Adele Sheridan-Magro, my guest in this podcast, came to social work later in life. Her first degree in sociology was undertaken in her forties: specialising in women and gender studies. She was particularly taken by post-stucturalism, including the theorists Foucault, Lacan, and the feminist Helene Cixous.

In our conversation Adele described how she faced the challenges of using these perspectives in her social work degree and her subsequent clinical practice.

Adele now has extensive experience in the NGO sector as a specialist domestic violence counsellor, educator, trainer and service coordinator. She has presented on domestic violence at conferences both nationally and internationally,  including the  2015  European Conference on Domestic Violence, held in Belfast.

Adele points to the research that  now makes a compelling case for a direct link between women’s experience of  intimate partner violence and heightened rates of depression, trauma , and self-harm. Critically however, women who are victims of  intimate partner violence, consistently report poor treatment by mental health services. It is clear that the service paradigm is often unhelpful, and profoundly lacking in its recognition of the complex and multilayered trauma experienced by victims of intimate partner violence.

Adele makes the crucial point that communities will have a far greater chance of keeping a child safe if the mother is kept safe.

Our conversation turned to exploring ideas of love, where Adele has been very much influence by queer theory. We go on to discuss how rigid, stereotyped notions of love may carry within them the seeds of oppression.

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Kim Hobbs has had a long career in oncology social work. She is now a clinical specialist social worker in gynaecological cancer at a large teaching hospital in western Sydney.

Building upon a solid base of clinical care, Kim advocates for improved psychosocial support services for all people with cancer and their families, friends and caregivers. She believes that psychosocial care should be a key component of comprehensive cancer care throughout treatment and recovery.

As a practitioner-researcher she has been involved in collaborative research projects, in psycho-oncology, including highlighting the needs of carers: demonstrating the power of group support: acknowledging and working with sexual issues: and understanding the qualities that leaders need in cancer support groups.

Kim believes that social work has important things to say about our contribution to psycho- oncology. She reminds us that social work caseloads reflect the marginalized and under-served: the disadvantaged, the poor: and the socially isolated.

Her research interests have led to several publications in international peer-reviewed journals, and she has authored and co-authored three chapters in two recently published Australian books.

Our conversation covers her clinical and research career in oncology as well as an illuminating visit to a palliative care service in Denmark.

Her message to medical leaders in the field has been simple; “you did the clever operation, we’re the ones who make their life worth living”.

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Dr Catherine Camden Pratt is a Lecturer in Art Therapy in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University. Catherine’s clinically-led teaching is informed by her private art therapy practice in which she works mainly with women, children and their families, and also facilitates art therapy groups for Cancer Wellness Support. As well as this, she draws on many years of working with creative arts in education, and in personal and social change.

Catherine is a social ecologist informed by feminism, poststructuralism and critical psychology as ways to open up questions of power and voice.  She locates art therapy performatively as a practice of social justice, and is passionate about making art as a way of knowing and of sharing stories for which there are no words.

She has over 35 years of experience in creative arts-based teaching across a variety of contexts. Her teaching is student-centred and foregrounds critical creativity as a way to enable understandings about ideas of identities as shaped by society, culture and politics.

Her PhD shared the stories of women growing up in families with a mother with a mental illness. Arising from that research she wrote a popular book-   Out of the shadows: daughters growing up with a ‘mad’ mother (Finch, 2006).

She also co-edited the book- Social Ecology: Applying Ecological Understanding to our Lives and our Planet (Hawthorn Press 2011).

Within social work there is a small but growing band of art therapists. In preparation for a podcast conversation with social workers who also are art therapists , I thought it would be useful for me talk to Catherine first, as someone who trains art therapists.

The conversation that emerged was not quite what I had anticipated, as we explored the long and winding road that brought Catherine to her current role.

She honoured me with a very personal account of her journey. She also shared with me her beliefs about what the art therapist brings to the interrelation space – and  through our talk, I gained a better understanding of how art can tell a story in one place, and the powerful therapeutic effect that that might engender.

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The notion of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining increasingly favourable attention from both the the left and right of politics. Small and seemingly favourable trials have occurred in some countries. To find out more about UBI I spoke with Dr Ben Spies-Butcher who lectures in Economy and Society in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University. Ben’s research focuses on the political economy of social policy.

In addition to his academic publications, Ben is a regular contributor to The Conversation. He is also a Research Associate at the Retirement Policy and Research Centre at the University of Auckland, and is a board member of Shelter NSW. He was also the 2017 Glenda Powell National Travelling Fellow for the Australian Association of Gerontology. Ben has written elsewhere that,

Unemployment benefits in Australia have gradually fallen behind the cost of living. The benefit, currently called the Newstart Allowance, is now one of the lowest in the OECD.
This makes it hard to effectively look for work, with devastating consequences for those relying on it. Even business economists have argued it needs to be raised.
Despite this, governments have moved in the opposite direction, shifting more people onto lower and highly conditional payments. This reflects the politics of payments that are very highly targeted.

Our conversation explores the idea of UBI and its relationship to work and social welfare.
Why are we all working so hard when automation was supposed to increase leisure time?
How has the state intervened in regulating both the paid and the unpaid economy?
Why has surveillance and compliance become such a central part of so many people’s work experience?
Why has pay day lending become so profitable? Why does household debt continue to rise?
If there was a UBI would we all just go to the beach and play computer games? Or would it reinvigorate democratic engagement and empower people to leave bad jobs?
How do we convince regional and rural Australians that punitive notions of ‘workfare’ are destructive to our social fabric?

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This episode is a conversation with Beni Mackenzie one of the founders of the Australian Social Work Changemakers Facebook page.

The page was born of conversations amongst some social workers attending the 2013 AASW National Symposium. The purpose of the page is to provide an online environment for students and qualified social workers in Australia to converse, debate, collaborate and organise.

One of the principle aims of the page is also to contribute to the positioning of social work as the peak social justice profession, and an as important and respected political voice. From small beginnings, it now has over 670 members.

Before Beni got into social work he fuelled his sense of injustice with alcohol, anger and drugs; paradoxically these experiences have held him in good stead in understanding many of the people he now works with.

During our conversation, Beni describes his first social work job in the small outback town of Charleville, working with people affected by drugs and alcohol, and his current work with the homeless in Southport.

We also cover the boundaries and ethics of working in personal and digital space; the contradictions of working in social media designed to make a profit; and the challenges of holding on to horizontal democratic practices in hierarchical organisations.

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