Women's Legal Service Tasmania

Women in custodial settings face numerous challenges when returning to the community. Pia from Women's Legal Service Tasmania sits down to discuss some of these challenges and the help she and her team can provide.
 
 WLST supports all women including anyone who identifies as a woman, is non-binary, gender fluid, or anyone who has a gender experience that makes accessing support from a women’s service feel right for them. WLST provides free help with legal issues such as family violence, family law, child safety and workplace sexual harassment. WLST's financial counsellors and social workers can also provide additional support. 

More information and how to get support from WLST: https://www.womenslegaltas.org.au/ 

*Name correction at 13.21 - David Denborough. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Positive Futures. In the community health and social service sector, we are often faced with complex challenges, but there is a lot to be optimistic about. Throughout this series, I'll be chatting with the people who work in this space to talk about the challenges they face and to find those moments that remind them why it matters. Thanks for joining me again. This is episode three of our little mini-series on continuity of care, Tascard's post-prison project. And I'm joined today by Pia. Hey Pier, how are you going?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Good, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Thank you so much for joining me. Pia's here from Women's Legal Service Tasmania. And you're a social worker with the group there.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

So I'm thinking for our listeners today, we'll get to sort of the collaboration for this project and why we're working together, but maybe for a bit of background and context for our listeners, can you tell us a bit about the program itself and your work there and you know sort of what's going on and what you're doing? And maybe broadly, because I know your organisation does a lot of work with women across the board, it's not just specifically in prison. So maybe just a brief overview of what you do generally.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah, thanks, Alex. Women's Legal Service is statewide service in Tasmania. We support anyone who's a woman or identifies as a woman. We take an integrated approach, so there's lawyers, social workers, and financial counsellors in our service. We have priority areas where we focus and supporting women who are facing systemic harm. We focus on certain legal matters, but we take a holistic approach to supporting women. From that, we kind of identified the programme that I currently support and run at Mary Hutchins and Women's Prison. It started about four years ago in the kind of fullest scope that we've been running. Prior to that, we did kind of minimal outreach there, mostly pre-COVID, and then that ceased during COVID. And when I started, a lawyer and I sat down and thought, how can we better integrate our support in the women's prison? We started the program that we're now been running for almost four years. Yeah, well. The programme focuses on supporting women while they're in custody and that continuative care approach, so continuing to support people once they've been released. The focus is mostly one-on-one care support in both social work and legal spaces. We don't do any criminal work, but our focuses are often in child safety support, matters around child safety, family violence, victims of crime, that kind of space. We do do some divorces, which is often a joyful spot for people when they get their divorce. So we decided to run this programme, and it was quite community-led. We did a lot of liaison with the women in custody and said, What would this look like for you? Primarily in that one-on-one space is very casework focused. Then we started to broaden the scope and think, okay, well, we're as a feminist organization, our focus is on also looking at what are the barriers that are facing women are facing, and especially especially for women in prison, there's so many systemic barriers. And so we thought, well, there's so much more scope and space, and our specialty is family violence as well. And for me as a specialist practitioner, I noticed that that was kind of the guiding underpinning experience for most of the women I was supporting. And so we started to run a family violence support group or education group within gender equality, another specialist service.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, within the prison.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, yeah. So I run an eight-week program where we have women come through our program and we talk about what is family violence, people's experiences, it's a therapeutic space, and we also connect people to specialist services. And then another part that we're doing out there is we also run legal education groups where we will focus on topics and it's often a soft entry place for the one-on-one support. So we'll pick legal topics and kind of explain them on an educational level, and it often helps people to identify if that's something that kind of support they need one-on-one. So two weeks ago we ran one on victims of crime, and every single woman that came to the session then engaged into one-on-one support. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Wow, amazing. That's a great uptake. Yeah, that's a great uptake, yeah. So it sounds like the work mirrors the rest of the organization's work outside of the prison setting. Was it set up to are you finding that they're lacking obviously lacking support service across the board and that through care or continuity of care? Was it aimed at informing them in the first case, or is it about getting into case management, or is it both those things? Like you talked about doing education sessions and then an uptake for one-on-one. How does it differ from maybe just someone calling you on the phone outside? Is there a difference or is it just another high needs area or population?

SPEAKER_02 4:34

That's a really good question because I think there is nuances, especially for people in custody, they're facing such extreme hardship. And in what I've witnessed and listened to and sat with people, that that hardship is so all-encumbencing, been often occurring since they were children, and the level of trauma that people have experienced and are experiencing and are likely to experience when they leave custody, it you can't act in a or you can't um follow a very structured kind of case management model where it's you do a task, I do a task, we see a nice ending. The reality doesn't reflect most of the women's lives and the barriers that are very real for them. So we actually do take an approach where our our first and primary focus is building a trust, rapport, and respect. I think you know, there's a lot of I came from a youth, I was a youth worker when I first started, and a lot of the focuses in youth work is creating one positive relationship in someone's life that can be, you know, that can often change the trajectory of the way someone's heading or what their experiences are or their experience of the world. And I I think those notions are very similar when you're working with women who've been criminalised to say actually just creating a safe space to to listen to someone and say what's happened to you is not okay, just because you're in a custodial setting, there's no need to dehumanize you as the system does. We really focus on saying often just sitting and hearing people and being led by them. That real true client-led focus. So I think it's there is a case management approach, and um I think that's why it's quite a unique program, one within the legal sector, but even within our service, that it's very social work-led. So primarily a lot of the support needs are social work, social work supported. So I'll often take the lead, whereas in a lot of our other matters, our lawyers take the lead because they're in court or experts or whatever. Yeah, yep, and they're doing the legal work, and I'll kind of be on the periphery supporting the person to kind of have the support they need. Um, so I think it is it's quite nuanced. So we often say we'll have a conversation with someone, it's very rights-based, so saying these are your rights and this is what you're able to access, it's up to you when and if you want to access those. You can come into one-on-one work, you can be in our group settings. Um, it might be just having a really supportive conversation a couple of times before someone's released, and then when they're released, that they know where to come, and often say, you know, we're like we're a friendly face, like you know who we are now. And I think for many of the women that we've worked with, they've had such a constant contact with the legal system, with workers, with social workers that are so predominantly negative, and there's so much systemic harm. And our kind of approach is to say, like, well, we're gonna really try not collude with that harm and not further systemic harm. And is there a different way we can practice to make sure someone feels safe? That might actually mean in the very long term we see a positive outcome for them or that they receive the positive outcome that they want, um, rather than that kind of really traditional model thinking of, oh, we're gonna take on your legal matter or your social work matter and resolve it, and then we've done a good job, because that doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

No, it's such a such a black and white approach, isn't it? And it's sort of reductive in its uh oversimplification of the issues, it just presents as if it's like a box digging exercise, or you can just offer someone this thing and then you're free to go. Yeah. I think we have the same, it reminds me of similarities with the NSP work, the needle syringe program, and and I spoke with another project collaborator on this project we're doing from the Brain Engineering Association and Just Ace, and it's a the correlates are all there, like it's people-centred, focused work, meeting people where they're at and giving them maybe like that trust and friendly face. You're right about those systemic issues, I think, particularly in the prison setting.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

You know, and we can, you know, we don't have to badmouth anyone or have a go at anyone's sort of job or title or approach, but I think we can all appreciate the issues and the complexities there, and that it's not working.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's you know speaks to the deep under-resourcing of the set of social services in full stop. But I think especially it's been really interesting witnessing um the kind of underfunding specifically for women in the women's space and women's prisons as well. Um and the quite contrast to male spaces, which you know, I think for us is really value-led work um as a feminist organization that we say, well, you know, that's an equity issue and an equality issue. And how can we do, you know, if it value lines for us, how can we really show up? But also I kind of see it as a space of often the women we work with, they don't have a space to speak up about what's happening to them. And so sometimes it's just being a witness to those stories, or saying, you know, as an organization, do we have a space where we can also support people to raise their voices up or um have other avenues to speak to their lived experience? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

And are those inequities like mirrored from society? I mean, I already think they are, but I mean you can confirm it, you know, like we're thinking about employment, housing, single mothers, let alone, you know, the victimization and domestic violence and sexualization, all that kind of stuff. I mean, is it just mirrored there but amplified in that custodial setting?

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's especially not just only in the custodial setting, but um and there's a lot of literature and research around this to say the impact of incarceration for a woman has such a profound impact not only on them but their community, their family, their children, um, in a way that's not reflected in when a man is incarcerated. And I think that's a really unique space. Um, when I started kind of working in this area and getting more focused in this space, I was trying to do lots of research to say, okay, how do we do best practice? How do we learn from what's come before us and not just reinvent the wheel or say what can be done better? And we have that kind of freedom because we're not we're designing our program as we go and in response to the women who access it. Yeah, and I think that's uh we're you know currently don't we're trying to get more support and funding for to do the work, but the spaces when you don't have KPIs and your restrictions, then you can kind of design it how people need it, or are saying to you they want it. But what we often see is just that overarching flowing impact that happens, and there's a lack of research, understanding or awareness about what a woman's lived experience of being in custody, opposed to a man's lived experience. And yeah, I think the the patriarchy and is so reflected within that kind of colonial uh prison system and the the inherent violence of the justice system, and that it doesn't have nuances, it doesn't think about what are the overarching impacts of um incarcerating someone, how does that impact their children, their children's contact with the justice system or um the out-of-home care system. And I think from a family of violence and it's a specific it's a very specialist space to work in that because of for many of the women that access our support will speak to me about if they're struggling with drug and alcohol issues, they'll say, you know, the reason I'm using is because of trauma I've I experienced either as a child or as an adult or in really violent relationships that might have led to criminality or offending to uh in you know in such a nuanced way that I often think, well, the line between you and I and anyone who's been criminalised is so thin. It's just you know bad, like horrific bad luck. Um and then I think from a family violence lens, and we work in a family violence informed practice model, is to say, well, violence in our community and people's experiences of violence is such an it impacts us in so many ways. It impacts community safety, impacts the safety of our children, it impacts that person's ability to live safely and to contribute to society, and it's that just reinvest model that we think that if we could actually invest into proper family violence safety and support, it would probably lessen the amount of women we have in custody. You know, it's that flow on improvement.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, well that's what I was just gonna bring up, and it reminds me of that idea of early intervention in anything, whether it's health, well-being, social care. We take this approach of a quick fix or a responsive nature, and that's historically there and present, like you're saying, with that, you know, sort of patriarchal dominance as well, and it's the approach of the quick fix or the wrap on their knuckles or whatever, but it's not taking into account those echoes or the domino effect in society and a and the people impacted by it, you know. And I think for women's stuff, it is the inequity much more of this, like you've just mentioned with children, family, social impacts where you know they might be the primary caregiver.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that either, but it's just you know that's interesting, and I think um I'm trained in um narrative therapy, and there's um a really brilliant narrative therapist who did a lot of research and capturing of people's stories who are in custody, and his name's uh David Denver, which I will double check that. Um but he yeah, he speaks to um within his book, captures a lot around the experience of women in custody, often being characterized as manipulative, and um I see that reflected a lot in the sector of that a lot of people don't want to work with women in custody, and there's so much um blame and shame placed on women, they're often um viewed through this light of like a bad mother or a failed woman, um, which I don't think we hold men to the same standard, interestingly. But when in my experience, when I work with the women, they'll often come to our appointment, and the first thing they want to do and sort out is around their children and their children's safety, you know, whether they're in um out of home care or with another unsafe person, or you know, they're really worried about the support. Where we when we ran our family violence group, that was one of the main questions that continually came up. And I was thinking it's very interesting when you're working with someone who's facing such a desperate and difficult situation when they're in custody, and their priority is their children. And I think that speaks to that the ongoing care responsibilities people hold even when they're facing such barriers. And I often think they're the women we work with are such brilliant caregivers and they're really facing such hardship and how they can how they are attempting to break that intergenerational cycle. And so we do take that kind of intersectional approach to think, okay, how do we see someone as a whole and what are they facing and not just uh you know seeing them in isolation? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

And so when you're working with these women in these spaces, I mean particularly in the custodial setting, and if their primary focus is, you know, the children, things like that, what are the main themes that are emerging there that and support that you guys are offering? Like are you trying to, especially that through care stuff model? So obviously you're doing advocacy and legal support and social support. Are you then trying to pair them up for you know release and then finding services that can assist them in the areas that are missing? I mean, what are they what stories are they telling you? Like, you know, is it just across the board support that they need, obviously?

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

I think all of that, all of the above. Um it depends where someone's at, if they're looking, if they're on remand. It's very it's and this was something I learnt when I started to work in the space, the nuances of if you're on remand or if you're sentenced. We've designed our program so anyone can access our support, but a lot of people what just briefly, what are those nuances?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Because for people listening, they might not actually, because you know, if you don't have any sort of engagement in this space, you actually don't fully know maybe what the difference is.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Yeah, so when you're on remand, um you're in custody but you're awaiting an outcome of a legal matter, so you're caught, so you haven't been found guilty or not guilty. Um you haven't accessed bail, which means you haven't been released into the community to await your trial. Um so when people are sitting on remand, they're prevented from accessing most supports, and so therapeutic maybe not the therapeutic supports, I'd have to check that, but they're prevented from accessing a lot of services because they're just awaiting their trial. Interestingly, for women, often women's offending is quite petty, so small crimes. So a lot of women sit on remand and then when they go to court they get time served. So they'll never when they're sentenced, they get released. So often when a good majority of the cohort we work with people are on remand, so they can't access a lot of services like the reintegration services, because those services are only available for senten women who are on sentences. For them, for women on remand, and this is why we designed our program so that anyone could access our support, especially from a social care perspective, that if you're sitting on remand waiting a trial and you go to the court and you get time served, you have no support to prepare to be released. So you I had one woman I was supporting where she knew she her lawyer was saying you're going to get time served because you've already served a couple of months, and the offence wouldn't likely be longer that. And so she and we were trying to work out for her to have some sort of housing. She didn't have anywhere to go, and the only option for her was to go to court, be released, stand on the street and call housing for crisis housing. And I thought that system's failing, that woman. Absolutely, you know, that's high risk of re-offending if you have no food, nowhere to go, no support.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Is it because they're seen, is remand seen as like a lesser need area for some reason, or is there some sort of legacy issue there? Because it seems like you know, we work with many support networks and and organisations, but that you're right, they are targeted post-release from incarceration as opposed to remand.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

And obviously, just as a side note, which I'm sure you can answer when you will anyway, but the inequity again of women because if where are their children going when they're in remand? You know, if they don't have any support.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Absolutely. Yeah. I actually don't know why so much of the criteria that would be interesting. I actually never thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Another episode, folks.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get Pia back in and we'll answer that question. I'll have to go do some research. Um yeah, I'm actually not sure why. I think there's a funding issue and there's a capacity issue. That always is what it seems to boil down to. Um and I know several others, you know, organisations developing new programs, and you know, we're often saying we really challenge you to to keep your scope as wide as possible.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah, well that's what's so great about it, is because that the iterative nature of it and how you've been, I guess, really reflexive in that. So when you've seen areas of higher need or responsiveness like people in remand as opposed to then if the stats show that for women offending, yeah, um, you've been able to pivot there, and that's that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

You know, yeah, we hope, and I guess that's the beauty of having that flexibility. We also support anyone who's sentenced as well. Yeah. So I think that's that space uh back to your question about that continuative care. We often do take that holistic approach. So some it's it can kind of go two ways, especially with someone's legal matter. Sometimes when they're in custody, something like a family law matter might really get initiated, so the child might have gone into the care of the other party or into our family members' care, and so proceedings might have been initiated, and that's when we can step in. Or things have kind of gone on held and hold, and we kind of say, Okay, as soon as you're out, that's where you need to come and engage with us. And from a social work lens, we support that person to get the legal advice and have that integrated approach. We also say, Well, you as a person, how are you safe? And that's where we take that family violence lens. We're often saying, Well, if you're being released into an unsafe situation, which is gonna put you at high risk of re-offending or at risk of harm, then what what's the support you need in place? So I we might sit and do furals with people, link them into housing support if I can. That's always the biggest challenge.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Gonna ask you about what you know, what what are the trends there? Is it just housing, transport, health, employment, you know? Yeah. Just all the usual ones or is it?

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Employment's kind of very down far down. Yeah, it's usually housing, food, clothing, ID, ID, I dig. Yep, how do you get your bank card, how do you get money out your bank, um, a phone. So those are just really Marzo hierarchy of me, the basic things that um if someone's sentenced, they'll have support from re-integration to work towards that. Yeah, but if they're not sentenced, if they're on remand, they have no support often. Maybe limited if they've done really good at self-advocating. And that's that kind of space as well where we say, well, where it we can provide that through care. So I might someone might call us and say, I'm getting released in three days, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Or and also I have these hugely complex legal matters that are on foot, and you know, I might be in court with child safety or you know, family law matter, or there's family violence charges where I'm the victim survivor and they've asked me to give evidence. Um, and there's kind of you know general chaos. So we all often sit down and say, Okay, let's create a plan, or we'll make sure that we have one conversation with someone, or we see them in person. We say, as soon as you get out, you can call us, you can come in. We have capacity, we have some like toiletries and clothing that we can support people to.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

In certain cases, if someone's really unsafe, we can support them with a safe phone, can do that planning and link and connect to services and which is such a great model, and so important because I think you know, so many times I think about this you know, industry is the wrong word, but um whatever the word is sector, thank you, uh, that we're in, and you know, so many of us and we're all trying to do a similar thing, but there's so many gaps. Yeah, you know, sanitary products, phones, you know, bare necessities, these are basic human rights that people don't have access to.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

You know, I'm talking with the salvos about their um housing program later on, and you know, similarly, I was just doing a bit of watching one of their little videos, actually, it's really great, and it's just about treating people like you've just answered, you know, at a basic level and looking after them. But I think your integrated model of care is such a good example for people because it's person led, you're doing the social work first and foremost as much as any of those other specific areas, like something like legal stuff, you know, or and you know, it's interesting that those specialized avenues are often, like you said earlier, just so black and white. And so, you know, yes, you can. So that's like bedside manner for when you go to the doctor or something. And if you're not there to sort of translate, if you will, in verticommas you can't see on the radio, um, it's missing. Well, we're getting close to time. I want to just very briefly, we haven't really talked about health as well. Is that I'm more interested rather than talking about the project at all that we're doing together. We can talk about that later for another day. At what level is the healthcare in general, where does that sit on that hierarchy of need for these people? Because if the priority is safe space, you know, a phone, their children, this kind of stuff, uh are they running out of time? Are they not support their is you know, what are the barriers to their healthcare?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Yeah, it it's an interesting question because people's health is so it should be part of your basic necessities. Um but I often witness when people are living these really challenging lives that health and their health care access is very low on their priority list. But it also is quite pressing that people really face really complex health issues and also being in custody, you're exposed to high risk of attracting certain diseases and high risk it's a high-risk health setting. And I think it but the barriers to the people to access that and be able to prioritize that is so great that it does kind of fall off people's radars. And you know, we in general, like for anybody trying to book a doctor's appointment is so challenging. There's a cost to it, even with Medicare, or you know, if you don't if you um do have a low income healthcare card, but you've got to find someone who's gonna bulk bill people's experiences of accessing hospitals or doctors, there's so much judgment and so much, you know, they might have been characterized as a drug drug user, it's on their file, and then their treatment and their support is so poor. People often talk about their experiences of being in custody and accessing healthcare and how they're viewed, and you know, there might be brilliant healthcare providers who really treat them with such respect and dignity, but that's not always the case.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

And those compounded issues you talked about about being a woman and then extra judged and caregiver and children and layer upon layer.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think it's that space that um for us it's it's been a really good reminder to say, well, one when someone's in custody, it's this unique opportunity for them where they might, as someone who struggles with drug addiction, be able to have connection to services and know what's out there and also know the risks and make that informed decision and harm minimization approach because they are not juggling all of the other chaos that they might have to when they're in the community. So I think it's easy for us, even as practitioners, to forget that those supports are important to even acknowledge and chat through with people, and but because we have those unique spaces of running groups, we can kind of sit down and say, Well, have you guys a lot about this? Like, how does this look like that? Well that's what I was kind of gonna ask.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Like, do you think in you know, in your experience, would the best place for that happen early on as sort of pre-intervention knowledge as opposed to you know, we've had the similar difficulties with clients accessing NSP or hepatitis C testing clinics and things. Like you said, it's low down on the list of priorities, and that has a mixture to do with the priorities of you know finding somewhere to sleep and something to eat, you know, which take take precedent and their family and their kids, but then also practicalities. If you don't have ID, if you don't have your income card, you know, maybe Cent Link haven't printed it, you've lost it, you know, got taken, you don't have a phone, you don't have transport. It's you know, we can say these services are there and accessible and free, but they're not actually accessible, are they, really? No. Unless someone's taking there and paying for it.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Yeah, and it doesn't, even if we feel they're accessible, they're accessible to us as people who have the resources available to us. And I think it's yeah, I think health is more inaccessible than we think. Like I practiced as a maternity social worker for a while, and you always think it's more accessible. You think, well, you could just come to a hospital, but we don't know all those barriers that might have been.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Well, like stigma, like you said earlier.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Stigma, um, especially for women who've experienced violence, you know, they might actually not have even been allowed to leave the house or they're monitored so greatly. Um there's a lot of fear of systems, so a lot of the women I work with, their fear of the systems of that if I go to a doctor and disclose something or disclose that I'm using, that's going to probably be a mandatory report. My children will get removed. Um, there's so the system is so quick to judge people and so quick to intervene in a harmful way. And this is something that we, you know, I personally have to ethically balance because obviously we've got a duty of care and we need to keep people safe. But also we think, well, what how does the system actually cause more harm and the fear of engaging in systems, especially if someone's been criminalised, then you know it's often people talk about just feeling like there's a butt mark against their name. Like I supported one woman and she'd reached out to a service and just felt that her response was so shaped that the response of the service to her was so shaped by the fact that she had a criminal history.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

And so they're being prejudged even if they've gotten there and said anything.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, and I think the shame and judgment and but at least the people not accessing service, or also the services are unaccessible.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Um, they might not be able their literacy levels might be low, so they haven't been able to access the material. Um I know we're trying to do a better job with that, most services, but what also might happen is then by the time they actually do access service, it's the issue's so acute. And this is where we kind of start to look at that holistic model, say what's going on for someone if they've got a really acute issue, health issue, that actually needs to come first and foremost before we even start to deal with their legal issue.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Actually, help the other issues or take some of the stresses away, or one of the many factors of the city.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

Holistic health, you know, all of that.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

It's just a holistic care, isn't it, across the board, social and mental and physical.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

We've run out of time, but it's far too interesting, so we'll get you on another episode again. But I guess, you know, has been pretty heavy, but very important stuff to listen to. And I think you can appreciate, you know, the sort of breadth of the issues. We do like to end the episodes with a slightly more positive note. Um, so that as I always joke, the podcast is called Positive Futures. So I would like to know just one or several things that you're excited, hopeful, positive about in the workplace, you know, in your space that that maybe changes are coming or something, a project you're working on, or an experience you had that you know that you're excited about or positive that you want to share.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, I think that's um yeah, it can feel pretty dire at times and green man. I think in the work, I also can feel it can feel like you're hitting your head against a wall and or watching people just be subjected to such great harm. But I think within that we, you know, every day we get to witness the strength of people and you know that's that vicarious strength as a worker that we get to see their resilience. And I think for me, especially doing the group work where I sit with women who've experienced such complex harm through their life and violence, and they're like funny and resilient, and they talk about what they want to teach their young people, um, like the young women in their lives, their daughters, but also the young men. And I think, well, we're sitting and having these conversations that you know, 50 years we wouldn't have had. The understanding and the growth of awareness around family advance and what is family advance, and you know, the complexities and the breadth of that. I think there's a lot of hope in that of it's really taking that old school approach of conscious raising and saying, Well, how can we have these conversations and de-stigmatize it? And I think there's so much power in witnessing and hearing women's lived experiences, and I feel I feel really positive and hopeful when I get to spend time with women who, you know, society's characterized as bad, but they're just brilliant women, they're really funny, um they have so much focus, and there's a lot of knowledge in their experiences. And some of those women that I've worked with have gone on to become advocates, or even just to see that that conversation or sitting in a space where we talk about family advance and um say to someone, what's happened to you is not okay, and like I've witnessed people have light bulb moments of saying, you know, I actually don't need to accept this moving forward, and that I think there's that ability to break the intergenerational harm that um has you know is so impactful on people's lives. So I feel very positive about that that we can hold those conversations in the most stark and quite difficult places like a prison setting. Um, you know, it's not a counselling room, like we have constant interruptions. I think if you can hold the conversation if you can hold a conversation there, you can hold it anywhere. And so I think that's a really positive, and I think that's the work, and that's why I keep doing my job. It's that you know we will see change, and that that change doesn't just have to be for like a certain group of people, it can be for anyone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Thank you so much, Pia. That was a fantastic conversation, and we'd love to have you back because there's so much more to cover. But um, thanks for all the work you're doing. Thanks for coming in.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

You've been listening to Positive Futures, a red thread media production. You can find past episodes on Apple and Spotify podcasts. And if you'd like to be on the show, head to redthread.org.au to apply.