[00:00:00] Ashton Hayes: Welcome back to the Collaboration with Inside Social Work and becoming an A-M-H-S-W podcast with me, Ashton Hayes, and with Marie Vakakis. So in, no, that’s me. That is you. Sorry. I should have thrown to you. In our last episode, we talked about becoming a social worker and each of our journeys, and today we’re gonna talk about what we are doing now.

[00:00:30] Ashton Hayes: So Marie, what is it that you’re actually working on now? What does your work look like? 

[00:00:36] Marie Vakakis: Yeah, so that was, it was very interesting to think about my social work journey and now it feels almost very distinct of, because I became an A-M-H-S-W, the same time I sort of started a business. Mm-hmm. So it feels like very two, two separate careers almost.

[00:00:50] Marie Vakakis: So I run a group private practice called the Therapy Hub in Melbourne, and we offer obviously face, face-to-face, and online therapy. We have a special interest in working [00:01:00] with. Young people. Mm-hmm. Young adults. And then there’s a few family therapists and couples therapists. So that’s sort of, if you heard the previous episode around sort of moving into that family work, you’ll see, you’ll understand why that’s an interest of mine and finding other family therapists to come on board.

[00:01:17] Marie Vakakis: So we do a lot of work with the system as well. And then I have my own, I guess, personal brand, so Marie Carcass, and through that I run trainings and workshops. So I go into organisations and do. Reflective practice groups or group supervision. Mm-hmm. I run workshops like Mental Health First Aid, both youth and adults, and tuning into teens.

[00:01:40] Marie Vakakis: So parenting program. And then I have my own parenting program called Connected Teens. Mm-hmm. Which combines a bit of Bowen Family Therapy, bit of Bowen Family Systems therapy with acceptance and commitment therapy. So really looking at supporting parents during that particularly. Tricky age of [00:02:00] child to adolescence.

[00:02:01] Marie Vakakis: That’s where I find the most interesting bit to work in. So yesterday when I was on the last episode, when I was talking about moving into working with adolescents and then parents, that high school age was my sweet spot. Mm-hmm. And that’s also where I found parents struggled the most with individuation and autonomy and what it evoked for them.

[00:02:20] Marie Vakakis: And so that parenting program is. Is part of that. And I’m also working on a resource for therapists with innovative resources that will help have those kinds of conversations with families in the space that can be used, DIY, so families can do it on their own or in. Therapy with a therapist. So really trying to bring out that relational stuff.

[00:02:43] Marie Vakakis: So I still have a strong interest in mental health and mental illness. Mm-hmm. And I use a lot of EMDR, especially EMDR intensives. I love those. And the family work is around how people respond to distress, how they connect with each other, all of those things that we [00:03:00] know shapes our mental health and influences our mental health.

[00:03:04] Marie Vakakis: So that’s all the stuff that I do. It crosses over between the two brands and then there’s. The Inside Social Work Podcast. Mm-hmm. Which is for other therapists. And then through that I talk about some of the training that I run for therapists. So I have some on demand, a mixture of on-demand and live.

[00:03:19] Marie Vakakis: And all the live trainings go to on demand for therapists or social workers starting out, or even experienced ones who are trying to learn some new things. And then the podcast, this Complex Life, which talks about. Love, sex and relationships and all those messy, complex things. So there’s a real strong, I have a strong interest in education and teaching people about we might know or we might’ve learned.

[00:03:43] Marie Vakakis: That seems to kind of be hidden behind. I dunno, to paywall, but I dunno. We just think everyone should know it and we think they do and sometimes they don’t. So that’s sort of. My ramble of what I’m working on now. 

[00:03:55] Ashton Hayes: So in the last episode, you spoke about [00:04:00] going into a teaching space in terms of teaching English so that not only that desire to learn, but that desire to share information seemed really strong.

[00:04:11] Ashton Hayes: I’d never thought of that before. Yeah, 

[00:04:13] Marie Vakakis: I suppose so. 

[00:04:14] Ashton Hayes: I just wonder how early into your going into that A-M-H-S-W and private practice space, did you start to feel like, I really wanna incorporate training and education, that kind of 

[00:04:27] Marie Vakakis: thing? 

[00:04:27] Ashton Hayes: It 

[00:04:27] Marie Vakakis: started before, right, actually. So when I was working in schools and I did my mental health first aid instructor training.

[00:04:34] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. I then started running them on weekends. So I would very pre COVID, pre lockdown, zoom and all of that would literally print out a flyer. And I’ve got some of the Waggiest logos and old flyers that were so, so bad, and I would print out a flyer, stick it around a few places, create an event on Eventbrite, hire the cheapest local hall I [00:05:00] could, and lug over plastic tables and chairs and a projector and run a training.

[00:05:05] Marie Vakakis: And so that started first, so I had. I actually had an A BN ’cause I used to do tutoring, right? So I used to work with, uh, I think it was, might have been McKillop Family Services. So I kind of worked with some of their kids in foster care as a tutor. 

[00:05:18] Ashton Hayes: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:19] Marie Vakakis: Very short period of time. So I needed an A BN to do that.

[00:05:22] Marie Vakakis: And so I had that there and I just ran events at the local community center so that, that started first was the training and then I sort of folded that into. The therapy hub and now they’ve sort of split a little bit because with the changes through COVID, what it did was create a lot of opportunity for those programs to be digitised.

[00:05:43] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. And offered more readily available online. So now I can run them all over Australia. Mm-hmm. And I have. And I do. And if you want me to train you, please get in touch. So, yeah, that, that’s always been part of it. 

[00:05:55] Ashton Hayes: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I really love that. And do you see yourself. [00:06:00] Being able to offer training in distinct areas or do you see them overlapping?

[00:06:07] Marie Vakakis: So the overlap, this has always been hard to articulate and I struggle with this when I work with business coaches and, and maybe that’s another episode. It is really that overlap of mental health and relationships. So even something like Mental Health First Aid, it’s not. Treating mental illness, it’s how do you respond to someone’s worsening of a mental illness or a mental health crisis?

[00:06:29] Marie Vakakis: And so the most valuable, I guess, interesting bit for me in that is how do you approach someone? How do you talk to them? How do you help them feel supported? How do you encourage other support? And so it’s around the context of mental health or ill health, but I’m teaching people the conversational skills.

[00:06:47] Marie Vakakis: To have those tough conversations and so they are distinct. So I do run some, I guess, training around specific like anxiety or depression and or working creatively with young people and how [00:07:00] to adapt and adopt and modify maybe CBT for a younger audience. So I still help clinicians digest material and package it up for a different audience.

[00:07:10] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And treat mental ill health. And my other focus is on the relational side. So working on a lot of things around how do you help multiple people in the room navigate things like bereavement or a change in life circumstance or a divorce, a separation, a chronic illness. So all of those things do overlap.

[00:07:32] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And that’s sort of, that’s at the moment peaking my interest at the moment. 

[00:07:37] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, I love that. And so you work across a wide range of people. What would you say was the youngest? Probably seven or eight, 

[00:07:46] Marie Vakakis: but I don’t work with that young anymore. When I first started, I sort of opened up myself to a range of different referrals until I found that sweet spot.

[00:07:55] Marie Vakakis: And so even though I like working with younger kids and I’ve got my room has set up with [00:08:00] toys and sandpits and all that sort of stuff, over time I found that I enjoyed a lot more. The parent work because that’s where I felt a lot of change could happen. Mm. And so now I sort of don’t go younger than maybe 14.

[00:08:14] Marie Vakakis: Right. Yeah. 

[00:08:15] Ashton Hayes: I think finding your niche niche is an evolutionary process, isn’t it? 

[00:08:20] Marie Vakakis: It is. And I’ve. I’ve heard different opinions around niching down and yes, you might call it specialising. And what I encourage people to do is it does help just target your PD as well. So at the moment I’m focusing on couples work and so for, it’ll be, I’ve kind of set myself like a two year training program in my head, so that’s how long I’ve got to do my certification.

[00:08:45] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. I’m reading all the books. The Gottman’s have written, I am absorbing training from other couples therapists. So I’m giving myself a sort of couples therapy, two year intensive. And before that I was doing the same with [00:09:00] EMDR. So I, I kind of like to have time patches, otherwise you don’t know what training to do, what webinars to do, what conferences to go to.

[00:09:08] Marie Vakakis: It feels really overwhelming. So sometimes I like to. Set a kind of topic or a theme. Yeah. And just focus on that for a little bit. And then I know something else might be curious. I might do like some somatic work, but I might bring in that somatic stuff into couples therapy or Right. Anything I understand about.

[00:09:26] Marie Vakakis: Trauma. I’ll either put that in the EMDR category and how I treat that in the room. Mm-hmm. Or the psychoed and information that I bring into the couple. So I try to have a few different things that overlap and compliment each other. Mm-hmm. But I don’t like being so air quotes holistic without a strong theoretical reason of this is what I’m doing and why.

[00:09:48] Ashton Hayes: Yeah. 

[00:09:48] Marie Vakakis: I wanna have a, a strong why and a strong case conceptualisation, and then bring in those other things as tools. Rather than just being like, let’s try this and let’s try that. And I think that’s really [00:10:00] confusing for clients as well. Yeah, 

[00:10:02] Ashton Hayes: I agree. And I think that when we are able to find what aligns with what lights us up.

[00:10:10] Ashton Hayes: To use a phrase that’s been used a million times, I think that does translate into longevity in the work and it translates into better outcomes for clients for sure. 

[00:10:22] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. I think that’s always been something I’ve focused on, even when I wasn’t self-employed. Mm-hmm. And so. Maybe it’s not a portfolio. I mean, I’ve kind of got a portfolio career, I guess, at the moment with all these different things.

[00:10:35] Marie Vakakis: And even when I was employed somewhere else, I had practice groups that I attended outside of the workspace. I had group supervision that I attended, I had charities that I supported. I, I looked at all the different things that I needed to feel fulfilled and energised. And found ways to put them in. And so there was always a working group or an event to organise or a fundraiser.

[00:10:57] Marie Vakakis: So when I worked in schools, I got involved a lot with the outdoor [00:11:00] education. Mm-hmm. Because I was one of the few female. Staff members who was happy to go on a multi-day hike with a whole bunch of teenagers. And so I was happy to do that. And then we, you know, did the Great Vic Bike ride. So I kind of got to find ways to do things that were maybe a hobby or an interest and align to the work.

[00:11:19] Marie Vakakis: And then have something on, like the project on the weekend, or students on placement or the podcast. So you don’t have to be limited by just what. You see in front of you. Mm. And there’s so many ways to get involved with charities, with organisations, with creative endeavors, with side hustles that feel energising or I guess meet different needs you might have from work.

[00:11:42] Marie Vakakis: That’s how I’ve been looking at it. 

[00:11:44] Ashton Hayes: That’s a great way to look at it. 

[00:11:45] Marie Vakakis: Oh, how do you look at it? What are you doing now? Where are you? You grilling me for 

[00:11:49] Ashton Hayes: 20 minutes. Um, where am I? I think it’s interesting when I look back. On what I had planned and where I, I had started. I [00:12:00] think I, very early on in my career, I was.

[00:12:03] Ashton Hayes: As I’ve mentioned before, I, I did social work as a mature student, so I’d had lots of experience out in the workforce and at di varying levels out in the workforce. And so I think fairly early on I moved very naturally into mentoring and leadership. And I think for me, what that looked like was being able to see gaps that could be.

[00:12:31] Ashton Hayes: Filled in a way that was beneficial for the agency that I was working with, or ways in which I could support staff and bring them up to feel empowered and be able to continue the work without burning out. And so that looked early on in my career that looked like supervision. So as soon as I could under the double ssw, which was two years post qual, I did.

[00:12:55] Ashton Hayes: And so where I’m working now, I kind of have [00:13:00] two. Spaces. So I have the Ashton Hayes and Co Consulting, which started as just me. But one of the amazing things about it is it’s grown and I’ve been able to work with a bunch of other social workers and support them in their own private practices. And so I do a lot of supervision, mentoring leadership, both individually and there are some local agencies.

[00:13:23] Ashton Hayes: I’m in regional New South Wales at the moment, uh, but shortly moving to Melbourne where I work with. Agencies in the area to do group reflective practice, but we do a lot of our work online. So our supervisors are across Australia and they’re able to connect with people pretty much in every state. And then the other side is Willow Tree, which is my counseling clinic.

[00:13:47] Ashton Hayes: And in that space I started off with children and young people and as it progressed, I sort of started working with more with adults and. I really love [00:14:00] EMDR, so working in that trauma space is really important to me. I really love internal family systems and parts work. 

[00:14:07] Marie Vakakis: And can I ask? So a lot of people when they hear us talk, they kind of think, okay, well, but how do you do this?

[00:14:14] Marie Vakakis: So how did you choose a modality or like how did you get started? Mm-hmm. In the therapy bit. So leadership was sort of a bit of a known, in a known structure. Sure. How did you move from that into direct practice counseling roles? Because I think it’s, so many jobs want you to have experience, but you need the experience to get the experience and you can’t get the A-M-H-S-W without working in counseling role, but you can’t work in an counseling role without some experience.

[00:14:40] Marie Vakakis: So there’s this back and forth. Sure. How did your, 

[00:14:44] Ashton Hayes: and I think one of the important things is. If you’re doing a bachelor of social work, be open to experiencing lots of different roles. Don’t feel pressure to find a counseling role straight away, because the more experience that you [00:15:00] have, the more you’re able to bring to a therapeutic space.

[00:15:03] Ashton Hayes: In therapy, it’s about building relationship and understanding the. Multiple nuances that exist in a person’s life. And so for me, I think I had been supporting my teams to be trauma informed and therapeutic in their work. And alongside of that, doing that training and understanding around how being therapeutic and trauma informed looked.

[00:15:30] Ashton Hayes: And so when I decided to go into the therapy space, it’s funny how we make connections throughout our careers. So. A few years before when I had been running an intensive family support service, we’d had an in-service from a provider, a local provider, and I had just loved their, the way that they worked and the work that they were doing, which was working with survivors of sexual assault and.

[00:15:55] Ashton Hayes: So I looked for a job with them because years later I had thought, I knew they were [00:16:00] doing therapeutic intervention, and when a role came up, they took a chance on someone who hadn’t had. Direct experience delivering therapeutic intervention. But my experience in child protection, my experience in working relationally with teams, my experience in running therapeutic teams and being trauma informed was a big part of why I was hired.

[00:16:25] Ashton Hayes: They were open. To that, and then I just grabbed every possible training opportunity I could. I worked with an internal and external supervisor, so very early on I went straight into external supervision because I was able to get something out of that was a little bit different and added to what I was doing.

[00:16:43] Ashton Hayes: The internal work. So that’s really how I did it. But I grabbed training courses, so not so much doing big masters or a whole other degrees, but starting with small introductory courses and then engaging in the more deeper versions of [00:17:00] those. So introduction to act, for example. And then I went in a little bit deeper introduction to DBT and then a little bit deeper, but ultimately I knew that I wanted to work in the trauma space, and so.

[00:17:12] Ashton Hayes: EMDR was the next best step for me, but I had been in practice for three years before I did my first level one EMDR. 

[00:17:23] Marie Vakakis: And now you’ve brought all of that in kind of together, but still separate to it. Willow Tree. That’s the Willow tree side. Yeah. What about the Ashton Hayes and Co, or Ashton Hayes Consulting?

[00:17:34] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. That’s. A unique offering. 

[00:17:37] Ashton Hayes: It is. So when I was doing my mental health accreditation, I really struggled to find targeted support in terms of both supervision and support with navigating the application. I didn’t find any at the time. Yeah, well, neither did I. 

[00:17:55] Marie Vakakis: That was not struggled. There was nothing.

[00:17:57] Ashton Hayes: And so it certainly. [00:18:00] During pandemic, as we started to go into lockdown, more and more of my supervisees was asking me to support them with mental health accreditation, with a view to being able to work from home as therapists, but as Medicare providers. And so I. Redid the entire application. I did not submit it, of course, but I redid the entire application so that I would be informed as to how to support people, and that started with a little Facebook group with 40 people in it.

[00:18:34] Ashton Hayes: Most people that I knew from either peer groups or other Facebook groups, we now have just under 4,000. People in that Facebook group, which are students as well as, um, social workers from right across the spectrum of their careers. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes 

[00:18:52] Marie Vakakis: so people can 

[00:18:52] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:53] Ashton Hayes: Join. And I did that because like I said, I couldn’t find anyone to help me. I really [00:19:00] struggled. There were a lot of chocolate incidents where I was eating way too many chocolates and there were a lot of incidents of me feeling like. How can, how am I ever going to achieve this? And I just didn’t want other people to experience that.

[00:19:13] Ashton Hayes: So the consulting side kind of came out of that. And then, I can’t remember, it’s sort of a combination of both me feeling like I was answering the same question over and over again, and people saying, God, I wish there was just a guide. And so I wrote the A-M-H-S-W roadmap, which has now been updated several times.

[00:19:33] Ashton Hayes: But the purpose of that is to. So that people have everything there in one downloadable document, and we offer targeted supervision, supervision groups and that kind of thing. But I think one of the really positive things that’s evolved is that I’ve been able to meet people who share my passion and who now work with me, and we come together as a team on a regular basis.

[00:19:59] Ashton Hayes: To [00:20:00] make sure we are supporting people as best we can. We have a combination of Amhs, Ws, and accredited social workers who share a similar vision and seeing people go from, you know, their first consult with me saying, hi, oh, I just dunno how I’m gonna get there, or I’m not gonna be able to do it to having their own practice.

[00:20:20] Ashton Hayes: It’s just an absolute gift. It’s one of my, one of my favorite things to come outta it. 

[00:20:24] Marie Vakakis: And there’s a lot of myths about the not myths maybe around, there’s difficulties in people figuring out what qualifications match that A-M-H-S-W applications. So stay tuned ’cause we’ll do an episode on FAQs and myths.

[00:20:39] Marie Vakakis: But there’s an interesting journey there from, yeah, wanting to study law, legal aid to criminology, to now having. Sort of two businesses working the therapy side and a consulting training supervision side. Yeah. And creating resources and learning about web stuff and user experience [00:21:00] and podcasting. Yes.

[00:21:01] Marie Vakakis: You didn’t mention your podcast. I didn’t mention the podcast, which you have not had me on as a guest until this collaboration. So naughty, naughty. I’ve had you on mine. Yes. I need to be better at that, I think. Yes. I asked you on this February 20th, 2020 2020. I should have, 

[00:21:18] Ashton Hayes: I should have reciprocated 

[00:21:19] Marie Vakakis: unsolicited DM on.

[00:21:21] Ashton Hayes: LinkedIn. I think a lot of my contexts have been unsolicited dms on LinkedIn, and I love that. I love how that evolves. But the podcast started as a way of supporting newly accredited social workers to share their experience so that. We were sharing that experience with everybody. You know, what’s it called so people can find it.

[00:21:43] Ashton Hayes: It is called becoming an A-M-H-S-W. Fantastic. The podcast, the branding is all around the roadmap or becoming an A-M-H-S-W because. It’s easy to keep things, you know, with one name, but yes, I’m thrilled that we are doing this collaboration [00:22:00] and we do have a series coming up about, now you’re an MHSW with people like yourself who are experienced and have these great thriving careers just to show people.

[00:22:10] Ashton Hayes: What they can possibly do. 

[00:22:12] Marie Vakakis: Fantastic. So now that you said we’re trying not to say the word fantastic, too many times I say it all the time, I’ve said it so many times, maybe we should turn it into a drinking game. So if you’ve counted how many times we have said fantastic. Oh, I have said fantastic. And I don’t normally say it until you said I say it too much and now I’ve said it so many times.

[00:22:28] Marie Vakakis: So fantastic. So our next episode is going to be around maybe some of the things that we’ve learned, maybe reflecting on what our younger selves. Didn’t know or are surprised that we know now. So check that out. That’ll be out following this episode. And if you missed the previous one around our social work journey so far, have a look at that too.

[00:22:51] Marie Vakakis: Please do.