About me

My career overview, CV and publications give some insight into my work history.  I completed a social work degree at the University of Queensland in 1983, and more recently graduated with a Master of Philosophy from the University of Sydney.  My research masters thesis examined the impacts of public housing on the wellbeing and education of children housed through this program.

Apart from work I am a parent of two teenagers, with all of the joys and challenges associated with that role.  I am currently studying counselling, as well as a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.  And with any remaining spare time I play drums in two bands.

My work and study has been to a large extent driven by my early experiences as a statutory child protection worker....

Making the service system work like a system

In this role I realised that, as a child protection worker, I was arriving too late to be much help, and the underlying problems faced by the families I met were the the responsibility of other agencies that provide income support, housing assistance, health and education services.  I quickly realised that these programs work with little or no reference to one another, or to the statutory child protection system that acts as a safety net if all else fails.

25 years later and little has changed in terms of coordination of government services.  By way of example, I recently spoke to an experienced teacher of an inner city school who had spent the last year working with a high need child.  This nine year old girl had a mild acquired brain injury, and came from a family with very few social supports.  He felt he had made great progress with her during the year, only to find one day that she had moved house and school to a suburb on the other side of the city.  The move occurred because her family were in significant arrears in their social housing, and the arrears was in large part due to her families' reduced income associated with repaying a significant debt to Centrelink.

In other words, the effectiveness of the one social program that had a chance to turn this young life around - the education system - was compromised because two other social programs (housing and income support) acted in response to their agency specific policy drivers (rental arrears in the case of Housing, and failure to declare changed circumstances in the case of Centrelink) without any reference to a more holistic perspective.  The nine year old changed schools, the hand-over process between the two schools was found wanting, and this young girl now has less chance of reaching her full potential because three government departments could not provide a joined up solution to a normal set of inter-related problems faced by this family.

This example highlights some core problem areas that require urgent attention: