Attachment and Resilience

I recently started a podcast. This is a project I intended to launch more than a year ago. Unfortunately, life intervened.

My first guest is Sally Rhodes.

Sally has a Master of Social Work, and a Graduate Diploma in Family Therapy.

Sally, commenced working in residential care in 1985, then followed her passion for strengthening families through working intensively in family preservation services.

In 2004 Sally established Connecting Families, a therapeutic Reunification and Family Preservation service, which has grown to 17 practitioners.

Sally is trained in Narrative Therapy, Marte Meo, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics ,and Signs of Safety.

Sally was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to work in the UK with the Resolutions Approach – Working with Denied Child Abuse.

Connecting Families is now the largest Reunification Service is South Australia and, together the team has safely reunified over 1200 children, and prevented the removal of many more. In Connecting Families, Sally has selected practitioners who share her commitment to social justice and human rights, and ethically driven practice.

Sally provides training and consultation to Government and Non-Government organisations and remains a strong advocate for vulnerable families. Sally has been integral in leading the development of a Partnering for Safety approach to child protection through training and consulting, and is passionate about family led decision making and bringing the child’s voice into child protection work.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

About the Secure Start Podcast

In the same way that a secure base is the springboard for the growth of the child, knowledge of past endeavours and lessons learnt are the springboard for growth in current and future endeavours.

If we do not revisit the lessons of the past we are doomed to relearning them over and over again, with the result that we may never really achieve a greater potential.

In keeping with the idea we are encouraged to be the person we wished we knew when we were starting out, it is my vision for the podcast that it is a place where those who work in child protection and out-of-home care can access what is/was already known, spring-boarding them to even greater insights. 

Transcript

I think I always knew this, but I know it far more powerfully now, is that the decisions that we make, the things that we write, the recommendations that we make about families have long-lasting impact. So therefore, think very, very carefully about what you write, what you decide, because it has consequences. And I know that to be so true now, that I probably didn’t know as strongly back then.

Hi, and welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode is a highly respected practitioner in my home jurisdiction. Before I introduce my guests, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that we are meeting on, the Kaurna people, and the continuing connection they and other Aboriginal people feel to land, waters, culture and community.

I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. So my guest for this episode is Sally Rhodes. Welcome, Sally.

Thanks, Colby. So Sally is, as I said, a practitioner in my home jurisdiction here, and we’re both used to paying our respects to the traditional custodians of the lands we meet on. So for those who may be listening or watching overseas, this is a customary paying of respect to those traditional owners.

Now, Sally has a Master of Social Work and a Graduate Diploma in Family Therapy. Sally commenced working in residential care in 1985, then followed her passion for strengthening families through working intensively in family preservation services. In 2004, Sally established Connecting Families, a therapeutic reunification and family preservation service, which has grown to 17 practitioners.

Sally is trained in narrative therapy, multi-mayo, dyadic developmental psychotherapy, the neuro-sequential model of therapeutics and signs of safety. Sally was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to work in the UK with the Resolutions Approach, working with denied child abuse. Connecting Families is now the largest reunification service in South Australia, and together the team has safely reunified over 1,200 children and prevented the removal of many more.

In Connecting Families, Sally has selected practitioners who share her commitment to social justice and human rights and ethically driven practice. Sally provides training and consultation to government and non-government organisations and remains a strong advocate for vulnerable families. Sally has been integral in leading the development of a partnering for safety approach to child protection through training and consulting, and is passionate about family-led decision-making and bringing the child’s voice into child protection work.

Wow, there was a lot there, Sally. Obviously, I’m going to move the editor. All right.

So, Sally, I guess I just really want for our listeners to hear more about you as a person and also as a professional. So, my first question to you is how did you come to this field of endeavour? Yeah, well, you know, I had cause to think about this last year when we were celebrating 20 years of Connecting Families, and I actually really stopped and thought about how did I get here, really? Because nothing’s ever by accident, is it? So, I started to think about my childhood and where I grew up and what my influences were, and it occurred to me that my dad was a really big influence in my life in terms of thinking about injustice and standing up for the oppressed. He always stood up for me, which was something that was, I was a bit of a naughty kid.

So, I used to get in trouble at school a lot, and he always wanted to know my side of the story, which was refreshing and not normal back then. I’m talking the late 60s, early 70s. And also, mum and dad volunteered at a children’s home.

It was run by nuns, and there were homes. There was about four. My memory was that there were like four homes on this property, and they had 10 kids each in them, and mum and dad would go there on weekends, rostered on, to support the nuns looking after the kids.

So, I would tag along. And it just struck me that this was a really unusual situation for children not to be living with their families, and I think that that was my first exposure to it, and I was exposed to it for a long time, over three or four years, probably, that mum and dad went there, that I would go with them. And I knew these kids, too.

I went to school with a lot of them. So, that was that, and then I think that sparked something in me that I wanted to do. So, I didn’t know what it was, and then I didn’t go straight into social work, but I knew that that’s what I wanted to do.

But I went and did nursing first, which I hated, and I left very quickly. And then I went and studied, and I found my way. So, this was in northern New South Wales, so not the state that we currently are in now.

This was in a little town called Grafton. But then I moved over here to South Australia in 1985, and I got a job with the Department for Community Welfare, as it was known then, in residential care. And I was 22, and I just thought at that point I was too young to do generic social work, and I wanted to work with young people.

It felt the right thing to do. So, I was there, and I stayed in residential care for eight years. And I think that experience really fuelled, again, this sort of kids just need not be in these situations.

We really should be working to try to keep children at home. So, a family preservation service in South Australia started in 1993. That was the first one, called Keeping Families Together, and I won a position in that.

And I stayed in doing that from 1993 to 2004 in various different roles, but all working intensively with families, and either in family preservation or reunification. And then the agency that I worked for, Anglicare, lost the tender to continue doing that work. And I was approached to set up on my own, well, set up to work with the families that had been in our service, because the agency who won them that contract to carry on the work for whatever reason didn’t set up.

And so, fortuitously, these sort of families fell into my lap, and that’s how it started in terms of connecting families. Just, yeah. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, really.

It’s a long-winded answer to your question, Colby. No, not long-winded, but very interesting. It really goes to show, I guess, that when you, you know, how influential our experience is growing up, our experiences in childhood are in terms of the future course of our life.

And, in fact, research that I can remember hearing about a long time ago about who enters the helping profession, who enters the helping profession, so to speak, tend to be people who have been in some sort of caring role as they’ve been growing up. And, yeah, and I think that rings true not only for myself, but a lot of people I’ve spoken to about this. And interestingly, just to pick up another point that you made in there, that is that the impact that residential care had on you and on practice, and a sneak peek into another podcast episode is that I’ll be speaking to someone who ran a residential care home in the UK for a very long time and then moved across to run the UK’s first therapeutic fostering service.

So our listeners can listen out for that as well. So just moving on, you’ve talked about your dad as being a significant personal influence on you growing up. And you’ve probably also referred to your observations of the children and the environment that they were living on as major influences.

But who were your professional, major professional influences, would you say? Yeah, look, many and varied, really. But, you know, and I guess I didn’t really, I suppose I did, but I can’t even remember who they might have been, but certainly when I came to Adelaide and I did the narrative therapy training with Michael White, so Michael White was a really big influence on me, and local therapists here in South Australia. So a therapist, well, psychologist called Alan Jenkins, his partner, Maxine Joy, Rob Hall, a social worker.

These were locally based Adelaide, but I think world renowned, really, in their craft and their expertise. And Alan used to come to our team meetings when I worked in keeping families together and consult with us, and I just used to sit there in awe, really. So he was a really big influence to me.

And of course, you know, Michael White and the whole narrative therapy, Dulwich Centre, in terms of, you know, I guess I was a bit of a, I had the values and the attitudes and the beliefs about why I wanted to do this work, and I really needed to get some skill, I guess, in terms of how to talk to people and to think more deeply about that, I suppose, you know. And so they were a big, and then over the years, people like Dan Hughes, Bruce Perry, you know, yourself, Colby, in terms of your writings around attachment and the science of safety, people, like, you know, all of that has influenced have influenced me, and I’ve been, you know, that all of those people I’ve named, their work and their way of thinking just resonated with my way of thinking. And it helped me, you know, move forward in being able to help families have that breadth of sort of knowledge and expertise, I suppose, to be able to think, come to, you know, talk with people with a whole lot of different things in your head and frameworks to operate from.

Yeah, so quite a diverse group there. I think, you know, thinking about my own professional journey and the work of Michael White and others, and Alan, and the Dulwich Centre, who I was probably exposed to at a similar time to you when I was a developing practitioner. I think a lot of what I heard from them resonates more and more with me as I move on with my life and career.

Certainly, the stories that we tell about ourselves, I think, are very powerful in the way in which we approach life and relationships. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that’s true, actually, in terms of, for me, you know, probably at the time, I didn’t realise how influential they were, and that they were, and how privileged I was to have them so accessible.

You know, they’re in my hometown. I, you know, I’ve got video of Michael White interviewing me, you know, it’s precious now to look back on that. And, yeah.

And maybe we need to be, you know, maybe we need to have practised, I guess, for a period of time to be able to join the dots up, I guess, in a sense around those early influences and, yeah, and the impact that they’ve had on us and our professional journey and the way in which we approach our professional and personal life. Yeah. It’s very interesting.

I’m also aware, and I mentioned to you, mentioned in the intro, that you did do a Churchill Fellowship in the UK. And I know a little bit about what a Churchill Fellowship is, but I wonder if you would mind just describing it, what a Churchill Fellowship is, and what it was like completing it, who you did it with, or who you, yeah, work with, and how it’s influenced your practice going from there. Yeah, so the Churchill Fellowship was actually set up by Winston Churchill, really, for, you know, Australians to have the experience to be able to go abroad, you know, to expand their skills and knowledge in a specific area that they weren’t able to get in Australia, you know, like, so this was the original sort of thinking around it, and that you could then bring back that skill and knowledge, and to better the community.

So that was sort of the broad, and I think that still holds true. However, you know, with modern technology these days, you really don’t have to travel, you know, you can do it, but, you know, they’re still offered. So I, when actually talking about influences, there’s some other people who were very influential in my life before I did the Churchill, and they were the John Gumbleton, Colin Luger, Susie Essex, three UK social workers therapists who worked for the NSPCC, is that right? Yeah, National, yeah.

And they started writing about the resolutions approach, which is a way of working with families where there’s denial around, and particularly around injury, unexplained injury to infants. So those very, you know, polarising as well as perplexing cases where you’ve got a baby that’s got injury, and parents who basically say they don’t know how it happened, and in a medical profession saying, well, this is how we think it happened. And so, you know, they become very stuck cases that, you know, and I was coming across them in my work of, you know, families with seemingly no other kind of factors that would have caused concern to anybody, but a baby that had these unexplained injuries.

And so you ended up with a situation that either the children just didn’t go home because of this stuckness around the acknowledgement, or they did go home because people just gave up and put them home, and so no work was ever done. And I didn’t think either of those scenarios were good, basically. So I started looking for, you know, any ways of working around this, really.

And I came across these guys, and made contact with them in the UK by email and phone, and started having some consultation with Colin Luger, one of them. And then the idea of applying for Churchill came up, so I did. And it’s quite a daunting process, really.

You know, they give away about 100 nationally a year, but in South Australia, I think the year I went, there were nine given away. And you have to, you know, put in an application, it has to be very succinct to, you know, to basically explain to a group of people not from this profession, you know, wide range of people making decisions about who gets them, and then go to it, get to an interview process, which is, you know, 20 people there was sitting around a big boardroom table and coming in and actually doing a presentation and then getting questions. Anyway, I was lucky enough to get one.

I think it was so interesting. You know, I think it is interesting. You know, I think it really piqued the interest of the people who were making that selection.

So I went to the UK, I went to Bristol, which is where Colin and John live. Colin has sadly passed away. He passed away in 2015.

But when, you know, see when I went, he was still alive. And I spent six weeks there in the UK with them doing, you know, traveling all around England, because even though they’re based in the UK, their referrals came from all different parts of the of the UK. So we would travel to meet with family.

So I watched them, I talked to them, I talked to families about their experiences, I interviewed judges, children solicitor, I met with some other academics, I met with I met Peter Dale, who’s another influencer male is Peter Dale. He wrote a book called fine judgments. He’s another UK social worker, psychiatric social worker.

And yeah, and then I came back, I had to write a report about that for the trust. And I went and met with the youth court here in South Australia to talk about it, because really, if I could get the court understanding it, that was going to help. You know, I did presentations to the department about it.

And I think it has it influenced me, you know, in a sense around that there were people on the other side of the world thinking exactly the same way that I do. Yeah, I think there was something really heartening and a sense of security about that, that, you know, that these issues were happening everywhere, and that there were people who were turning their mind to how can we actually help these families stay together, but in a safe way. And, you know, they are the trickiest cases, because people do take such a stand about, we need to know, we need to know what happened, if we don’t know what happened, how can we ever make this safe.

So there’s a, I’ve done a lot of talking with people over the years around trying to get them to think about that in a different way. And why people wouldn’t talk about it, you know, the sense of shame, all of the disincentives to talk about how an infant got injured, you know, the criminal charges, loss of friends, family, whole range of things, you know. So, yeah, and as far as I know, we are probably the only service that provides resolutions way of working, certainly in South Australia, if not across Australia, I haven’t come across anybody else.

So it’s a niche. And I think that nicheness, you know, that, you know, helped in terms of gaining reputation across the sector around, you know, here’s some people who will actually work with these kind of families and, but rigorously, it’s not fluffy work in any sense. Yeah, and so Colin and John continued to be, Colin, particularly up until his untimely passing, like he was very unexpected.

And in terms of him getting sick, that was, but he, I continued to consult with him up until then. And then John, for a little while after that as well, but, and I’m still in touch with John, he’s retired. Yeah, they were great, great influences, really.

Yeah, they are difficult cases. Yeah, from my own work, while you’re talking, immediately thinking of a couple of cases, one in particular, that I became involved in, or was asked to become involved in very early in my career. And similarly to you, I was aware that the local child protection authorities, the emphasis that they placed on admissions, and admissions as being a precursor to looking at the possibility of reunification or reunifying.

And I remember even then, being very much aware of, or thinking a lot about all the impediments to those to making those admissions. And whether, as you say, whether there is actually another way that can ensure safety, but doesn’t rely on an admission. Yeah.

And I think there are ways to go about doing that. And you referenced one of those models or approaches. Yeah.

I think it’s very much a way, I mean, they are approaches, but it’s very much a way of thinking rather than a way of doing in a way, there are certain things, steps through the process, but it is, you can’t actually do the work if you don’t, if you don’t sort of think about this in, it’s about being able to hold a degree of uncertainty and not knowing, but also, suspending doubt, like all of these, all of these sort of principles of the model really around, thinking about denial, like when I’ve done some training on this, I remember talking to a bunch of supervisors when I first came back, and I said to them, I want you to turn to the person next to you and tell them the thing that you are most ashamed of in your life. And they all just stood there and stared at me, like I was mad. But the point I was trying to make was, that’s what you’re asking families to do.

You’re asking them, if we take on that belief that yes, they’ve unintentionally caused some injury to their child, that they then have become aware of. And then you’re asked, and they’re so deeply ashamed of that, you know, that you’re asking them to tell you a pillar of power in their life, what you did. And I just think it’s, unless you get alongside of people and approach them with empathy and compassion, in a non-judgmental stance, you, you’re, that’s going to shrink shame.

And you may get some partial acknowledgement. You certainly get people motivated to make sure that what happened will never happen again. And that’s all we want to do is just to make sure future harm doesn’t occur.

Yeah. I think the shame element is a powerful impediment and the regulation of that shame is a powerful way forward. Yeah.

And I remember something that we said something a little bit earlier where you were saying that not only the making of the admission means that not only do child protection authorities know about what happened, but it comes out one way or another that, that family and friends may also find out more about that. And I’ve done a similar activity with when I’ve done training in the youth justice area, and I had practitioners come one by one in and disclose similarly to me, an act that they were, it’s going back a few years ago now, but it was, it was an act that they were ashamed of doing, and it may well have also had a, an offending element to it. And they had to disclose it to me one by one.

And they had a choice about whether they come in and do that or not. Everyone did it, but everyone seemed to be quite uncomfortable about it. And I will note that I was never asked back.

I had met one of those, one of the person, and I, in subsequent training that I also delivered in the court, youth court, but I was never asked back. And I think it’s when we, where we expect families to make admissions and the whole movement forward depends upon it. They’re not just making admissions to child protection authorities, they’re making admissions potentially to their family and friends as well, as you say.

So that little activity that you did, and that, and that I did, as, as uncomfortable as it was, probably still doesn’t really get at what it’s like to make admissions in child protection processes, because to make it similar, we would broadcast what they, what was disclosed to the group, at least, and to family and friends. And so, yeah, there are very powerful disincentives to make admissions. And yeah, when I, I always thought that, I always think that nobody does anything for no reason.

And it’s, and I’ve always applied that in my practice with children, or, you know, for as long as I can remember. And I think that in trauma-informed practice, it’s all about responding to the reason. And I think similarly, it is possible to navigate a way forward by responding therapeutically to the reasons for a child to become, to be hurt, without necessarily hanging it all on an ambition.

Yeah. And, and also, you know, you know, there’s this big focus on acknowledgement and admission, or whatever. And, you know, and I guess my way of thinking after years and years of working with families in this area, is that acknowledgement on it, of its own, doesn’t necessarily bring about safety.

You know, people can acknowledge that they’ve done something, or they’ve behaved in a particular way, doesn’t mean they’re not going to do it again. So, you know, it’s not enough. And, and I think that’s what certainly the, you know, the science of safety model, you know, the principles and practices of that model, and that approach got me really thinking about that as well, that you have to be actively demonstrating a change, or doing something differently over a period of time.

It’s not enough to say, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, you know. There seems to be a belief that an admission is as an acknowledgement of a preparedness to change. Yeah.

And it’s, it may be the case in some instances that that, but my thinking about it is that the admission is probably not the main incentive to change. Rather, it’s the therapeutic relationship that we develop with the parent client, and our endeavours to regulate shame and regulate their closed, them being closed off, and rather to opening them to meaningful conversations. And, and what follows from that as being probably the, what we should be putting most emphasis on as a starting point.

Yeah. Parents engaging with the process, rather than parents making an acknowledgement. Yeah.

Yes, certainly saying, you know, and because I think that the focus on you must acknowledge, and this is not necessarily even in denied childhood, just in anything, really, you must acknowledge this, or you must acknowledge the harm that you’ve caused your child, or you must, you know, the way that the statutory organisations come to try to get people to do that is just not therapeutic in any way. It’s very shaming. And, you know, potentially quite frightening, really, for people, because they don’t know the consequences of if they do acknowledge, you know, so, yeah, I agree.

And I think it’s, you know, when, you know, thinking about this work, I mean, I don’t think I, I would have known this 30 years ago, you know, this has been a process for me also around just, you know, I remember, way back, there was a book written by Maluchio and Pine, which is around reunification, and because people just talk about the stages, you know, the steps and the thing, and it’s, it’s not like that, you know, it’s because of this, what we’re just talking about now, you know, it’s a really around understanding the complexities of people’s lives and experiences and building relationships so that they can navigate their way through that, to come out of that, you know, in a way that they can demonstrate to people that I want to be a safe parent and I can be. Yeah, shame is such a destructive or can be such a destructive emotion and a process that deepens shame works against a goal of a safe reunification between a child and their parents. Yeah, I feel like we could talk about it for a long time.

There’s some other things I wanted to ask you, though. I wanted you to just, you’ve given a little bit of an intro to how Connecting Families came about, but perhaps you can tell me a little bit more, or tell us, the audience as well, a little bit more about the work of Connecting Families, and you mentioned 1200 Safe Reunifications since 2004. What do you think, what are the ingredients for both the success of Connecting Families and reunification work more generally? Yeah, I mean, that’s interesting, isn’t it, too, because, you know, Connecting Families in 2004 was me.

So, and then by 2006, there were three of us, but the three of us were, so Deb Pickering and Sarah Gray, whom I worked with in Anglicare in reunification and family press services. So they were, we’d already had existing relationships, and they had the same values and attitudes and beliefs that I do. And I, because I was just getting inundated with referrals, I just couldn’t, and you know what it’s like in private practice, you just never say no to anything.

So I needed to bring people on to help with that. And so that’s kind of what happened over a period of time. More and more people came on board that I had, I had selected based on my previous working relationships with them, knowing what their attitudes and values were to sort of over the time.

So Matt Davis, another person from, you know, when I was in Anglicare, Tracey Laddams, who I worked with in residential care. So Tracey and I have been now have a 40 year long working relationship. It’s amazing to think about really.

Tracey was in Keeping Families together as well, and then Connecting Families. And Matt, you know, 30 years, Deb, 30 years, we’ve been working together for a really long time, the core group of Connecting Families. That is now expanded, 17 in that bio since then with one person has left, so it’s 16.

And they are people that I have come across in my career, where we have, we’ve gelled and I’ve known that they approach the work the same way that I do. So, you know, we’ve got a large team now with three men, and we did have three Aboriginal practitioners, we now only have two. And I think the reason why we’ve been so successful in the work is because we are a collective voice.

You know, when I stopped to think about it, there’s, you know, it’s hard work, you know, this Colby, you know, it’s really hard work. And often, we are butting heads with the statutory agency, we are butting heads with the court, we’re butting heads with everybody, because we might approach it differently and have a different view. And I think with us being having so many people in the team, and we all approach the work in the same way and think about families and that the children ought to be with their families, if that’s at all possible, and if not, with very close enduring connection to family, that having many of us speaking that, I don’t know what it is, but it just brings about a sense of safety in the team to be able to do that.

And in a sense that, you know, we are, we’ve got each other’s backs, we can support each other, and to continue to do the work. So I think, you know, I despair at competitive, I don’t know what happens in other parts of the world, but competitive tendering processes where agencies win a tender to provide a service for three years, and then they put it out again, and then someone else might win it. So no one develops long term practice wisdom, you know, long term, and that you have people that are really passionate about this work, it’s not just a job, it’s not, it’s actually a career.

So I think that’s what I’ve been able to gather together. And when I think about 21 years now, almost that we’ve been going as Connecting Families, you know, that’s a long time for one service, and I don’t see it ending anytime soon. And so that collective wisdom just grows and grows and grows.

And I think that’s why we are successful, because the values and the attitudes and the beliefs, but but also the skill set that people develop over time, and then can pass on to each other is immeasurable. I don’t I don’t know how you measure that. I don’t know how you replicate it.

And, you know, I feel really lucky to have this group of people around me. So I think that that’s why I think Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I think what you’re what I’m hearing you say is the importance of a team that is aligned in their approach to practice.

And is speaks with a consistent voice. And I think there is something very psychologically safe about teams where people are all on the same page and aligned in their practice. I think, you know, in some respects, we we celebrate diversity.

But also, I think we need to acknowledge that teams work well, in the this kind of way of being aligned and supportive of each other. And being and speaking with a collective voice. I think the collective voice provides is authoritative in the work that we do.

And I think you mentioned, go back to one of your responses about the Churchill Fellowship. We think about we’ve talked a little bit about in in our backwards and forwards conversation here about things that are really powerful in, you know, factors in human behaviour and, and the way in which people approach life and relationships, we thought a bit about the role and importance of shame, but also validation. You know, the the the experience that that we’re not just the only one thinking and working in this way, that our thoughts and beliefs and approach are valid, are acceptable, are worthy.

These are very powerful conditions, I think, in which to in our shared areas of endeavour approach, approach the work with as much psychological safety as we can muster to protect ourselves, because it is it is a difficult area of endeavour. And when you when you work in a over a long period of time, I don’t think you can do it. I don’t think you can do it without depleting yourself drastically if you don’t have a team and peers who, as you say, have got your back, but who also believe in what you believe in.

Yeah, yeah. And I think also it can challenge you, you know, because, you know, I think about, you know, the work of Eileen Munro and, you know, her talking around, you know, the I can’t remember the actual quote, but the most protective thing is to admit that you might have got it wrong. And I think and I in child protection work, you know, and I think that having a team around where we can talk about, you know, you can get different perspectives on things.

You can be going, you know, am I am I not am I missing something here? You know, I think that having a collective voice is not just about being, you know, gee, we’re all right. And that’s not what I that’s not what I mean. And it’s really more around saying where we want to come at things with rigour.

You know, we want to make sure we’re doing things properly and right and thoroughly. And I think when you’re on your own, you can lose you can lose that objectivity. You know, you basically it’s good.

It’s healthy to have people around to sort of go. Yeah, I’m not quite sure about that. So we do a lot of co-working in this as well.

A lot of the team, you know, will work with two practitioners. Sometimes we might have a family where they might they might end up with five of the team because someone’s doing someone’s doing security. Tracy might be doing a relapse prevention plan around substance misuse.

So they’re seen by a lot of people in the team. And we don’t always agree about where the families are on there and the progress that they’re making. And I think that’s really healthy.

It is. I agree. And I guess most people who talk about teams, I would anticipate, talk about the importance of having diversity of background and diversity of beliefs and opinions.

And yet I would say that those things are fantastic where there is a secure base within the team. And the secure base is one that regulates shame or is non-shaming. And the secure base is one where we feel of togetherness and connection and belonging.

And in another podcast, shout out to Lynne Payton and her success is never accidental podcast. I talked about how teams are very functional teams are very much like an attachment relationship. And I think in order to explore other ideas, to take risks, carefully managed risks, to make mistakes, own up to them, learn from them, move on from them.

You need the security that we’re talking about, the psychological safety that we’re talking about. Yeah. I think the preparedness to be vulnerable and know that you can be vulnerable in that space and people will just hold you really in that.

And for me, it’s very much a parallel process about what we’re trying to do with families is to support them to be vulnerable, but to feel that there’s safety in doing that. So… That’s very much aligned with what an attachment relationship is. Yeah.

Looks like what we’re talking about with attachment. Attachment is about a relationship in which the person can be vulnerable or is vulnerable and can orient to someone who is able to support them, protect them, respond to their needs and create a situation and a circumstance where the person can grow. So just moving on because it’s been a long chat already, although I’m aware that there are podcasts out there that run to three hours.

Oh my goodness. But I wanted to ask you what advice you would give to your younger self starting out in your professional journey now? And you’ve made some reference to it, but if you could just expand upon that. Look, lots of things probably, Colby.

Yeah, look, I feel like I have touched on certainly… I don’t think I ever thought that I knew everything back then anyway, but I would certainly be saying to myself, you’re going to learn a lot along the way. You know, this is continuous learning and continuous growth. And in fact, you’re going to change your mind about things as well.

And that’s okay, you know, because some of our ideas are shaped and we haven’t really had enough time to actually think about really, really is that do I really think that, you know? So I think that and I know we had talked about this once before, but there’s not a hierarchy of knowledge. I think when I was a younger social worker starting out, and this is no offence to psychologists, you know, I think, but you know, there was always this thing, and there still is, that psychologists trump social workers in terms of, or then, you know, psychiatrists trump psychologists and doctors, somehow the medical profession are revered and they can never get it wrong. I don’t hold that to be true anymore.

And that’s not to be disrespectful about any of those professions. You know, I have respect for all of them, but I have respect for my own and I have respect for the knowledges and wisdom that comes with people who’ve practiced things for a very long time. So I don’t feel, so I think what I would say to my younger self is don’t be intimidated by those other knowledges.

They’re valid, but they’re not the only way of thinking about things, and your way is just as valid, you know, I think that. So I think, you know, I probably hold, you know, these days, I hold great respect for people, you know, like yourself, like other practitioners who have stuck it out, and have an immense amount of knowledge and wisdom. And, and, you know, I see people in the Department for Child Protection here that have been there for, you know, 30, 35 years and doing a hard job, and I respect them that they’ve stayed there and done that.

And they have a lot of knowledge, you know, so that, and you know, it’s okay to make a mistake. What I really liked, I liked all of that answer, but I think the acknowledgement that you will change your mind. And I think two things about long careers.

One is that you’re never, you’re never going to have the same view, I think, or at least it’s healthy to not have the same view, a year down the track, five years down the track, 10 years down the track, then you then you have right now you need to be open to that and prepared to accept that with, with experience and observation, you are, you are going to change your thinking and opinions about things, unless you have a very rigid adherence to what you and who would, who would argue that it is healthy to maintain a rigid adherence to what you knew when you were fresh out of university or first in this, I don’t know that anyone would, would do that. Wouldn’t we call it stuckness? You know, similarly, and I have changed my position on things across a long career. And in particular, one area that has been particularly influential with me, for me, two areas, actually, one, one is working very closely with families that are on the cusp of statutory intervention.

And the and the validity and importance of intervening in those circumstances where, you know, it’s 50 50 as to whether whether statutory authorities should and could get involved. The other area that has been very influential for me is working with care leavers is, and in particular, seeing care leavers that I knew as children taken into care. So both of those areas have been very influential in my position.

Yeah, as I’m sure it is with others. Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a family at the moment in the service that is for Mac, one of the workers in the team, fourth generation.

So the family. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, the dad was an injured infant, actually, back back when. And so we worked with his parents.

I was the manager of the team at that point. This is back in Anglican days. And then Mac had worked with the this dad’s father was in residential care.

And then so Mac had met the great. Well, I don’t know. We were just like, yeah, well, we’ve been we’ve been at this for too long.

We’re getting to this. But, you know, it was really interesting because this dad, what you know, when when Mac realised that, you know, he was who he was, he you know, we talked about it. And I said, you have to tell him, you have to let him know that you you knew him as a baby, which he did.

And and that worked. You know, that that was fantastic because they, you know, they formed a really close connection, actually, now. And and this dad has successfully had his three children returned to his care and is doing really well, you know.

And I think that that longevity of, you know, of him knowing that that Mac knew his story was very helpful, you know. So whilst it was sad, it was also really it was fortuitous that Mac was the one that, you know, coincidentally picked it up. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But I do I do think that those knowing knowing what’s up, you know, I think that’s the other thing, Colby, is that I think I think I always knew this, but I know it far more powerfully now is that the decisions that we make, the things that we write, the recommendations that we make about families have long lasting impact.

So therefore, think very, very carefully about what you write, what you decide, because, you know, it has consequences. And I know that to be so true now that I probably didn’t know as strongly back then. No.

Because, you know, I even think back to families where we recommended that children go into long term care that would I do the same now? Probably not. You know, I even though they weren’t fantastic home situations that were better than what got provided in the long run. So I’d probably go back and undo some of the things that I if I could, if I could, based on the knowledge that I had at that time, I was probably doing what I felt was the right thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Similarly.

Yeah. Sally, that that’s, I think, a very powerful and bright place to bring our conversation to a close. Thank you very much for agreeing to be on my podcast.

And maybe in the future, we might get you back to talk a little bit more about some of this, this and similar. That would be good. Thank you, Colby.

It was a good conversation. Yeah. Awesome.

Thanks, Sally.