Hello everyone, welcome to the Social Work Stories podcast.

It is great to be here back with you.

I am Nim Sox and I am here as always with my friend and colleague Liz Murphy.

Hi Liz. Hi Nim. Hello everyone.

So good to be here today Liz because today we have a special guest.

We are so excited to have with us Mith Maipul and if we might actually get you to introduce yourself to the listeners.

Sure. So, Professor of Social Work at the University of New England which is in regional New South Wales, Australia.

Fantastic. We invited Mith to come on today listeners because today is a special theme episode where we are talking about school social work.

And this was as a result of a school social worker sending us a recording and we're aware Mith that this is an area of passion for you and we thought that would be a great way for us to learn more about this emerging part of the profession and maybe even in entire so few of our listeners to consider this as a possibility in the future.

Yeah, absolutely. So it's emerging in Australia definitely as a new area of practice but is really common place particularly in North America to have social workers in schools.

In Australia there are some social workers in schools more commonly found in Victoria for example, than say in New South Wales where I'm located.

But it's interesting because the reason that I'm really passionate about it is that when I started social work I wanted to be a social worker in a school and I didn't do my homework that well and Google didn't exist then and I didn't know it didn't exist so I went often did social work and then found I couldn't get a job in a school.

I'm not a professor anymore.

I'm a professor. I'm a professor.

So, you know, a couple of decades later.

Here we are with this opportunity to develop social work in schools and at UNE we've been working on it for about the last 10 years and it's yeah it's a really exciting initiative and seeing the students that we place in schools and the sorts of innovation and creativity used just yeah keeps that kind of passion going so it's really exciting to join you today to talk about it.

That's so awesome. Miff, can I ask what might be just a bit of a basic question to you?

Is school social work the same thing as school counselling?

Like for there might be listeners out there who are thinking why aren't we calling it school counselling?

Yeah. So what do we mean when we say school social work?

Great question, Mim. So the school counsellors in New South Wales, traditionally school and this is common but not the same but I'll just talk it.

I'll try and give state specific to New South Wales as an example because everybody will have slightly different experiences.

In New South Wales the school counsellor would have a psychology background and an education background so it might be that they did teacher education first and then psychology or vice versa and primarily their roles have been around traditionally I should say their roles have been around doing some psyched testing with kids, some counselling when there's particularly grief and loss issues or attendance issues or if a teacher might refer to the school counsellor for a particular classroom issue.

They're often also servicing a number of schools so a school might only have a school counsellor onsite a day or two a week if they're lucky, maybe less depending whether they're metro or rural or regional and the number of students at the school.

So it's quite a defined skill set and a defined area of practice but also a really limited one so it does mean that there's a long time between when a student might be experiencing issues and they might say a school counsellor and often the ones that the areas that are prioritised is the psyched ed testing rather than the more broadest psychosocial issues that we know are part of young people's lives and so that's the school counsellor type role.

There's also more recently been SSO positions which are school support officers so they can be filled by social workers and we've been working with the Department of Education around the PD for that position description which is fantastic but also they can be a number of different professional groups or people with experience in working with young people who may have TAFE qualifications for example and non-university qualifications.

There's also there was a chaplain in schools programme so that's now been broadened out and in New South Wales again has been sort of morphed into the SSO roles.

So there are other roles like this.

One thing that we know is that there's not access to services for young people like there is so much unmet demand and schools are like the perfect location right kids mostly turn up there every day from when they're four or five years old through to when they're 18 years old and so it's a captive audience right service delivery so that's really where expanding from where the school councillor role is quite traditional and it's focused into a broader way of thinking about support within the school setting.

So Miff are you saying that part of the role of social work coming into the schools can be around safe face-to-face work with the students but in addition to or instead of can be community building, community development models are being used as well?

Yeah definitely and one of the things that we've found like over you know the decade that we've been really working closely with schools and placing students in schools is the variety of the sorts of work that that ends up being done and it's really different for each school community and the broader community in which that school sits and so there's definitely one-on-one work being done absolutely, small group work, year group work, a lot of work done with teachers actually around the sorts of psychosocial issues that young people are experiencing because they obviously can see it from their classroom work but don't have that broader you know understanding of human development of the sorts of contemporary issues that are being dealt with in terms of mental health that things that teachers aren't trained in when they're doing their teacher training so that's really interesting work with parents and then definitely with community and service providers referral pathways all of the sorts of things that you would see in social work practice in lots of different areas as well but happening located in the school and addressing the sorts of priority issues that are in the school body at that time when when you know those students are there and and now that we've got schools where we've had students sort of you know term after term after term and year after year really developing up a much deeper practice space and then obviously in a new school starting out really just educating the school community about what social work is as a starting point.

I want to ask you if a couple of questions are coming to me.

The first question is I guess what some of the exciting things that you're seeing students doing in the school social work setting are there's so many exciting things.

I think one of the things from an education point of view that I really admire in students that take on these roles because it can be quite confronting.

They're going into if it's a school where there hasn't been a social worker before they're going into like a brand new environment and it's really about educating the school community about what social work is and I think that's quite a hard gig for social work students like if they're on their first placement say a third year student you know really being able to clearly articulate what is a social worker what can social work offer to the school community when they're relatively isolated they're usually within the wellbeing team so the wellbeing team at most schools are made up of school counsellor often learning support officers and teacher at there's usually a deputy principal or somebody that's responsible for wellbeing in the school community but even those people might not really know what social work is about so there's a lot of education that they have to do an advocacy about what their role will be and so that really excites me because I think it's a really hard task for students to do that so as a baseline I find that really exciting the other things that I think have been really exciting to watch over time have been responses to issues in the community that are affecting that student body so obviously COVID you know a global challenge for schools but also in Australia we've seen so many natural disasters so you know being in a school when there's a flood happening and there has to be a quick response or bushfires we've had students in schools where deaths have occurred where you know big events have happened that have really affected the school community and so really moving into that crisis response and and leveraging the relationships that they already have with the student body and helping support move to the school having to work in a different way in a response to one of these situations has also been really exciting to see students again with that creativity and you know problem solving in that moment and and working out who they are then as a social worker as a professional and the roles they can play within that broader group when those things are happening.

What I love about all of that is that students really sit with that challenge all the time coming into placement right and about defining their identity to others.

Let's hold that COVID idea and the kind of more thinking about the different ways that school social work can look and let's listen to our story from our social worker and maybe just see whether that really sits with these ideas that we're talking about and what's the potential for school social worker yes yeah all right let's listen now school social worker king with adolescence and their families and carers the role is a very new one it's only been around for about two years so when I started at the school they had never had a social worker there before so initially there was a lot of confusion around the role of a school social worker you know what I do how I can help the students as you know as well as their families and a lot of my my early work was a lot about like advocacy for as part of a social worker in a school and what value social work can bring amongst a setting you know of primarily teachers my role involves doing individual counseling with adolescence with mental health difficulties and and family difficulties many of the young people have experienced trauma a lot of them have an experience of of migrating to to Australia so they have trauma from their country of origin there's other issues such as you know exposure to family violence previous child protection involvement parents own mental health difficulties so it is it is a really challenging space and no one day is the same as the one before as well as doing the individual counseling I also facilitate small groups of adolescence with similar presenting issues such as and and guard aggression poor school attendance also I promote mental health awareness around the school so amongst this amongst the teaching staff and office administration staff amongst the students as well as their families and carers I've also found since starting as a school social worker is that there is a lack of mental health literacy amongst both the teaching staff but also the parent care community so a lot of my you know my work is really promoting access to good mental health services whether it's through myself at the school or an external service I remember one student that was referred to me because she had very poor school attendance and this young person is 13 years old and has a traumatic background her father's incarcerated and she's been raised by her single mother and then there's three younger siblings in the home as well so this young person hadn't regularly attended school since 2021 and her mum was very concerned about her future and what would become of her if she wasn't able to complete her schooling upon speaking to the mother I soon realized her school attendance you know wasn't actually the main concern the main concern was this young person's mental health difficulties so this young person wasn't getting out of bed other than to shower and eat and then going straight back to her bedroom she wasn't going out to to see her friends she wasn't going out with her family and to other family event so she presented as very you're very flat very depressed and didn't seem to have any new goals for the future around education or what she wanted to do in her life this young person was also very resistant to Lincoln with any mental health services sort of external to the school a lot of my initial work was with mum over the phone and it was really just checking up on this young person how she's going and have there been any sort of significant you know improvements or deteriorations of her mental health and the current situation I did try and engage the young person as well while she wasn't attending school but I wasn't able to get in contact with her as this young person still wasn't coming to school still wasn't linked in with any external mental health services I felt that it was really important to have this regular contact with mum and mum really you know became an amazing advocate for her daughter and an advocate around her having an access to education and attending school again but also advocating for her to be receiving some sort of mental health treatment as well what I did with this young person is I had organised a support meeting with their mother the young person the year coordinator and myself the year coordinator wasn't actually aware of this young person prior to to me contacting her to arrange this support meeting as the well-being referral had been submitted by mum herself and I was the one that had the direct contact with mum not the year coordinator so with the year coordinator the young person and mum we developed a support plan which just looks like a return to school plan so the young person was able to identify what she felt most difficult about returning to school and she had said some of their barriers included feeling very anxious at being amongst her peers because she had experienced previous bullying and so she was very worried about returning to the classes where these bullies were present she was also worried about returning to school five days a week when she hadn't been there regularly for over a year so I had advocated to the year coordinator to allow this young person to return to school just on a part-time basis a few short days per week initially just gradually expose her back to school and then sort of review this plan at the end of every week and then if anything in the plan wasn't working then I could then adjust that along with the young person directly so this young person returned to school on this modified timetable as well as they're having regular sessions with with myself in there as well to address some her mental health difficulties the young person is also very receptive to being in a small group so that something I'll look into as well I'm thinking to create a new group next term for students with with mental health difficulties and school attendance issues so that's something I've I've still got to design as well and I've got quite a few students that sort of fit that category that I can put in this group together now because my role working in schools is still a very new one there was a lack of understanding among school leadership around the importance of supervision when I started in the role as I said I was ever been the only social worker at at the school so there was there was no other social worker there to provide me with the supervision that I require I've spoken to a lot of other staff that work in schools and they've had a similar experience to myself in that supervision is not provided at all at the school and many of them have to fund their own external supervision which comes out of significant financial burden because school social workers aren't very highly paid compared to some social workers in some other industries so I was quite shocked when I started working in a school and saw that supervision was not guaranteed in the role another social worker colleague and I who works at a nearby school we both decided to do something about this this issue so we started a peer supervision group and we didn't just have social workers in the group because we acknowledge that we have a lot of allied health colleagues working in school well-being that also don't have access to supervision so in our group we opened that up to social workers counselors psychologists youth workers art therapists otis and any other similar related profession as long as they're not a teacher so we will really clear that we only wanted school well-being allied health staff so then we can have that supportive environment amongst colleagues and create new connections and that has now been running for just over a year and it has been really really successful and I'm finding that I feel a lot more supported in my workplace because I'm able to have a reflective space to talk about cases such as this one of this adolescent female and it's really nice to hear from colleagues I've got a confession to make me if I was like you I wanted to work in schools too and of course my time is it's gone now it's it's another grief I'll have to carry professionally but me if my first question to you is what was your reaction to listening to this story is it reflective of the work that you're seeing in schools done by social workers yeah definitely look I think one of the areas that schools have really had to challenge be challenged by or are challenged with is about engagement and disengagement and what were those balance points are between when a kid's really engaged and the disengaging and in the ways in which reengagement can occur and obviously there's some flexibility from the school point of view but there's always an underlying well-being issue for that student and I think that's what was reflective in that particular case study and I also wonder when when it was recorded too because there's there is obviously a lot of learning over the last two years during the pandemic around engagement of kids so mainstream engagement going from face to face to online but also for that that group of children and young people who are disengaging from education and from mainstream schooling and the impact of COVID on though that group and then the group of kids and families but where homeschooling was really challenging for a variety of whether it's geographical you know an internet and all of those sorts of issues whether it's cultural and safety in the home so there's so many issues that were kind of blown apart by COVID that are now different but also I guess magnified that were there before and now we really see them and and there's new challenges because of that as well so do you think that actually the pandemic helped through a spotlight or bring forth this push for school social work in Australia now given that it was on as popular here as it was in the States I definitely yeah I definitely think that the kind of more hands-on deck of having social workers in schools at the time of the pandemic and during the pandemic we kept placing students into social work roles and we now have like quite a lot of our graduates in social work positions in schools that those more hands-on deck were really useful we've just had a bachelor of social work on a student finish her thesis looking at school social work during the pandemic and and what what did those social workers do during that time and how did they respond and how did they feel about their response and it is around these issues around engagement we had some students in rural schools who were literally driving you know the pat learning packages out to families and then being there on the doorstep obviously physically distanced but being able to talk through you know what other things were going on for them and it was you know a bit of a lifeline for those families and so I think it it definitely has allowed for us to see the value in having somebody in the school system whose only job is to look at the psychosocial issues of their children and young people rather than focused on the next part of the education journey and what we see in lots of the schools where we've had a longer contact is that that movement of children and young people towards the social worker in just a chat and that kind of opens up the conversation because they know it's a safe space for that rather than teachers who do by the by their very role have another agenda around meeting the curriculum requirements and and moving kids through that way not to diminish their care and respect for the children and young people clearly their students are their priority but their focus is on education so I think COVID and like in so many industries it has highlighted where the gaps are and how we might start to work towards filling some of those gaps.

Another happy accident in some regards that has been brought on by COVID.

Myth as you were talking I couldn't help but see parallels that have occurred in my career trajectory when I was in health so 35 years ago I feel like there's some similarities of social workers in the health space and having to really forge our role within hospitals community health and it does take time that now we can actually see that we're one of the biggest allied health professions in health but I think one of the things that I'm really curious about is so we're in social workers being placed in a school community that hasn't really I guess have a catered for social work needs.

I'm really curious about the support and the supervision needs that are provided for social workers in that area.

Yeah it's such a great question and because we started this project as students going into schools right so they so their needs for supervision obviously there's accreditation requirements around the need for supervision but the the way in which that happens when there isn't already so well there wasn't social workers in those schools so obviously we had task supervisors and external field educators to support those students but those relationships have been what's been most important and we have also I've supervised an honours student and sorry master's student looking at those supervision needs because it's so important it's so different in a new setting and what we what that particular student found really was about those relationships like if the relationships start to break down between the university the academically is on the external field educator the task supervisor that the student what would not be well supported and it's it seems I mean it's it's obvious because that happens in many situations but because the student then is in a little bit of free fall because there's not the other supports around them there's not a broader community that understand you know what the social worker doing there and and there's obviously always those power differentials as well so certainly the the support needs are are great but what we've found in the schools where we've been placing for a while and and often as I said now we've those students have been employed into roles and we have now students that have been there long enough that they're now supervising students the social work students in those schools so that lovely trajectory is starting to really you know pay off I guess over time what we've found is that now you know unexpected absences don't make such a big difference so in the early days if somebody say the task supervisor was a way the student would be you know quite isolated those issues aren't evident anymore because the the role is integrated into the whole school community and so I think more specifically though at an individual level for the role to be really well understood and the student to be well supported it's very much about the orientation to the school and then the student orienting social work back into the school community and understanding the sorts of roles that they can play and what we've found is that the wellbeing teachers are really important there because they already have their finger on the pulse of you know which year group is a little bit tricky or you know which group of girls might be a bit clicky or where might there be you know a bit of bullying starting to really emerge as an issue and so the it allows for that wellbeing teacher to really well support the student as they're exploring what's going on there before they launch into you know thinking about how they might address it the other thing that has helped support students over time is that these placements the students that have done these placements have developed the most amazing rich group of resources that then are fed onto the next group of students so they're not going in cold so much and that's really supportive because it gives them a suite of resources to choose from and to think about does this work in this school community with this you know cultural group of students or geographic location that I find myself in we do also think about the student who's going into these placements and they're who they are and their strengths and weaknesses and they're the learning that they need through the placement because I think support for a student who might be geographically isolated in a rural school for example may need a certain set of skills themselves to feel like they can perform that role whereas a student may be better suited to being in a more structured placement where the social work role is more established for example.

I feel like this conversation is required reading for a student who's just been allocated a school social work placement but that's just a side point.

I guess my next question though me is that's the support a student would require on placement but what happens if you've got a social worker who's like our person who told us the story but they're quite isolated because they're potentially in a new environment that's not used to having social work.

What kind of support does that person need that practitioner?

Yeah great question and I think and we certainly do hear from our graduates that go on to these roles as well and even though they may have done a placement exactly the situation where because it's not a common practice area yet that people don't necessarily know the sorts of situations that they're dealing with or the sort of practice that they're involved in every day and I do think it can be quite isolating then so obviously external supervision from anyone providing social work supervision is a must but somebody who really understands young people is going to be really important but also that advocacy and the way in which advocating for and systemic barriers for young people because that's where we really see you know in that disengage student bodies like in the story that was played that that's where the complexity really comes in and where are the boundaries of the role when it's a new role and so I mean the most I guess the simplest answer to your question is supervision supervision supervision because you have to have a sounding board when you're an isolated worker even though you're working in a community a school community and I think the other thing is really thinking about who your peers are and linking up with other social workers who are working in schools because that is the that's the way that we can advocate for more social workers in schools obviously but also learn about what's worked in other situations what hasn't worked that community of practice type idea is definitely an necessity for social workers moving into these positions and me if I'd imagine it's also important that school principals for instance and the teaching body are aware that that's a that's a cornerstone of our practice and that whilst it may not be part of the education profession that is a social worker we need to have regular supervision and that that needs to be factored in perhaps to the budget of the of the well-being unit if you're employing social workers you need to actually be footing the bill for good supervision and knowing what they do absolutely yeah and such a tricky area too so the way that again using New South Wales as an example because I know it best the way in which the school support officer role has been developed looks more like the professional staff or administrative staff in a school than the teaching staff so that causes challenges around you know what are the professional development opportunities how are they funded into the role what is it the expectation during school holidays because of course there's a 12 plus weeks of holidays over the whole year whereas that is different for the school support officer roles so I think there's some real challenges in there around who how is external supervision how is ongoing professional supervision and professional development funded in these roles particularly in a more generic role like the school social work officer that's sorry the school support officer role in more established school social work locations like North America that's it's an accepted area of practice because it is an accepted role because it has had that developmental time so there's certainly still a lot of advocacy to do for social work in the schools to make sure that that support is there and particularly around the ongoing professional development because it's a new area so these new issues are coming up there are schools that are you know you're dealing with a broad cross-section of a community when you're working in a school so the kind of specialization of say moving into a trauma or grief and loss trajectory will be one part only of what you're working on and so you know there's so many opportunities for professional development as well but also the area itself is a specialty area yeah just to finish up this conversation if it's occurring to me that there's another aspect to having school social work become more prominent in that you've got generations of children growing up with examples of social work right and you're not talking just about children who have all the different variables in life that eventually makes them become a client of some sort you're talking about the general population of children so clearly this has to be good for our workforce as well you would think totally and you know it's it's funny that you say that meme because when we do open days at university or our the university liaisons people that go out to schools to say hey you know he's all of the courses we offer you know it's always like what do you send for social work so like the nurses send you know send I don't know apples and band-aids or something of healthy lifestyle and you know doctors are wearing clinical coats with stethoscope like what's the kind of prop right because people don't know like children at school as they're thinking you know into the later years of high school what's a social work unless they've had contact with a social worker exactly as you say me but now they're you know these children young people already have some contact with what kind of social worker do what's the role how might they work in a school setting but also more broadly understanding what the social work role is so I absolutely agree I think it's a fantastic thing in terms of promoting our profession back into the school years so they know more of the work force promotion right exactly right I love it oh great look what a fantastic conversation to have thank you so so much for joining us and it's been lovely to be able to host with you this episode thank you so much for inviting me it's been really fun really enjoyed it and it's a great topic to talk about and whilst we couldn't pursue our career dreams myth maybe as a result of this conversation there will be some that will be banging down the doors of the field education coordinator I want a placement in my local school yeah that would be great yeah definitely too late for us but all four those newer social workers heading out I won't say younger newer social workers heading out so we're going to link to you Mifon on the show notes and social media so that people know who you are and what the amazing work you're doing in this space is but for everyone out there if you have had experience of school social work in your environment in your context and you've got stories to share around this please let us know like Mif said it's a growing space for Australia but not so much for other places in the world so especially that's a shout out to you our American listeners send us some stories we want to hear how it's happening in other places thank you Mif thank you everyone take care of yourselves till next time bye 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 no matter the context if you want to help us grow the podcast tribe and continue the work 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 write 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 Liz Murphy doctor Mim Fox Justin Sesh doctor Ben Joseph and Maddie Stratton thanks so much for listening