, as they're approaching a case or thinking through a case.
And we're going to ask them some questions about their process, get them to reflect and analyse on the work that they're doing.
After that, you and I are going to come back to the listeners and do a real debrief, really get to the heart of why that was meaningful for us, what we might have learnt from that or what others might have learnt.
And that's the bit I'm really looking forward to.
That's what I'm going to do.
Me too. And I'm really excited about our first interview, actually.
I am as well, actually, because both you and I have worked in acute hospital settings with both Dunham Call, so we've both been there in the middle of the night with families in distress.
We do need to do a little bit of a disclaimer, I think, before we do this, because we're about to hear from an ICU social worker who has been in a situation with a child death.
And if that's a difficult thing for our listeners to hear, I think they probably need to know up front that that's the story they're going to go into, so please take care listeners.
We wouldn't be social workers if we didn't say that, Liz.
No, that's right. And onto the person in the role, I've had the privilege of knowing this person for many, many years, and she's what I call a master.
She'd hate me saying this.
As all social workers wore through that, it's absolutely true.
And she completely downplays her skills at times, but she's a master.
And I'd like for us to spend more time with her at another time, really drilling down on some of the courageous conversations that she carries out day in, day out.
And actually, he heard language these conversations in a way that I know our students and you grad people like myself, will be actually writing down quotes that roll out of her mouth incredibly easily.
And I see that you and I will probably want to highlight some of those points in a later interview.
I think that would be great.
And that's the beautiful thing actually about doing this podcast is that we can have a social worker giving an example of the work they do, but then we've also got the forum and the setting to be able to go into depth with them at a later point, which is great.
One of the things you've just said is about social work students.
And I do want to say that one of the big things we want to do with this podcast is make it an arm for social work education.
We want students to be able to listen to the stories that get told and be able to imagine themselves in that moment and be able to ask the questions that they would want to ask of the social worker in the moment, not later on, not after it's been done and dusted, but in that moment.
So to that end, we're recruiting social work students to work with us on the podcast and to undertake the case studies.
And today we wanted to really thank Justin, one of our social work students who's on placement with us at the moment.
As we all know, social work students do it rough on placement, but Justin had the fantastic opportunity to meet with this social worker and have this discussion.
And we're going to come back to you after the case study walk and have a bit of a debrief and an analysis.
We'd like to introduce our first anonymous social worker to you.
Let's see what she has to say.
Has there been any big story that's really impacted the way that you've worked?
So I've got two cases, one was with a little three-year-old boy who I was on call that night and came into the emergency department, the family we're having an Australia day party.
And he had unfortunately slipped into the pool and had drowned.
And it was just terrible, absolutely terrible.
They brought him into the emergency department in another large hospital I was working at.
And they were trying to assassitate him.
And just the overwhelming grief of the parents was just something that I think always sticks with you.
And just really having to just work out what my role was in that.
And obviously the role was caring for the parents, supporting them through watching the resuscitation, helping to explain what they were doing while the doctors were trying to resuscitate him.
And just when the doctors pronounced him dead, it was just truly awful.
But then the baton is handed over to you.
So everyone else steps away and then it's handed over to social workers to support the family and also discuss all the coronal things as well.
So there was a coronal inquiry in this instance as well, of course.
I guess that sounds like in that moment really everyone else is doing their role but you're able to be there for that family and for those parents and walk them through probably the worst night of their life.
And I guess just be a presence for them, somebody that was there to kind of look after them emotionally and practically and meet their needs.
It's incredible. And also that very strong advocacy role because the police turned up and really supporting the parents through explaining that the process again of how he ended up in the swimming pool and just there, you know, they had asked other people to watch him and other people hadn't watched him.
And then someone had left the gate open and they're guilt around what if we hadn't had that party, he wouldn't have died.
And I just always remember his mum saying I couldn't even get him to preschool, he was starting preschool next week.
And so I think supporting a family through that and helping them to just sort of like be with him and to advocate that they needed more time to spend with him.
Because the police are usually very empathetic but they also had a role to get on with and they wanted him to be transferred over to the coroners and just sort of having to advocate that they needed to spend time with him.
And then communicating with the colleagues over at the coroner's court so they could facilitate hand prints and lots of hair.
You know, it's one of those cases because I have a nephew who was exactly the same age at that time.
So you are always mindful of what families go through when you've sort of like got little kids around of similar age and how, what do you do to sort of disassociate from that?
It is quite a bit of transference.
So me and what a poignant story.
I know. Oh, it took me back to emergency work and how difficult it is when a child comes in who dies.
And I like I just, I see her in that room with that family.
She's standing there with the parents who must be just absolutely traumatized and God knows what they were doing.
But she would have physically been there in prison and maybe even holding them and explaining everything that was going on at the time that their baby was being worked on on that table.
But for me, the moment would have been when they actually declared that baby has died.
And so there's that silence and then she says and then the baton gets passed over.
And this is where her work really begins.
Yeah. In some regards, like you know what I mean, like she would have been standing there with them, bearing witness to what Justin said would have been the worst moment of their life.
Absolutely. Ever. And she's got to sit with that with them.
The rest of the team get to walk away.
I know it really is a passing of the baton.
Isn't it? Yeah. You're turned now, so I shall work on it.
You've been part of the recess.
But now you're also. You're also part of it.
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
And that's the word that most of that team would never even see.
No. Don't you reckon? I remember the first time it happened to me.
I just remember saying they're going, what?
What? What? I'm here and for all that, what do you have to do?
I'm here. Yes. Yeah. It's true.
And but it's such important work that I know would have been done there.
Absolutely. With them.
So there was that moment for me just visualising that.
And then the other moment was that image of this social worker carving out space for those parents to have more time with their baby.
I remember she said, I had to actually, the police had to take the child to the coroners.
Now she knew that she had to carve out a bit more time for that mother and father.
Because this is probably going to be the last time that they ever see their baby without having had a post-mortem.
So the baby is going to look different.
The baby will look different.
And it's only the social worker that has that insight actually to what's coming for this family.
Yes. The family have no idea.
Yes. And having to remind the police who of course would have been incredibly sensitive to the idea of, well, you know, a child's died.
Yes. Who's not moved by that.
But the police aren't thinking all those steps ahead.
True. And the social worker has to be.
Yes. The social worker is the only one who knows the journey that's coming.
Even if the police have seen it in different ways, they have deadlines.
They have different priorities in that moment.
Yeah. But the social worker's priority is the wellbeing of that mother and father.
And you're so right about that seeing it in a different way.
She would have been looking down the barrel of those that husband and wife or partners, their grief process.
Yes. That's the other thing that would be going through a head right.
You know, I need to actually do certain things so that this grief is not going to be further complicated.
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
And that's without being too much of a teacher in the moment, that's actually where the theory comes into play, right?
Yes. But the social worker is operationalising what they know about grief and loss.
Yes. And so it's playing out in a sense where they're actually advocating, but they're actually opening the door for a future emotional journey that these people are going to be on.
It's actually quite powerful work that they're doing just in that moment of decision-making.
I loved what you just said is about physically holding them.
And what it made me think was that one of the taboos we still have in social workers of profession is around physical touch.
And students are always asking, when is it okay to touch your clients?
Is it never okay? Is it sometimes okay?
What if they reach and touch me?
What if they do this? What if they do that?
It's always that point of argument or conflict.
And often it ends up being, well, maybe if the social workers are touchy-filly person, maybe they touch the person.
Or if you don't touch clients as a social worker, it's because you're not a touchy-filly person.
But actually what you've said just then is that there are moments when you need to physically hold people.
And actually go beyond whether, I think what I'm trying to say is in that moment, it's not about you as the social worker, actually.
It's about what that person in front of you needs.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, what about you?
What were the points in that story that stood out for you?
I loved what she said about her nephew and how it made it so much more poignant for her because she was going through a parallel experience.
She had a nephew of the similar age and she, it transported her to what would have happened if it were him who had actually gone through the gate and into the swimming pool in that moment.
It threw me straight back to my first ever stillborn case in hospital in an emergency department where I was in my early 20s, my first friend was pregnant.
That moment where you don't know lots of people who are pregnant, but your first friend has become pregnant.
There I am in the emergency department and it's a stillborn case.
And I remember after it was all over calling my friend and saying, how can you do this?
How can you possibly think that you're going to have a baby?
Don't you know that the baby could die?
Now, I know how inappropriate and probably upsetting it was for my friend, but she took it on the chin and said to me, of course I know.
Of course I struggle with that.
But how can I not be pregnant and have a baby?
But these are the things I think that happen with us as social workers.
That actually we're dealing with everyday life experiences of people.
It's the same every day life experiences that we're going to have ourselves.
It doesn't stop us being human in the moment, but it does mean we have to sit with it and we have to process it in a different way.
It makes it that much more meaningful for us, I think.
Yeah. Well said. Well, that was an amazing case study to sit with.
And I really want to thank Justin for doing that case study walk with the social worker.
It's really good to hear the curious questions that social work students ask.
It's the questions that I think we often want to ask as practitioners, but don't of each other.
So that was really good.
But I think one of the realities about this podcast is as well is that we are going to have to debrief case studies that we hear that are a bit sad sometimes.
Sure. That cast be a bit thoughtful.
And the reality of social workers is that we have to do exactly what every social worker out there does.
Pull your socks up and get on with it.
Yes, Mim. Let's pull our socks up and get on with it.
So in that vein, I think we should finish our podcast.
Our inaugural first episode of the social work stories podcast.
We'd like to really thank our producer Ben Joseph for doing such a stellar job with putting this together.
And to Justin, our social work student who did our first case study walk.
And thank you, you Liz and thank you, you Mim.
And listen, isn't this episode going somewhere next week?
It is. This episode is going to be launched at the ANSWAS symposium in Adelaide next week.
The Australian New Zealand Social Work Education and Research Symposium.
And the theme for that symposium is disrupting the narrative.
And in a way, I think that's really important for a theme for us to be launching our podcast app.
I think we're disrupting some secrets, some taboos, some given expectations around social work.
And I hope to see lots more of it.
Oh, me too. Yeah, I'll be back.
Will you be back? I'll definitely be back.
This is a very exciting, comfortable space for us because we love chatting to each other.
We do indeed. All right.
Thank you everyone for this next week.
Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Social Work Stories podcast.
All of the stories we share are de-identified to respect and protect the people involved.
We create this podcast because we're passionate about building the global social work community and strengthening our practice in a matter of the context.
If you want to help us grow the podcast tribe and continue the work that we do, we would love it if you can subscribe or follow the podcast in your favorite podcast app.
That way you'll be sure to get every episode as soon as it's released.
While you're in your podcast app, if you can leave us a five-star rating and a review, it would mean so much to us.
You can connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, where you can share our posts with your friends to help spread the word.
And you can always find us at our home on the web, socialworkstories.com.
The Social Work Stories podcast is made by Justin Stesch, Liz Murphy and Dr.
Memphox. Thanks so much for listening.
