Audio transcript (edited)

DANA SHEN: Well, welcome everyone. My name is Dana Shen, I am a Ngarrindjeri–Chinese woman and I will be facilitating our session today. Before we get started, I’d like to acknowledge the lands on which I am living on, on the lands of the Kaurna people, to recognise the Elders past and present, and the emerging leaders, and to recognise the beauty and wisdom of the country that I’m on.

I also pay respects to the traditional owners of the countries throughout Australia, and recognise their continuing connections to land and water. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, and to Elders past and present, and I’d also like to recognise that we do this during Reconciliation Week, now more than ever.

Before we get started, I just have a bit of housekeeping to go through with you. There’ll be no live Q&A in this webinar, however, please still submit questions under the questions tab in the GoTo Webinar dashboard. The panellists will be taking some time after the live portion of the webinar to address some of these. They will be recorded and made available, along with the recording of the live event on the AIFS website within the next two weeks.

We also have related resources that will be available at the Handout section of your GoTo Webinar control panel. We’re going to do our best, but we do have a really, really big topic today and we may not be able to cover everything, but we will do our best. There’s also a short feedback survey that will be open at the end of the webinar.

And just to acknowledge that there may be things that we talk about today that will be a bit tricky because we’re talking about working with families that can be often going through tough times. So I just wanted to acknowledge that, and that all people here take all the time you need if things do come up for you.

So, what will we be talking about today? Today we’ll be discussing ways to work collaboratively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to build trust and genuine connection. This invites ways of seeing and listening to families, and ways of being and doing with families that recognise their strengths, their cultures, and the wisdom that is at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents and caregivers have many stories of resilience. In a practice setting, a space to share and reflect on these stories is not always there, it doesn’t always exist. The ability to create this space is crucial to working with these families if you genuinely want to walk alongside and build connection. So how can you explore these stories where true empowerment and self-determination is there as families work through hurts, hopes, and healing? The panel will address these at both an individual practitioner level, and at a broader systems level, that is within communities and within organisations. We know we’re speaking to a practitioner audience, but we also think that much of this will be useful for others too in varying fields.

We also wanted to recognise we had a lot of questions come through about children in out of home care, and also in education. Whilst we’ll be touching on these, there has been specific webinars on these topics and there will be links in the handouts to those.

So on that, let’s jump in and meet our wonderful panellists today. So I’d firstly like to give space for each of them to do a quick introduction of who they are, and the kind of work that they do, and I wonder if I can start with Michelle?

MICHELLE SWEET: Thank you, Dana. So my name is Michelle Sweet, I work for the Menzies School of Health Research in the ‘Stay Strong’ team. I’ve been working for 10 years in that team, and I love doing that work because I get to connect across the country with just so many different communities and families and practitioners, and particularly focusing on developing resources and training.

DANA SHEN: Fantastic, thank you Michelle. Now I’d like to welcome Judith Lovegrove to introduce herself.

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Good afternoon. So I’m Judith, I’m a very proud Ngarrindjeri woman. I’ve got cultural connections across most of South Australia so if anyone knows anyone in SA, I’m more than likely family.

Look, I come from a background of psychology and counselling, and I’ve been an EAP counsellor for a really long time and offer clinical and professional supervision as well as cultural supervision. I’ve worked in many different spaces, frontline, child protection, in education as an advisor, and in the last few years been more involved in more policy work. I previously was the executive director in Aboriginal health here for the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network, and now I’m currently the Indigenous governance and engagement lead working alongside Michelle at Menzies School of Health Research in the ‘Stay Strong’ mental health division. And I’m really excited to be joining everyone today.

DANA SHEN: Fantastic, thank you Judith. And Kym, can you introduce yourself?

KYM SCHELLEN: Hi, my name’s Kym Schellen. I’m a psychologist, I’ve worked in the community for over 25 years. Much of that was - my early work was as a Stolen Generations counsellor once the Bringing Them Home report had been put into practice, and I was part of the initial responses to that through helping in Nankuwarrin Yunti in Adelaide. So I did that for 13 years.

And for the last dozen years, I’ve been contracting work in regional South Australia through Rural Doctors Workforce Agency. So, my work is literally 100% working in the community, and I think that my practice is very informed as it has been formed by the work as a Stolen Generations counsellor, which has really set me in understanding a lot about the community.

DANA SHEN: Thanks so much, Kym. Well, you are all in for a really wonderful discussion today so I just wanted to start to really get into the meat of this around learning from our community and how to be with our community and work well and alongside. So first of all, Michelle, what are some of the general strategies and approaches practitioners can use with families to genuinely connect? Can you talk us through some of those?

MICHELLE SWEET: Yeah, so I think I’d love to start with the really practical approaches, but I think what stands out in that question for me really is about genuine connection, and it’s really the most important words that I hear in that kind of sentence and that question. And for me, what comes to mind is refection, and I think we find those strategies and those approaches when we can truly reflect on ourselves.

And I think this week is often a time where people attend incredible events and performances, and where we learn so much from First Nations storytellers and artists and researchers, musicians, sports people. And in the year we have so much access to online resources and knowledge holders, cultural advisors, and community who give so much in to what we can learn and listen.

And really, for me, it’s about what we do with all of that, and that’s what becomes important. And I think we need to reflect on what that means, and what we hear, and the stories that we’re listening to, and how we can keep this learning going and how we can influence our practice.

And in terms of that when I think of reflecting I think well, what is that reflecting? What do we need to do to reflect? And for me, you talked about it earlier in the introduction around having time, and I think it’s so crucial, even as busy as we are, to be able to just stop, and to be able to listen, and take time to ask questions. And ask those questions of ourselves rather than our colleagues, or community, or the families that we’re talking to. It’s crucially important that as non-Aboriginal practitioners or researchers we’re asking ourselves those questions, and self-reflecting on our own beliefs and our own values, and what do they mean in terms of our interactions? What does that mean in terms or the language that we use? And then reflecting also in our practice, and then what do we bring to these relationships?

And from there is where we move in to find those strategies and approaches through that self-reflection, and often that can be quite uncomfortable and bring up some uncomfortableness around feelings or thoughts that we have. And I think some of that is because we need to challenge, and we need to challenge some of the outdated colonial systems or practices that we often work in.

And some of those ways to do that, I think, is that we can start shifting the way we practice, and one of those things I think I learnt over time, of working with people, was shifting the focus from being so outcome-driven. You go into a situation, into a practice or a community, and you’ve got paperwork to fill out, or you’ve got decisions that needs to be made, or referrals that need to be made. So, we sometimes get caught in that kind of outcome-driven approach, and I think one of those things with reflection over time is I’ve really learnt that I need to focus on connection, and building relationships with people.

And part of that I think is being open and curious, being interested in people, and being able to let go of some of those assumptions that I’ve brought in to this relationship.

So that’s some of the ways, and some of the ways I think that I’ve certainly learnt to do that is to share something about myself. So that’s one sort of breaking of patterns. As professionals, we’re often told to keep our boundaries and not share anything personal with clients or communities, and I think we can’t expect others to share if we’re not willing to share something. And I’m not talking about the deepest, darkest secrets that we hold, but even as simple as who’s our family? What’s our home? Who are our children? Or what’s our favourite footy team? As simple as that, finding those connections with someone who’s in front of us.

And then I think also that curiosity that we need to come in to the relationship with is really important, to be able to really hear what people are saying. I don’t think anyone asks us to believe them. People are asking to listen, just to listen to what someone else’s experience or story is, to understand more deeply and to connect more deeply with someone. And looking at some of those really important things like understanding the impacts of colonisation, or what does social emotional wellbeing mean? And then to reflect on how we can change our practice, knowing those things more deeply.

DANA SHEN: Thanks very much, Michelle, I think you’ve set us on a wonderful conversation and journey. And one of the things for listeners to come back to was that issue about the focus on the journey of the relationship as well as outcomes, but we often focus on outcomes, but I want to come back to that. So, I’ll come back to that, because we’ll be talking about some more systemic questions later on.

Kym, so Michelle’s really touched on that importance of how we connect the sharing of ourselves, the giving of time. One of the things I know about you is you’ve spent a lot of time in our community. I’m Ngarrindjeri and so has Jude, and Kym’s got a very close connection with our community. But my guess is that there’s many practitioners that come to this work that don’t have that connection and I just wanted to see, if people don’t have that connection what are some of the things that they need to do to connect, Kym, from your experiences?

KYM SCHELLEN: For me, I really like Michelle’s idea about the relationship, the nature of relationship. I think that relationship is everything, it is 100% everything in working with Aboriginal people. I think it should be in the broader community too, to be honest. I think that it’s something that’s paramount in the community, that relationship is everything.

As a psychologist, you’ll meet non-Aboriginal people and they’ll say, “What do you do?”, when they first meet you. That’s not what an Aboriginal person does. An Aboriginal person says, “Who are you? Where are you from? Who do you know? Oh, we know you.” All of a sudden there's a connection being built. That’s paramount. And to me, relationship is almost the most important thing that you can do in working in the community, is be prepared to be in a relationship.

I had an old fellow when I was doing Stolen Generation stuff and he said to me - I’d worked with him and alongside him, but also with him. And one day I was at his house and he said to me, he was an older fellow, and he said, “Kym, when are your wife and you going to come to tea at our place?” And it really shocked me. I thought wow, realising I’m in a relationship, the depth of that, and what it means to connect to people.

So I really like Michelle’s idea of nurturing relationship, and being prepared to be in relationship, the opposite of what psychology tells us. I’ll say that my training was early ‘90s and it was pretty old-school, and I was a critical learner. I wrote through all my books and questioned everything, and I was starting to question the idea of should psychology be given away? It was almost this idea that no one should have that, that that belongs to us. So that’s the style of learning that I grew in. And everything, like Michelle said, you get taught is to keep yourself distanced from your clients, or from the people that you work with, which I just so can’t do, that is not me, and I like to know and I like the idea of building a relationship.

And I think the idea when we build that relationship, you’re actually saying to the person, “I actually want to know you, I want to know what you’ve been through, what you’re trying to process.” So I think if we foster that idea of wanting to move forward with that relationship, and that directs everything that you do, then that’s going to work and people are going to then slowly but surely begin to trust, because trust is huge. You also then learn to be flexible.

And I think that that idea of nurturing a relationship is probably the first thing that non-Aboriginal practitioners could be learning to do, is thinking about those ideas about developing that relationship, because relationship is everything. And it’s not just with each other, it’s with land, it’s with community.

We had a prime minister a number of years ago say something about the idea of people living out in the desert were actually making lifestyle choices, and it highlighted that our great leaders completely didn’t understand relationship with land, which is staggering at that level. And I think, to be honest, that most people are the same, they don’t get those ideas, that relationship is everything, and its connectedness to everything.

So, I think for us as practitioners the idea of doing that, and being prepared to do that – because I think that’s something that makes people nervous, particularly psychologists. The idea of saying, like Michelle said, we’re supposed to keep our stories to ourselves and that sort of stuff, and we’re not supposed to share, and I don’t agree with that one bit. I like my narrative training, which taught me about the idea that as a psychologist we are automatically at a different level than someone who’s coming to seek our help or support. They automatically feel as if they’re less. I don’t see that at all.

So to me, my job first is we’re equal, there’s no difference. You’re not better than me, I’m not better than you, maybe we can do something together, and I think that’s huge. And that also builds up trust because then people go, “Oh, this person’s real, this person knows a bit of stuff.” So I think that those things are first things in understanding.

Another thing that I think of is understanding that the work that we do in the community, there’s lots of nuances. That what we think is something - or that there’s fine detail that people don’t get and that those things… I’m not sure, I keep getting the ‘muted’ message on.

DANA SHEN: Yeah, there is a little bit of -

KYM SCHELLEN: Am I coming across okay?

DANA SHEN: Kym, there's a little bit of a glitch at the moment, so I’m just going to revise what you’ve just said, just so people are clear. Because I think I caught the bulk of it. I think if we be really clear that relationship is one of the most important things, but you also made the point that it’s relationship with Country, relationship with community. So in other words, it’s not just that individual person as a practitioner, it’s the whole system of our communities that you’re talking about. And then, Kym, I wondered -

KYM SCHELLEN: 100%.

DANA SHEN: - would you mind just saying that last bit that you said again, just one more time?

KYM SCHELLEN: Which bit was that, sorry?

DANA SHEN: So, I think you were making your final point around connection, and I just wondered if you could go over that again? We definitely missed the last bit of that.

KYM SCHELLEN: Okay, what I was getting at is that a connection to me – when we make a connection, we’re building up trust, because the person is actually trusting. But they’re also seeing ourselves as real, and I think that’s one of the huge differences in working with community. I’ve worked with lots of people over the years, and psychologists and that, and I don’t want to put my own profession down, but I think that that fear of connecting with people really separates people from their clients and the people that they – I really don’t even like using the word ‘clients’, to be honest. It’s a very clinical word, and I get that some people prefer that sort of language.

But the idea of making that connection is the way you build up that trust, that connection with the community, that connection with that person and their family. Often my work is more that I start work with a particular family member, the next thing I’m working with the whole family, or their grandparents, or their parents or whatever, and it’s that connection, like you said, with the whole community. It’s the building blocks to – and be prepared to take that jump that leads to flexibility, because we have to be flexible. I probably don’t know many psychologists that do home visits, or meet in parks and all that sort of stuff. I personally love that stuff. But that’s part of being - I think often we get stuck in ideas of going, “Well, you’re the client, you should do it the way we say”, and that’s not the way I see it at all. The other way we teach is to be flexible, it teaches you to engage with that person and understand them, and then you understand what are the stories. Then they start to tell you about their stories and what they’re trying to process.

So I hope that’s what you were – I can’t remember exactly -

DANA SHEN: No, that’s exactly, so thank you so much, Kym. And we’ll come back to Kym. But Jude, it would be great for you to talk about a couple of things. The first one is about identity. So a lot of people have asked questions about how to have the conversation in respectful ways with different people about identity. Could you speak a little bit about that first?

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Yeah, look, in order to unpack what identity might mean to someone, it’s really important to understand that Aboriginal identity and Aboriginality are two completely thing. Basically, identity is really core to understanding who we are as people, where we belong in the world, who we’re connected to, and it basically shapes everything about who we are.

For instance, to talk about identity we identify ourselves through our family connections, through our surnames, through our clan groups. And I introduce myself as a Ngarrindjeri woman, but I’m also Kaurna, I’m also Wirangu, I’m also Walkandi-Woni, I’m also connected to a lot of other nations. And the moment I start talking about my family surname and who my grandparents were, and great-grandparents, there’s always some kind of link.

But I’m going to go back off the point of what Michelle’s made, and Kym. It's really important to distinguish the way we’re trained as practitioners to engage with people. Most code of ethics, or code of conduct that we have in any profession, inhibits our ability to really engage with people because we’re told we can’t disclose anything personal, we can’t make anything too personal in conversations. We stick within the parameters of our professional boundaries. But in reality, it’s really that we need to make sure we let our wall down and we’re giving space to be able to connect with people.

The way we identify one another as Aboriginal people, we want to be able to connect with you on that level as well. So we just want to know who you are. And basically we know that in terms of our mob working with non-Aboriginal practitioners out there, there’s a lot of fear around historical factors and mainstream agencies that we know have had huge impact on wellbeing, and removal of children, and all of those sorts of things. So having a conversation with families about identity, it is a sensitive issue because there is an assumption that every Aboriginal person is connected and they do actually know who they are, but that’s not the case.

And I think when we bring it back down to simpler terms is identity in the way I’ve been trained in narrative therapy, and been teaching it for many years, is understanding that identity is intentional for people. It is about what brings purpose to them and how they see themselves. And identity is defined by that individual. It’s quite easy for us to have a conversation and say, “Who’s your mob?” Coming from a non-Aboriginal person, that might not be comfortable, but I think don’t ever feel like you’re stuck or you’re going to say the wrong thing, but – our mob will guide you in the conversation. Ask questions, ask lots of questions.

And we have to take off this expert hat all the time, we don’t know it all. I don’t know it all in every Aboriginal community across the country because I don’t come from those parts of the country. So ask lots of questions, and make sure that you’re giving clients and families the opportunity to be able to be asked questions, to understand what identity means to them.

And how they stay strong in their identity is another thing. We do know that identity as an individual is impacted by family, it’s impacted by community, it’s impacted by connection to Country, and that whole holistic view around identity is something that everyone needs to keep in mind.

I think if there are gaps in people not feeling comfortable in having those conversations, I would really strongly encourage people to understand the social and emotional wellbeing model and philosophy. There’s lots of really great tools, particularly on Emerging Minds, that people can link in to to understand a little bit more about identity to our people.

DANA SHEN: Thanks very much, Judith. And panellists, just to let you know, we’ve got quite a lot of questions to get through over the next 15 minutes so I’m moving through them at the moment, so I’ll come back to things where I can, okay?

Michelle, I wondered if you could talk a bit more about – so we’ve focused a little bit on individuals, but both yourself and Kym have broadened out to talk about broader connection in community. What would you suggest are important for practitioners to consider as they get to know a community? What would you suggest is important?

MICHELLE SWEET: I think it’s interesting hearing Kym talk when you’ve worked in that one community for so long. I had a small experience of that working in Alice Springs for 14, 15 years so have done that. But predominantly I’m working across different communities so I think that brings maybe a different response than what you might have as well. And so some of the things, it might be very quick and you’re moving into a community where you actually don’t really have a contact there, or know a lot about it.

So for our team we work alongside Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people, and so that’s a really big thing to be able to do that. But sometimes that’s not always the case, and so some of the things that we do is having a look at - if you’re in with a group then having a look, who’s in the room? Who’s the important people I need to talk to? Who’s the Elders?

And also, again, being curious, not having to come in and know the answers. Like Judith said, it’s asking those questions. I think we get told a lot not to ask questions and it freezes where we are at times, but asking those questions and connecting in.

And again, understanding what kind of services are in the community, what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services might be there that you can talk to. And who are the best people in that community who need to be involved in these discussions? So even if it’s that one on one individual, who’s the family, who’s the community that may need to be involved?

DANA SHEN: Thanks very much, Michelle. Kym I want to come back to a couple of things, because of you mentioning the work that you’ve done with the Stolen Generation. So I want to frame this question with that, but also in a broader way. In our work in social services we talk a lot about complexity, the complexity of a family. The way I like to describe it is more that we’re working with families that have a lot of worries, and a lot of big things that they’re having to work through.

So, I wondered if you could in your answer consider a couple of things. First of all, your thoughts about the working with big issues, and when there’s lots and lots of things going on for a family. But also, I imagine you might have something to say about the identity work, because you’ve done it with the Stolen Generation. So I wonder, maybe the concept of complexity too. What do practitioners need to consider when working with lots of worries and a lot of big things?

KYM SCHELLEN: That’s a huge question in a way. In the work that I do, in working particularly with Stolen Generation people, but not only Stolen Generation – because I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a family that hasn’t been affected by Stolen Generation in some form. Even directly, my mother-in-law is a Stolen Generation person. So I don’t think I’ve ever come across it that no family was affected, I doubt that very much.

So the complexity, that idea of connection that we talked about before, to me that is very complex, even though we are not alone and people are part of - when we think from a psychological point, systems theory, that people are part of systems within the family, within the bigger family, within the community. And then we add the Aboriginal context and that’s very complex because then it goes to land, it goes to responsibilities and all that sort of stuff, so hugely complex.

I think the things as practitioners, I think one of the things that practitioners often don’t get to see those complexities because they are guided by pre-existing knowledges, or what they believe are knowledges, about where that person or where that community [inaudible] that family. And I think these pre-conceived knowledges really get in the way of understanding the complexity of what people are trying to process and deal with.

I think one of the things in my work, I always take a lot of time when I’m first starting to work with a person having a look at the referral that I’m getting and trying to pull that apart, that referral, and trying to understand what was that like for that person to hear these things? Usually those referrals are loaded with lots of diagnoses and all these sort of stuff, and reports and all of that. And I think that these knowledges, so-called knowledges, really can blind us and block out understanding the stories that people have actually been living, and the complexity of those stories in understanding that that doesn’t just affect me, it affects this person, it affects the family, and it affects the community. Trying to understand the process when children are taken, it’s not just the family or the immediate people that suffer from that, the community suffers from that. So its connectedness makes it very complex.

And I think these pre-existing knowledges prevent us from actually having the opportunity to actually hear a story, hear the story that the person is actually – and we’ve got these diagnoses and labels and all that. And like I said before, I’m a psychologist, I don’t want to turn on my own profession, but I think often it’s been more hindering than helpful, to be honest, in working with community and helping to heal some of those things. Because like I said, most referrals come loaded with labels and discussions and indications about what that person is and who they are, and we don’t get to hear it. We don’t get to hear what they’re trying to process and we block out automatically, and it stops us from hearing the real story. I think that [inaudible]

DANA SHEN: Kym, you’re breaking -

KYM SCHELLEN: - the power of the written word is a big thing. I -

DANA SHEN: Kym, we missed the first part of that sentence. I’m going to come back to you because your internet is slowing down quite a lot, but I will come back because you were about to say something really important.

So Jude, one of the things is the challenge of actually making connection, so we’ve talked about that. And making connection with community, it’s hard to create the spaces to make that work well. I wonder from your perspective and the work that you’ve done, what is it that’s needed in teams and organisational supports to better able to build systems that can do this from your experience, Jude?

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Look, I’ve worked in lots of different spaces, government, non-government, and worked in very challenging conservative environments where resistance to change is quite prominent, particularly when it comes to understanding cultural ways of doing and being, and engagement.

But you can’t underestimate the power of education and exposure because we don’t know what we don’t know. So a lot of it is really trying to immerse people around cultural ways of doing and being, sharing stories and bringing back that narrative. And look, we know a lot for our communities, we have these dominant stories that take over, strength in stories and people’s strength in community and those sorts of things, so we need to make sure we’re bringing those conversations into the space. They may be absent in our work and they may be absent in our team, but I think a little bit of exposure, a little bit of education.

Cultural training, there’s all sorts of cultural training you can do. Cultural learning, cultural awareness, cultural safety. I never say competency because that means we tick a box and we know it all. It’s a lifelong journey around developing that cultural intelligence to be able to [inaudible]

But we can all do a little bit ourselves. We sometimes are working in systems that are lots of red tape, we can’t make a lot of change. It can be really disempowering to us as workers as well. I know I’ve definitely gone beyond boundaries to be able to get outcomes for families in the past, which got me in trouble as well. But I think there are real little things that we could do around how – and I’ll draw from what Michelle and Kym have said around genuine time taken to engage with mob and to listen to them, to understand their stories, and to really try to understand the power imbalance. Whether we’re Aboriginal or not, when we’re working with families there is a historical disadvantage that we’re just kind of born in to. There are these things that are kind of invisible. And we talk about impacts of colonisation, but this is an intergenerational thing we’re kind of born in to. And even me, I'm mindful of my own privileges. I’ve had access to education that I know a lot of other mob haven’t had access to.

So the way that I see it is that each and every one of us can do things in little ways to make sure that we are influencing the people around us around trying to understand better, engagement strategies, and really deeply and meaningfully connecting with people.

And also taking the time to go and engage in some training. Like I said, we don’t know what we don’t know. We need to get people out there, we need to get them curious and interested. And what I do feel is in spaces, I’ve often shared some real-life examples of tragic circumstances, of things that have gone really wrong, and given examples around systems that have really impacted on good outcomes, particularly around child protection. There’s so much we could do to prevent child removals, but we know there’s lots and lots of gaps in those services which keeps things moving along.

I think thinking about reconciliation as well, we really need to leverage off the systems that already exist within organisations. I walked into an organisation where there was a reconciliation action plan, it expired 18 months prior, it wasn’t reviewed, 90% of it wasn’t delivered. And it wasn’t until I came on board, I thought I’m going to do this and I basically wrote it myself, engaged with community, engaged with Aboriginal staff, and basically pulled it together in a way that I knew there were realistic things that we can actually work towards achieving.

But also making the emphasise around the governance of that. It doesn’t sit with Aboriginal people, it’s not our problem to try and address. It sits with the decision makers, and so approaching the genuine allies in teams, in leadership roles across organisations. It’s like if I can’t influence that change, I’ll get in someone else’s ear to make sure I can get their voice to carry and influence my messages. So being strategic in that way, and I’ve definitely seen some great improvement in that regard.

DANA SHEN: Great, thank you.

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: It’s Reconciliation Week, so don’t underestimate the RAP. And it’s not just a week, it’s a journey. It’s constant, it takes work, it takes effort, and every little bit counts.

DANA SHEN: Great, thanks, Judith. Kym, I want to come back to you, and I just wanted to just summarise what you’ve already said and what I heard, and I had a question for you. So, one of the things that I heard around the response around complexity and issues of complexity is a couple of things. First of all, that connection, in and of itself, in our communities is complex, and what that all means. That there are times when we will be doing referrals that are written in particular ways that a family might not want to look at, might not understand themselves. So, a couple of things I just wanted to check with you about that: Is it useful then to write referrals that a family would be comfortable to read and understand? I guess that’s question one.

And the other question I had was you talked a bit about how because of our training, that can make us blind to really seeing the narrative and story of others. And I just wondered given that, given that we have to hold on to that, there are ways we have to work, structures we’ve got to work, what do we need to let go of to be able to do that?

So two questions, referrals around families, and also how do we know the jobs we’re in, the professions we’re in, but are able to let go? I just wondered if you could address both of those.

Kym, I think there’s actually a bit of a delay and you’re not coming through. You’re completely muted now, so that’s okay. But I think you gave me the thumbs up that I was on the right track with the things that I was saying, that I heard you and what you were saying? Okay, yep. We can’t hear you at the moment at all so I’ll move on and I’m going to try to come back again. Cool.

All right then, I wondered when I can now have a chat with Michelle. So Michelle, one of the things that has come through as a key question for people is really about practical resources, things that people can really use and apply. I wondered if you could speak to some of the ones that you think are going to be most useful for people?

MICHELLE SWEET: So I think there’s two, there’s the paper-based resources and the digital resources. We do a lot with the digital resources in the last 10 years, and one of the most important things though that we talk about is just knowing your resource and knowing who you’re working with. So making sure there’s a match there.

And people are very time-poor, and so understanding the resources, it does take some time to know what those resources are. So some of the places we recommend people to have a look at is in WellMob. So WellMob is a website, it’s got over 400 resources, social and emotional wellbeing resources for First Nations communities, families, and people working in that space. So that’s a great website to go to because there’s just so much in there and such a range to be able to have a look at, and it has such a range of different resources, videos, papers, webinars, podcasts. So that’s a great one.

And of course I’m going to unashamedly talk about the ‘Stay Strong’ resources, which there’s quite a few of them which have been developed over 20 years, so there’s a lot. They were developed by Aboriginal mental health workers 20 years ago with the concept of practice, which really is such a simple concept in how to engage and what people want in terms of that engagement. And how to approach, and different strategies around connection. So again, there’s a whole lot of different resources from paper-based care plans, digital care plans, videos.

And I have to say Emerging Minds has some incredible resources on there as well to have a look at practice, ways of practicing, and strategies to work with families and communities in practice.

And then there’s of course Healing Foundation which has some fantastic resources. Lowitja has some great ones on there as well. So I think they’re the main places that I’d recommend people have a really good dig into and have a look at what might be relevant.

DANA SHEN: Fantastic, thank you Michelle.

Jude, one of the things that has come up and I mentioned this earlier, is that there’s been quite a lot of questions around education and child protection. And in both cases there’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of expectations in those systems, a lot of pressure on people who work in those areas. Jude, I wondered, given the pressures, and given what Michelle said about the importance of the journey as well as the outcome, so the relationships as well as the outcome, how do we actually support practitioners to apply things in genuine ways?

So if we really hold that people really do feel pressure and there’s lots that they’ve got to do, there’s KPIs and all sorts of things, how can we think about, for practitioners, how can they do this in a genuine way despite the pressures? Given your experiences, I wondered what your thoughts were on that.

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Look, one thing that’s kind of guided me in terms of the way that I do my work with children, adults, and families is really about taking this de-centred approach. And it sums up everything that Kym’s talked about and Michelle’s talked about, but from a narrative approach, is understanding that to be genuine, and I’m talking about narrative as in how it was made and designed by Michael White. He did say that one of the key foundations to how you apply this kind of therapy is through the learnings or engagement with Aboriginal people. He said they taught him what true, genuine ways of working were, and that authenticity and transparency were the foundations to how you actually work with people in general, kind of like this humanism approach.

But it really comes down to we might be time limited, we might need to go out and do that assessment, tick the box and get things done very quickly, but it does really compromise genuine engagement, right? Aboriginal families are often labelled more at risk when they disengage. So that initial point of contact they have with any practitioner, it sets the foundation of what the outcome’s going to look like. So we need to make sure that we are actually holding a space for them and working at their own pace.

So being de-centred is really not being an expert, but allowing clients to share their journey and their story to be able to build trust with you, let your wall down, let them yarn about who they are, what they want to prioritise in their conversation, and let them be the drivers of the conversation. Let them try to find the solutions to what the concerns are. Because we’re very quick to try and fix the problem, like Michelle’s first point was we’re coming in here outcomes-focused, we’re not focusing on that journey. And that is where the goal of the work is, it’s really about – and I think coming to that point really is the importance of reflective practice in how we apply that. When we do look at the positive outcomes we do see with engaging with families, we need to take time to pause and think about what worked really well, and what could I have done better?

I know that in order to keep registered with any kind of profession, supervision is really important, we need to have it in place. And one thing that I’ve always practiced as well is making sure that I take time to practice Dadirri. I really try to make sure that I tap into my own reflection, and make sure that I’m drawing on the best that I can to improve ways of how I engage with mob, because it is really challenging, it really is. Challenging sectors, we want to impress our bosses, we want to follow policy and procedure, but we also know that that does compromise outcomes sometimes. So making sure that we stay within a safe space.

And our reflection of our own practice basically is reflective of outcomes at the end of the day. How well you engage with mob, how well you yarn with them, what time do you give them?

And essentially, I will leave this point here, is if our mob have one really good experience with a non-Aboriginal practitioner you’re likely to get more mob coming to that person. We have this Nunga grapevine that we’ve got, everybody knows. If they’ve had one little bad experience, or one wrong word comes out, we kind of go, “Yeah, they’re not a good person, I didn’t feel comfortable.”

So it’s quite real in terms of how we vouch for one another as practitioners in the workforce. I know that there’s been a lot of people - I happily send mob to Kym because I know the way he works and I know how respected he is in the community. And if there were people who needed to do some work around projects and research, Michelle is number one on the list because I know how she works with community. And essentially that’s it, it is a reflection of how you work. So taking the time, taking the time.

And one thing I will say is it doesn’t matter what your qualifications are, it doesn’t matter what your job title is, our mob don’t care about that. They want to know they can trust you, they know they can engage. And so, just being as genuine as you can, give a little bit of yourself, and we know we can trust you.

DANA SHEN: And Jude, it sounds like – and correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like it’s really worth spending the time early in the relationship?

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Absolutely.

DANA SHEN: It can make all the difference if you spend the time early. Okay.

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Yep.

DANA SHEN: All right, thanks, Jude.

Kym, I want to come back to you and just check in about the sound at the moment and just to see – because for me I think you’ve got something to say about this too, about the importance of how to really build genuine connection when there’s quite a lot of pressure.

I think I’m having difficulties still with hearing from Kym. I’m really sorry about that Kym, we just can’t quite hear you at the moment, although I know you’ve got so much wisdom to share. I’ll try one more time because we have about eight minutes left so I’m going to try and come back one more time.

So other things that I really wanted to respond to were really about the importance of responding to some of the questions that people had through registration. So, one of the key questions that came through was around how do connections in [inaudible] Michelle, I wondered if you could respond to that?

MICHELLE SWEET: Yep, yep. I think we keep saying the same thing, which is relationships, and the most important thing is spending time, and it isn’t any different, I think, when we’re doing that in groups or online. It’s about those same ideas about sharing something of yourself to build that connection. And we always want to create a safe space, or a space where someone feels comfortable, and allowing people the time to settle in, not just jumping into quick questions with people. So we often work in groups where we share about ourselves and the project, or what we’re doing first, before we start. And then about if it is groups, breaking people into pairs, partnering people up so they can just have those small conversations and feel a bit more comfortable.

And then as maybe the day goes on, or the morning goes on, expanding that out where it expands from partner conversations to small group conversations, to then talking within a larger group. So that’s some of the strategies, as well as obviously how the room is set up as best that we can set those rooms up.

But also finding activities that build those connections with people that are familiar with people, that it’s something they feel they can talk about. That there's some sort of – what keeps you strong, is a really simple question. What’s your favourite food? Those kind of things that can build someone up.

And also I think humour is a really good one, that you’ve got to bring that humour into something in a group where people can actually release some of that tension, or some of that angst, that happens as we come together as a group.

And then I think the last thing really, I know we’re short of time, is just being able to complete. When you come together as a group, some way of finishing, completing, that process. And simple things like even what’s one thing you would take out of this session, that you would take back to your community or family or workplace?

DANA SHEN: Fantastic, thank you Michelle. And just a point to make to people listening today, there are a couple of times when I’ve asked Kym questions and he’s been unable to answer them. We are going to be doing another session after this with some of the questions coming through and we’ll make sure that those do get answered. So do make sure you listen to the recording afterwards if Kym can’t finish answering some of the questions.

We’ve just got a few minutes left, and so one of the questions that also came through through registration was the importance of the use of non-stigmatising questions and language. So Kym, I just want to come to you and see if we can test your mic there and if you’re able to talk about how to avoid stigmatising in language with Aboriginal families?

I think again I’m not able to hear Kym. So don’t worry about that Kym, we’ll come back to you in the recording.

Jude, I wondered if you could talk a bit about how to have a non-stigmatising approach to communication with families?

JUDITH LOVEGROVE: Look, I think it comes back to my point around being de-centred is really about how we centre people in those conversations. And I think one really important thing is, and disappointingly over the years working frontline in child protection, I used to be in a program where referrals from DCP used to come to me and I’d provide intensive family-based support around trying to address any concerns around child protection issues, and to move families away from the statutory system.

And I time and time again would be really disappointed to see the terminology used to describe our families, so deficit-focused, nothing coming from a strength-base. They talk about protective factors and risk factors, but it’s very heavy on the risk factors side, which makes sense because child and safety is a really serious issue but we do have things that we can draw on with people’s strengths around addressing some of those issues.

I think one really important thing is breaking through this idea of us and them as in workforce and client, or as in professional and client, or as in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, because I think that kind of thinking is a real barrier to developing a really strong resonance in terms of therapeutic alliance, or whatever you might want to call it.

Not ever referring to people as ‘you people’, that really irritates us mob, we get it a lot.

But there’s things that – you need to make sure you don’t use acronyms. The one thing that annoys everyone is using ATSI in everything because it’s much shorter to type out. You’re either too lazy to type it out - but we would respect Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, it needs to be spelt out because it’s not about being an acronym because people do find that really offensive.

But I think doing your background work and knowing the community that you’re going to be working in. If it’s a new community, doing your homework, tapping into Elders, knowing how to yarn. What’s the local lingo that you refer to? If we’re talking about child protection, do they call it welfare, do they call it something else? So making sure that we’re using a simple language that’s connected to the literacy level and the local language of community is really important, I think.

And I think one more thing I would say is allowing clients and families to be able to sum up what the experience is for them and really using their words. That is such a powerful, yet underestimated, skill that we can use to be able to really bolster up these preferred stories, and stories of strength where we can really empower them to be the drivers of change, and to find solutions and to hold the space, and really validate what their experience is.

I think there is never enough time that we can continually develop our skills in being able to engage with mob, yarn to them, respectfully be curious. Someone says they feel like they’re depressed, we can’t say we understand what depression feels like. We can’t tick a box according to the DSM and say they meet this criteria because everybody’s experience of depression is different. So we need to unpack that, what is it for them, and use their language. That’s quite a powerful thing.

DANA SHEN: Thank you so much, Jude. So we’re really, really close to having to end now, so prior to ending I just wanted to thank you so much, the presenters, and us working through our tech issues. As I said earlier, we’ll have a bit of a yarn afterwards and answer some of those questions, and others.

Thanks presenters, audience, AIFS communications teams, and Child, Family Evidence and Evaluation team. Remember to subscribe to AIFS newsletter to be notified about recording. And reminder, remember the survey, if you could fill that in, that would be wonderful. We look forward to joining you at our next webinar. Take care, and we look forward to seeing you again next time.

Well, hi everyone, welcome back. As promised, Kym and I are spending a little bit more time together, so we can learn from his practice and his work with community, and individuals and families as well.

So hi, Kym. I wondered if we can start with the first question that I have here, which is really around language. So questions have come through from practitioners about how to speak to families in ways that are non-stigmatising, practical, and effective, and I just wondered if you had a view about, from your practice, how best to do that.

KYM SCHELLEN: Yeah, it’s a really big question again, it’s a huge question actually. When we think of stigmatised language, or when I think of stigmatised language, I think of language that describes people in particular ways that they are not okay with.

And I think this is one of the huge problems for practitioners, is the idea that immediately, when you’re actually starting to work with a person, you have a referral, that there's an immediate lot of stigmatising going on. That referral has some descriptions in that referral, and I think I spoke about that previously, is that my first important work is the actual referral, looking at that referral and actually trying to de-stigmatise what’s on that referral. So there’s language on there which is - particularly mental health, often I have this thing in my head that often mental health does more damage than good because what it does is it reinforces this language that pathologises people.

So to me, the first part is that de-pathologising so that we can actually open up our heads, open up our minds to what’s going on. And what is this language like for that person? So like I said earlier, the first part is, for me, is to actually go, ‘What does this referral look like? I know what it looks like to me. What does that referral feel like to you?’, this client, this person who’s come to you and is saying, ‘I think I need your help.’ And they’re already feeling pretty pathologised, and thanks to systems, very clinical systems that are ingrained in these ideas.

So I think when we think about stigmatised language, it’s a really tough one because obviously we want to de-pathologise it, and we want to normalise, and that’s part of the work that I like to do, is normalise. So we hear the story and we say, “What’s happening? How come you’ve got this referral, what’s been happening?” And then look at all these words that are in these referrals, and I will read them out to people and people often don’t even know what they mean.

And I will really use that as an opportunity to go, “Well, let’s normalise that. So really you’re a traumatised person and you’re responding in this particular way because this is what happened, this is who helped you, this is who didn’t help you when you were dealing with those traumas.” So that’s a pretty broad way of saying it, but that is exactly what I do, is trying - but then we’ve got the problem of language. I don’t want to be condescending to people either as if they don’t know language, so often I will clarify language and try and normalise it in terms that make sense and simplify it.

But I think that the system is really good at – I think particularly around ideas of child protection and education-wise, we still have these ideas that are very stigmatising. So at one level we have systems that say, “Oh, we really want to help people in the community, Aboriginal people. There’s lots of things that make it really hard for them to function in the same ways as people that haven’t gone through these experiences of colonisation, the traumatisation of that, Stolen Generation, all of that.” But at one level the systems says, “Oh yes, we want to make sure that – we want to fix that, that’s really bad.” But it still uses language that still actually has this idea that at the end of the day we are still right, and I think that can be really hard.

So when we’re trying to actually de-pathologise and not use stigmatised language, it’s already there. So the client is already being exposed to that and is actually living that in a way. And often I find clients are often very almost guarded, so they go, “You’re a psychologist”, so they’re a little bit guarded about that. And they usually look me up and down and they go, “Where are you from?”, and they start asking questions and all that. But there’s still this internal guard because I think of this stigmatised language, which is mainly pathological about them, about these people, and they’ve been experiencing that for a long, long time.

So when someone says, “Well, I’m going to go see a psychologist”, I can imagine their heads going, “Really? What the hell would he know? What does he know about my story? What would he have a clue about my story?”

And so the use of language, although like I said I don’t want to be condescending and suggest that they don’t know what that language is, but it’s not only about the language, it’s about the concepts that come with that language, the pathologising of experiences and things like that. So my job first and foremost is to really try and avoid using that language, but if I do use it then I want to explain it. I like to make it simple and keep it simple so that they get – without being condescending, because I think you can be condescending if you try and use language that’s too simplistic.

And in all fairness, it depends on the person too. Some people are wanting to know their language, some people want to understand that, others don’t and feel a bit downgraded if we use language.

So the use of language – and I think one of the things that - I like language myself full stop anyway, I like to use language. And I feel pretty privileged, I’ve done a lot of work around the country, particularly over the last 30 years with Stolen Generation, a lot of reunions, a lot of travel. But I was also privy to some long work, working with some older people from up in the APY lands and that. They used to teach me language, and I like learning language, so I like doing that anyway. And I’ve travelled a fair bit of Asia and I like learning language over there.

And when you try and take on someone’s own language, well, it’s the greatest form of flattery, isn’t it? To copy what someone does, to say, “I want to know”, people like that. People think, ‘You’re interested, you’re interested in me but you’re also interested in my language and what that means’, and I think that can be expanded.

So as far as language, that’s a skill I think, is actually learning language and understanding what – I know what people are talking about when they say things and they’re talking language. And I know that we’ve got broken language, even in Ngarrindjeri there’s words – I know lots and lots of words within that, and I know that it’s not a full and complete language as it used to be. But understanding where you’re working and who you’re working with, I think that's a really important thing because it’s showing respect, and it’s showing that you actually value that. And you value them, but you also value that culture, you value that people, so I think that’s a huge one.

DANA SHEN: Great, thank you Kym. And actually what you’ve said, it leads me to want to ask you, given the discussion about language, I want to ask you a question about the language of strength-based practice, working to strength-based practice. I wondered if you could talk to me from your point of view about what that actually means in practice?

KYM SCHELLEN: Yes, so I’m probably – I don’t know what percentage of psychologists have done narrative. But I did narrative, and in all fairness I was doing narrative training when I was training because I’d come across ideas that were quite contrary to the postmodern ideas when I was studying. And I was one of these people that wrote all through my textbooks, scribbled on them and would write things like, ‘What a load of garbage, what about this, what about that?’ And I remember coming across postmodernist ideas with David Epston and Michael White, there was also the Galveston School in the US where that stuff, those postmodern ideas, had started to develop. So those ideas really interested me and that was real to me, I found that to be more real. So when thinking about ideas of - ways of seeing the person in that, I think that that school of thought is really important.

So, when we use strength-based ideas – and I like these ideas, and I think they can be really important and really helpful, they can also be – we’ve got this language now of neuro-divergence, which sounds great when we look at it from a point of view. And I really like that idea, I like that way of thinking.

But also, it worries me a little bit sometimes, that can be used to pathologise and actually dismiss certain things. It almost suggests for someone that’s – well, I’ll use the example of, say, attention deficit, ADHD. Neuro-diversity is used a lot in that area of attention deficit and that sort of stuff. However, my worry for that is that there can be a dismissal of trauma, because there’s huge parallels between ADHD behaviours and trauma behaviours. And what worries me is that I think for practitioners to be mindful that this language can actually be – is it part of reinforcing old ideas? So if we say, “Oh well, this person’s just got that. Oh well, it’s ADHD and that’s neuro-diversity, and that suggests that it’s an innate thing”, whereas maybe that's not and are we dismissing?

Going back to the strengths-based ideas though, we were talking in the last session around the ideas of hearing and understanding a story in a context of relationship with both the person, with their family and the way they do relationships, and the high importance of relationships. And if we have that idea that we’re using these concepts as recognising the strength-base because they are, they’re hugely strength-based for everyone involved.

If we look at traditional culture and community, unbelievably strength-based at every level, at every member of that community, not just a single – we do have a bit of an individualist society today which is more the individual. That there’s certain individuals that are seen as strength. We go, “Oh, they’ve got amazing strengths and values and skills”, and that’s quite different to the way community works, that’s very different to community.

So again, my head wonders about – it’s good – are we using head strength-based in a broader context, or are we using it in an individual context? And of course they’re both really important, but I worry about language that dismisses then and wants to hear certain things at the individual level, despite the person’s experience at the community level and the family level.

And of course we would never want to dismiss strength-based approaches because that’s everything in a lot of ways. It’s about working – I always liked the idea from the narrative perspective, going, “How did you manage to survive this?” When I hear a story and go, “It is amazing” - and it’s constant in my work, my head is staggered. And I’ll say, “It amazes me, it amazes me what you survived. How amazing what you’ve managed to do despite these things.”

I think that this is the pathologising of things like the Stolen Generation. People forget people have survived, and survived amazingly. I had a client at Tailem Bend, an old fellow, a non-Aboriginal person, and he was about 85 I think he was. And he had gone through his whole life, he’d gone through quite significant trauma as a child, and he never - and I said to him, “ I can’t say to you, because my head says it’d be really rude and disrespectful of me to say, ‘Well, we need to help you deal with that’”, because clearly he had dealt with that. He’d survived it, and actually had family and grandchildren and all that.

So I think they’re the strength-base when I think about those ideas. But thinking that strength-based is an idea, and I really like the idea and I really work for that idea, I am also a bit mindful about what does that sound like if we take it in the context that often people are being referred, and they’re referred in a pathological way? Highlighting pathology, rather than actually survival and resilience and amazing survival skills.

DANA SHEN: Thanks Kym.

KYM SCHELLEN: I hope that's partly answered it.

DANA SHEN: It does, and it really leads me to the next question I wanted to ask, and I think you’re touching on elements of this anyway. So there is a lot of discussion in the service world about complexity and what that means around - I tend to think about it more as people going through different things in their lives, there’s ups and downs, this can happen in all different ways. But the term complexity is often used, and I just wondered if you could talk a bit about how you think about that? And what that means in relation to your work, and what you think practitioners should be thinking about when they’re thinking about complexity?

KYM SCHELLEN: So when you’re asking the question about complexity, are you asking the question about the complexity of what people are dealing with, or about the complexity of the work that we have to do in working with people?

DANA SHEN: That’s a fantastic question. I wonder, could you address both for practitioners?

KYM SCHELLEN: I can try, I can try. To me, I have this way of working and it’s just mine, it’s just what I do, and I’ve been developing it for about 10 years now, and it’s just this idea of having frameworks for people to tell me their story. And one of the things about that, I had a fellow in Riverland, an Aboriginal fellow, and he’d come a fair way to come and see me. And we had our first initial looking at the referral, which I usually do, and then he spoke for probably a good 10, 15 minutes and I’m writing down all this stuff and I’m listening to this.

And he got to the end and he goes, “And that’s it.” And I went wow, I said, “So that’s the extremely condensed version of your life. It’s got to be way more complex than that, it’s got to be way, way, way more than that.”

And he really reminded me of this idea that people are taught to do that almost, but no one really knows the depth of what you’ve experienced as a person and how complex that is. You know the Native American saying, ‘Don’t judge me until you’ve walked a mile in my moccasins’. When you break that down and you think about that, the amazingness of that is so significant, it’s such a smart saying, because for me to have experienced the same as you, that means I had to experience the same people, the same places, the same family, the same everything, the same teachers, the same everything. That’s just not possible. All of a sudden the complexity is the part where we go wow, that means that there’s billions of combinations of stories that are really possible. And to hear that – and we go, “Oh wow, that is really hard, that’s just too much to try and - ”, but to me that is the important part.

So to me, the complexity, people’s lives are so complex and I can’t know that until I slowly start to understand, go, “Well, what have you been through? And who helped you through those things? Who didn’t help you through those things?” So to me, you can have a similar set of experiences shared by a few people, yet there’ll be such complexities that are separating those stories. We go, “Oh, you experienced this, this creates this, and this creates that.”

And from a scientific point of view, I like neuroscience because neuroscience gives me a bit of a tool to help say to my clients, “Well, this is what the brain does when it’s gone through trauma. We know now way more than we used to know about these things, but still that is still - ”, so we clinicalise that but it’s still not as complex as actually the story what someone went through.

So to me, that’s a privilege, to actually hear someone’s story, because you’re never going to hear that from anyone else. That’s their unique story, and it’s so complex, and it’s taken their lifetime so far, depending on how old they are obviously, to get to that.

And I think that the mental health system – I did it myself – we tend to have this thing of going, “We’ve got to have it fixed soon.” My first trade was mechanics, and I used to say to myself, “Well, you wouldn’t keep taking your car back to the same person, would you, and it not be fixed?” But we’re not cars. It took me quite a lot of years to go, “Well, that’s just not humans, we’re not like that, we are very complex and whole lots of things are happening in that.”

I think that the system very much likes to have us - even as a psychologist, doctors go, “Oh, well, we’ll give you six sessions and you better write us a letter and tell us why you need more.” It’s like really? You want to unravel someone’s life and the complexities of that, particularly when we’re dealing with trauma at really compounded levels, that’s not going to happen and that’s just unbelievably unrealistic. But I think that people actually do that, like that fellow that went, “Okay”, in 10 minutes rattled off his whole life. It’s like wow. So I think people think that they have to do that, that I should be fixed soon, really quickly, and it’s just not like that.

So when I think about the complexity for people, I think that’s the way I think about it. I think that life is complex and I can never understand how complex it is until you start to tell me that.

From the other point of view, the complexity of doing the work, I think it’s very complex for the very same reasons. Because if we try and minimalise it, and we talked in the last session about the preoccupation with – and that’s why I sort of pull apart, deconstruct, referrals, is because what that does is it shuts us off to that language, it shuts us off to the understanding. And it’s trying to simplify, “Oh well, this person has - ”, it’s amazing how many referrals I’ll get that’ll say anxiety, PTSD. Sometimes they’ll say, very rarely, sometimes they’ll say complex PTSD, but more often not. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, and six sessions of CBT as if that’s going to do the job.

So the client then thinks that that’s the way it is, the doctor – and one of the things I love about the community is that the community, there’s a level of resistance in the community that says, “I don’t buy that actually, I don’t really buy that. I know what happened to me, I know what I have experienced, I know what my community has experienced, and I know what my broader community has experienced.” So when you come up with this little referral, and this language, and these diagnoses and these labels, I think I love the resistance side that says, “Yeah, I’ll sort of call it on that, I’m just not sure if that’s quite true.” And I think that that resistance is pretty cool actually.

From the practitioners’ perspective, the complexity is actually being able to actually resist making it really simple by just following the doctor that said, “This person has got this,” and the psychiatrist that said, “He’s got this, this, and this.”

“Okay, well, we’ll go along and you can keep taking your medication, and we’ll have a few sessions and we might do some CBT, and try and discuss why you think about the way you think about what you’ve gone through.”

I think if practitioners can bring that complexity and actually dare to actually expand on these ideas, and actually challenge it and say, “Is that really all there is to it? You’ve just got depression and you probably were born with it, and there’s these ideas.” And be prepared to actually have a go and challenge those ideas and say, “Is that really true? Is this really the way it is?”

And I think that works on a number of levels because I have a lot of kids, I was doing some work, and I won’t say where, but I was going over there or about 18 months and it was quite a remote area. And I was really shocked at the number of referrals that I was getting for ADHD. Now these kids that I was seeing, it wasn’t ADHD, they were traumatised kids, this was trauma that we were talking about. And I kept thinking is there something in the water here that all these kids have got ADHD?

I think that this happens in remote areas and rural areas where there’s people been around for a long, long time, that no one challenges it and says, “Oh well, yeah, this is it. The paediatrician says he’s got ADHD so he must have ADHD.” And I did question and it was amazing, I got responses that I didn’t expect, it was like, “No, don’t you question that.”

So I think complexity, where you go for practitioners, is to be prepared to accept that it’s going to be complex, that it’s not going to be an easy thing to do, and step past the idea that hopefully we’ve got you fixed in six sessions. And this is where the relationship part comes in because then when you’re actually dealing with someone, you’re actually developing your relationship with that person, which is quite complex by itself.

So I think it taps into all those ideas of being prepared to make it complex, and to hear the story in more complete – you’re never going to hear a complete story, but you’re going to hear a better story than what the referral says, that’s for sure.

DANA SHEN: Thanks Kym, I think people will really find that interesting about that kind of movement between the consumer, the client, the practitioner -

KYM SCHELLEN: Yes, yes.

DANA SHEN: - and how it reinforces each other. People will love that and be able to explore what you’ve talked about, so thanks Kym.

KYM SCHELLEN: No problem.

DANA SHEN: With all of this, there was one more question that I wanted to ask. There’s a number of people that are listening that will work in a really tough social service system with a lot of expectations, a lot of pressures, a lot of rules, a lot of ways of doing things with limitations, et cetera, et cetera. And I wondered what advice you might give them in relation to working in this way in these really tough systems, because there’s a lot of pressure that can push people away from some of the things that you said. I just wondered if you were able to just speak to that a little bit?

KYM SCHELLEN: 100%. So you’re talking about the child protection system and the education system as well, aren’t you? So I think there's – go on.

DANA SHEN: That’s exactly right. There's so much pressure on people, there’s workforce issues, and lots of people go into this because they really care and they’re trying their best.

KYM SCHELLEN: Yeah, I think you’re dead right, and I’ve often wondered that myself. I worked in Glenside for about six months in the chronic schizophrenia ward and I was really dismayed a bit about the lack of empathy that some of the nurses – And I used to think, ‘But surely you took this job on because you wanted to do better, you wanted to help someone,’ you know what I mean? And my head says it's often the system actually does this, it actually wears people down. There were some fantastic nurses, really caring people working, but it did disappoint me a bit that there were those that just got sucked up by the system, this systemic thinking.

And it’s really interesting because it touches on these ideas about we use the word nuances in working in community, to expect that there’s going to be some nuances that you’re going to experience as a non-Aboriginal practitioner. I think that that’s probably a really subtle thing to say, that there’s going to be nuances. There’s going to be a lot, there are some huge differences that are not just nuances, just little bits of difference, I think there’s some huge differences.

So I think one of the things for practitioners if they’re coming from within child protection and education ideas, or from those systems, that there is definitely language there, and I think we talked about this last time, that suggests – like I said earlier, we want to address some past difficulties and traumas, et cetera, but really we still believe our way is the way. And I think that that’s a strong message, particularly in education, I see it in education, this idea, not recognising that there’s huge – they’re not just nuances, there’s quite different ways of being as an educator, and traditionally what an educator would do.

Experiential learning versus non-experiential learning. When I did my training back in the ’90s, I remember doing my honours, and I was told, “Don’t do anything –” I wanted to do Aboriginal learning, the learning styles, as opposed to non-Aboriginal, and I was basically told, “Don’t do it.” Now, I was stubborn and I did do it. And it was interesting, because it was only then sort of going, “Oh, well, we don’t talk about that sort of stuff.” So, I did my honours at Adelaide Uni and I was shocked to hear those sort of approaches. So, it was very much the idea, “Well, that’s too tough to discuss.”

So, I know that is a long time ago, it’s 30 years ago or more, but I think those ideas are still pretty strong in those systems, that idea that our way is the way. The mainstream Western way is the way.

And I think that for practitioners, if they could only try and immerse themselves in a different way of thinking, and question themselves about, ‘Is this the way of thinking?’ I always think about this idea of experiential learning, that Aboriginal and traditional cultures generally worldwide will generally not stop children, and I always use the fire, they won’t stop the children from touching the fire too much because then they go, “Well, they’re not going to do that again, and then we don’t have to worry that they’re going to do it again.”

Whereas the Western way is very, “No, no, don’t touch that, don’t touch that”, and 30 years later they’re still worrying about whether that child’s going to touch the fire eventually. So one way to me is very smart, and one way is quite different, and I think there's reasons for that, of seeing the world and all that.

I think that one of the huge things that I’ve become very interested in in the last decade or so is the idea, the huge difference in understanding from a collectivist culture to a non-collectivist culture. And there’s lots of research, and there’s lots of anthropological stuff that actually talks about this where Eastern, which includes Australia, is quite different to Western. Western is collectivist, and it always has been because it experienced temperatures which they had to store – that storage was important. You had to herd animals first, and if you herded animals then you needed to store for them.

In Eastern, you didn’t have animals to herd, particularly in Australia. You couldn’t herd a kangaroo, good luck with that. And so there was no storage, so it was more different ways of adapting to their environment and dealing with their environment.

And so one leads to more an idea, I’m not sure, the term counterfactuals, where people, “What are we going to do if this happens?” And one of the things that they’ve found in Chinese characters, they don’t have those ideas. Yet in Western it’s very much, “What are we going to do if it snows all year? What are we going to do? We need this, we need that.” Those things, and I know that’s a little bit off topic but it’s not that off topic as we think, because it is the idea that that changes the way a culture thinks and how they deal with things.

So to bring it back, is that Aboriginal learning is very different to non-Aboriginal learning. And there’s huge, like I said, not just nuances, but there’s actually quite huge differences. One is seen as very protective and one is not. One is going, “We’ve got to get through, we need you to be as capable as possible. That includes experiencing, you have to experience, because that makes you more capable.”

And it’s a bit funny when I hear – I left home at 15, and I hear – I know obviously there’s housing, but when I hear 35-year-old men living with Mum and Dad still, my head goes, what? And of course we’ve got the housing problems and that, so I’m not thinking about that, but I’m just thinking about this idea.

So, I think for someone that’s from child protection, there’s definitely huge differences in the way that changes the thinking, and the challenge for child protection workers is to be able to immerse and understand, go, ‘What does this look like in an experiential learning culture? What does that mean in the real picture?’ Without going, ‘Oh, but it still means that you can’t do this, and you shouldn’t do that, because that would mean you’re a bad parent.’ Do you know what I mean? It doesn’t.

And the challenge obviously for child protection - I believe in child protection, my wife is a child protection worker and has been for 20 years. I believe in it, I believe in it in principle. It’s in the application and the understanding where I see some problems that are concerning, and this is why it’s still continuing. In a way we still see Stolen Generation practices still going on, it’s just hidden behind an inability to try and understand and go, ‘What does it actually mean? What does it look like to be an experiential culture that actually brings up their children experientially?’ There's a huge difference.

And the same for education, education is the same, the way we teach. That was my area that I really liked in the early stages of doing psychology was the learning styles, how you learn, and there's huge differences. And there’s a lady called Catherine Ellis who has not been around for a long time but she’s from Adelaide Uni, did a lot of work in this area around the different styles of learning and what that meant. The idea for Aboriginal people is you shouldn’t put someone on the spot. That comes out like avoiding eye contact and all of that. So it’s not so much about that, it’s the idea you don’t make someone feel embarrassed in front of other people, you just don’t do it.

Yet in studying, our education system often does that, it actually puts people on the spot and says, “Oh well, if you know this then you should know this”, and make it really complex. And they go, “You’re trying to trick me, you shouldn’t make me feel like that.”

So even that’s a very simple thing, but that’s actually part of the bigger – so for me, the challenge for educators and for child protection workers is to actually see, try and immerse your thinking into what does it mean to be – and not say that it’s the same because it is not the same.

To me, there is a lot more that’s different within Aboriginal culture than there is the same, I think there's a lot more different than there is the same. And of course people go, “Oh no, everyone’s the same.” Well yeah, of course we are, but you can say that about animals. How many animals have got four legs? They’ve all got four legs, but you wouldn’t say a dog is the same as a bear. So there’s huge differences.

So immersing yourself in that ability to think down into and immerse yourself into that understanding, I think that’s probably an important thing for a worker or a practitioner.

DANA SHEN: Fantastic. Thank you so much Kym, thank you. You’ve taken us through really different ways of thinking about language, about thinking about concept from very different directions, and now about how practitioners can bring themselves into these systems and to have a depth of learning and connection and curiosity. Obviously respectfully doing that, but really exploring what does this mean? To really come and understand from a very, very different way of seeing the world and being a part of that too. So thank you Kym, thank you so much for your time.

KYM SCHELLEN: No problem.

DANA SHEN: And thank you to everyone that has joined us in this session, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.