Social Workers Improving Healthcare: Part 1 Rosalie Pockett AM and Health Inequity

This month we bring you an encore release of our conversation with Rosalie Pocket AM who has spent years overturning the inequities and injustices built into our health system.  In this conversation, Rosalie describes her abiding interests in the social and community based factors that influence pe…

The Social Worker in the Library

For many people who see a social worker, it is because they are already involved in our health or community services system, and they are referred by another professional.  This means they have to make contact with our formal service system, and this is something that doesn’t suit everyone.  What i…

Out of the 'Too Hard Basket'

When young people walk through Alex Wilson’s door, they are already carrying the stigma from their long involvement in our mental health system.  They know they have been called ‘Frequent Flyers’ or ‘treatment resistant’.  Alex’s aim for her work with these young people is that they will feel appre…

ENCORE Leaving Matilda: From Elite Sport to Social Work

Back in 2021, we talked to Ellen Beaumont about her experiences representing Australia as one of the Young Matildas, and her life afterwards.  Back then we had just learned that Australia would be hosting the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.  Now that we know how well the Matildas have played in that t…

Ethical decisions at the end of life

Jane Sullivan OAM’s career has spanned paid and unpaid work, community services and the health system, social work and psychology, church organisations and the public sector.  As she looks back over her career, it is her conversations with one group of people that stay with her.  These were the peo…

“Walk With Us to a Better Future”: The Voice to Parliament and the Road Ahead

Professor Tom Calma AO is one of Australia’s most respected human rights and social justice campaigners.  He is Senior Australian of the Year 2023, and he is a social work graduate. Prof Calma AO is a- Kungarakan Elder and has worked for more than 45 years at local, community, state and internatio…

Supporting widowed people in rural communities

Michelle Moriarty has won an award for establishing groups for widowed people in rural Australia to support each other.  But Michelle is not going to stop there, because she would like us all to be able to support young people who have been widowed.  Reflecting on her own experience, Michelle reali…

Digital inclusion, community development and social justice

When a technology company invited a social worker to join their digital literacy project, it was because they hoped her social work skills would be “nice-to-have” additions to their “need-to-have” skills for teaching people how to use their digital devices.  But Anna Morgan had already been contemp…

Students for Sensible Drug Policy: Reducing harm by changing policy

Harm reduction is an approach to drug policy which promotes health, dignity and rights for everyone, regardless of which drugs they happen to be using.  Although it is part of Australia’s National Drug Strategy, the principles of Harm Reduction aren’t always obvious to those of us in the service sy…

History is so recent

AJ Williams-Tchen provides Mental Health First Aid training to groups and organisations; and cultural awareness training to health professionals.  Throughout all this work, AJ makes sure participants spend time listening to each other’s stories.  AJ believes in the power of storytelling as our most…