Welcome back to the Social Work Discoveries podcast. In this episode, I’m joined by none other than Associate Professor Dr Jacqui Cameron from the University of Wollongong.
Jacqui is a social worker with over twenty years of experience in practice, research, evaluation, and training in a variety of settings including alcohol and drug, mental health, and domestic violence. She is Co-Editor for Advances in Dual Diagnosis (ADD), an international journal that promotes submissions on co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders from academics, practitioners, and educationalists, as well as from lived experience of dual diagnosis.
Jacqui is a realist mixed-method researcher with extensive experience in qualitative data methods, and she ties this in with her passion for transforming research into practice. Her ability lies in engaging with practitioners with enthusiasm and credibility. Using a social work lens, she engages services and service users to use evidence to inform practice and manage complex issues including alcohol and drugs, mental health, and domestic violence.
You’ll hear from her all about her story from starting on a social work field placement, then moving into clinical practice, and now undertaking high-impact research as a leading scholar in her field.
It’s a pleasure to release this episode. I’m sure you’ll enjoy!
Ben.
Here’s a link to Jacqui’s contact info and recent work:
Welcome back to the Social Work Discoveries Podcast.
Today’s guest is Dimi Lattas from the University of the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland Australia. Dimi is a qualified social worker and family therapist. Her research focuses on forensic social work and, specifically, forensic social work education. Dimi is specifically interested in forensic social work pedagogy and developing educational practices that support student learning and professional expectations. This includes curriculum design, simulation, and technology.
Dimi is also a board member for It’s Sunny Somewhere. A charity that uses a holistic outdoor activity model to support young people who are at risk of coming in contact with the justice system.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Ben.
Here’s a link to Dimi’s contact details if you’d like to reach out to her directly:
Welcome back to the Social Work Discoveries podcast.
Today’s guest researcher is Dr B.J. Newton. B.J. is a proud Wiradjuri woman and a Scientia Senior Research Fellow based at the Social Policy Research Centre within the University of NSW, Sydney. Dr Newton specialises in Indigenous research methods and child protection research and policy. Her research focuses on working in partnership with Aboriginal organisations to build evidence and support Aboriginal families interfacing with child protection systems.
B.J.’s current research, ‘Bring them home, keep them home’ investigates the rates, outcomes, and experiences of successful and sustainable restoration for Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. She has extensive experience working on a range of child protection and domestic and family violence commissioned research, and multiple projects for the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.
In this conversation, you’ll hear B.J. talking all about child restoration practices in Australia, Aboriginal Community-led approaches to research and social change, Indigenous research methods, and so much more.
I hope you get as much from this conversation, as I did. It was an absolute pleasure!
Ben.
To reach out to B.J. or to follow her work, please use the following link to her UNSW research profile:
This episode I am joined by Professor Angelika Henschel from Leuphana University of Lueneburg in Germany. Angelika is the Head of the institute of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Leuphana, with her research and teaching focused on gender studies, inclusion and youth welfare. With a long history in social activism and feminist political work, Angelika is a well-known and admired agent of change in the work of Women’s Health, both throughout Germany and around the world. Angelika’s social work practice led to co-founding the first women’s refuge in her hometown of Luebeck, as well as a rape crisis collective and an organisation to bring together young women supporting each other through mutual aid and active support. I am so grateful to have met Angelika and spent some time getting to know her and learning all about her social work research and practice in this field.
We are back again for another awesome conversation with a social worker using action research to make a big difference in the world. Introducing to you all… Associate Professor Tamara Blakemore from the University of Newcastle!
Tamara is a social worker and researcher who is (along with her research team) rapidly changing the face of family and domestic violence intervention for young people and their families in New South Wales and beyond, with action research project called Name. Narrate. Navigate pathways program (NNN).
Here’s what the UoN University News (2021) has to say about it:
“Taking a unique approach, Name. Narrate. Navigate acknowledges young people who use violence have often been victims/survivors of violence themselves. It uses trauma-informed practice to provide sensitive and culturally safe education, skill development and support to young people who have used or are at risk of using violence. NNN provides psychoeducation, skill development and support to young people and their caseworkers assisting them to a point-of-readiness for targeted recidivist focused interventions. With the support of Westpac, in 2022 the Name.Narrate.Navigate (NNN) Pathways Program will see scale-up of the program through specialist trauma-informed and culturally-safe training, mentoring and support for practitioners across regional, rural and remote Australia to delivery NNN in their own sites and settings. The program for young people will continue with targeted delivery for young women, young Aboriginal people and young people who display sexually harmful behaviours.”
(University of Newcastle, University News 2021)
Tamara and I have a great conversation together in this episode, and we’re so glad you get to hear it! Keep an ear out for the description of action research, along with how she (and her team) work towards creating a research project and intervention program that is trauma-informed and culturally-responsive.
Please, if you can, don’t forget share this episode among your networks, and definitely let Tamara and I know your thoughts on the episode by reaching out to us on twitter using the handle @swdiscoveries
I hope you enjoy the conversation and it spurs you on to do some cool things of your own. Cheers!
Ben.
Tamara’s contact information:
Tamara Blakemore
Associate Professor in the discipline of Social Work, School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Science, Univeristy of Newcastle
Chief Investigator & Project Lead at Name. Narrate. Navigate Pathways Project (namenarratenavigate.com)
As you may be aware, it’s been pretty quiet of late on the podcast, sorry about that. It’s not because I haven’t been interviewing people, because I promise I have, and that there’s lots of interesting social work research conversations coming your way throughout the year, but more excitingly its been because quite a lot of time has been spent with my friends and podcast collaborators at our sister podcast, the Social Work Stories podcast. There are some really exciting things coming out this year on the Social Work Stories podcast, as well as some amazing new series’ soon to be launched by us. So, keep your ears tuned for more info soon! If you want to find out more about the Social Work Stories podcast, be sure to follow us on twitter @SOWKStoriesPod or check out our website socialworkstories.com.
As for Social Work Discoveries, the social work research conversations are getting super interesting! In late 2022, myself, and the team from our sister podcast Social Work Stories, travelled to Melbourne, located on the lands of the Kulin Nation, and attended the Australian & New Zealand Social Work, Welfare Education, and Research Symposium, otherwise called ANZSWWER. At this Symposium, our team managed to sit down and record a number of research conversations for Social Work Discoveries, as well as perform our first live Social Work Stories show, which we’re super excited to release for all our listeners, very soon.
Today’s conversation was recorded at the ANZSWWER Symposium, and my guest was Dr Sarah Wayland from the University of New England (Australia). Sarah is a Senior Lecturer Social Work in the School of Health at UNE in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. For more than 20 years, Sarah’s frontline work and research has focused on trauma and loss, with a particular emphasis on understanding the needs of missing people and their families, as well as suicide bereavement and prevention. Dr Wayland is involved in several projects examining workforce responses to suicide attempting, trauma exposure and the needs of carers. Her current focus remains on authentically including the voices of those with lived experience to better inform suicide policy, research and practice developments. She is a regular speaker, to mainstream media, about the impacts of being left behind when a person is missing.
This is a great episode for all those who are interested in finding out more about social work and education in the university. In particular, how it is that students are learning about social work in contemporary times. In this episode I interview Dr Mim Fox (University of Wollongong) who explores her recent research in this space, as well as going into detail around her experiences of, and lessons learnt from, the popular Social Work Stories podcast (socialworkstories.com). It’s a long episode today, but we felt that the conversation needed time and space, and we love having a good ol’ chat together.
Special thanks to Kate Draper (Western Sydney University) for all her hard work in producing this episode – congratulations Kate! I hope you are feeling proud of your efforts with this episode, I know that I am.
Welcome back to the Social Work Discoveries podcast!
In Episode 19 I speak with Samia Michail from Western Sydney University. Samia is a researcher, practitioner, and academic focused on promoting the voices of children and young people in her work and everyday life.
The conversation we have explores the complexities of working in this field of research, and paints a picture of what the world could become if only we opened our ears to the voices of children and young people.
Special thanks to Kate Draper who produced this episode while on her final social work field placement at WSU. Congrats Kate, you did a fantastic job!
Social Work Discoveries 