[00:00:00] Ashton Hayes: The beauty of social work is that it is such a meandering path, isn’t it? And I don’t mean that from the concept of being unstructured, but just that when you see something that really lights you up, there is the potential niche into 

[00:00:18] Marie Vakakis: that. That was one of the attractions was being able to move laterally.

[00:00:22] Marie Vakakis: And I think it’s what can make our reputation watered down is that because we can work in so many areas and that base qualification is only the starting point, it’s actually not enough on its own. It means that people aren’t really clear what we do. Because you can work in and I, when I supervise students, I’ve had tens of them and the placement variety is so big, which is how the podcast actually Inside Social Work Podcast started, was interviewing the different placements.

[00:00:50] Marie Vakakis: So you can do everything from policy to hospital, mental health, criminal justice, family work, advocacy, work, environmental. [00:01:00] It really spans across so many areas. Hello and welcome to this collaboration between the Inside Social Work Podcast and the becoming an A-M-H-S-W, the podcast. Welcome everybody. I’m Marie Vakakis.

[00:01:15] Marie Vakakis: I’m Ashton Hayes, and we are two social workers. Different social workers in different states with different businesses, different journeys, and even different generations. And we have been working on this collaboration for 

[00:01:27] Ashton Hayes: probably a year, I think it’s been about a year. Yeah. 

[00:01:30] Marie Vakakis: So we have a whole bunch of stuff planned for you all.

[00:01:34] Marie Vakakis: Over the next several weeks, and we’re starting off with why, how, how we came together. We were talking about this and I was like, no, no, no. Press pause. Press pause. In the conversation about how we, how we met. Do you remember how we met? 

[00:01:49] Ashton Hayes: I do actually. I searched up my messages and I found a message from you which dates all the way back to February, 2020, which was [00:02:00] I guess about a month before everything.

[00:02:02] Ashton Hayes: Shut down. And you sent me a message and you said, Hey, what did I send it? Is that LinkedIn 

[00:02:07] Marie Vakakis: or? 

[00:02:07] Ashton Hayes: Yeah, it’s LinkedIn. Okay. That’s why I couldn’t find it. That’s why you said, Hey Ashton, your supervision groups look interesting to me. Would you like to chat to me about them on my podcast inside social work?

[00:02:18] Ashton Hayes: And And you said Yes. I said yes. ’cause you were on the podcast. I was on the podcast and I was really flattered that you had reached out. And it just grew from there that we. I did your podcast and we have been in touch and sort of talked about how it is to be social workers in the A-M-H-S-W space. 

[00:02:39] Marie Vakakis: Yeah, so I think that would’ve been very early in my A-M-H-S-W career, probably would’ve just.

[00:02:45] Marie Vakakis: Got the approval, got the past or whatever, and was everyone who listens to me regularly knows I love learning and I love networking, and I would’ve just casted wide net and gotten in all the Facebook groups [00:03:00] and followed everyone on LinkedIn. And I even went through the, uh, find a social worker listing on the A A SW website and just started connecting with people.

[00:03:08] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. Great. Um, so if you haven’t already connected with us, please do, yeah. Chat, send us a, a DM or LinkedIn. Message or something like that. 

[00:03:16] Ashton Hayes: Absolutely. 

[00:03:17] Marie Vakakis: So we wanted to start off with why we wanted to be social workers or what’s been your journey. So I’ll link to the full episode with Ashton from a couple of years ago on the Inside Social Work Podcast.

[00:03:28] Marie Vakakis: But maybe for your listeners who don’t know you very well, ’cause you’re always interviewing other folk. I am. 

[00:03:33] Ashton Hayes: Tell us about yourself. Sure. So. The story sort of goes that I started off wanting to be a legal aid lawyer and wanting to support children who were going through the system, and I kind of started off in that area and worked for some big firms overseas.

[00:03:54] Ashton Hayes: And then when I returned to Australia, I just decided that. Due to some changes [00:04:00] in my life circumstances, the 60, 70 hours a week that I would need to dedicate to that was just not doable. And so I realised that I could do the work that I wanted to do being a social worker. So I switched over to social work and just immediately felt like I’d found my people.

[00:04:16] Ashton Hayes: So you actually studied law from memory? 

[00:04:18] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. 

[00:04:19] Ashton Hayes: And, uh, you loved it. I wanna be a 

[00:04:20] Marie Vakakis: guitarist. I heard about this 

[00:04:23] Ashton Hayes: American skill you had that I did not know in all these years. Well, my actress slash singer aspirations did not come to fruition. 

[00:04:35] Marie Vakakis: So why is social work a not like criminology? Or like humanitarian work or community 

[00:04:42] Ashton Hayes: development?

[00:04:44] Ashton Hayes: Well, interesting. You should mention criminology because that’s the degree I did after my social work degree. But I think the reason I went with social work was because I felt like I could do active work. [00:05:00] With outcomes more than perhaps I could do in a criminology space where I probably wouldn’t have been working directly with people.

[00:05:09] Ashton Hayes: It just felt like it encompassed the ethics and values that were important to me and that it felt very human centered and that’s, that was something that appealed to me. 

[00:05:20] Marie Vakakis: Very 

[00:05:20] Ashton Hayes: interesting. Very cool. Do you regret it? No. What’s been the best bit about social work? Yeah, the people. I’ve made some incredible connections and I met some really amazing people.

[00:05:32] Ashton Hayes: So I went to social work as a mature student, and so that was very anxiety inducing because I worried that, you know, people would think, oh, who’s this old bird? But in actual fact, I wish I was still that age now. And yeah, I was lucky to meet a huge variety of people and that’s what we do in social work, isn’t it?

[00:05:51] Ashton Hayes: We meet huge varieties of people. 

[00:05:52] Marie Vakakis: You mean me, right? Yes. This is the highlight. It took how many decades to find me In 2020. February of 2020. [00:06:00] 

[00:06:00] Ashton Hayes: Yes. I a hundred percent menu. You. 

[00:06:01] Marie Vakakis: Thank you. Thank you. 

[00:06:03] Ashton Hayes: So yeah, that’s pretty much how it went, and I loved it and felt like it was the right thing for me. 

[00:06:09] Marie Vakakis: Very cool.

[00:06:10] Marie Vakakis: Very interesting. Dunno what the world of social work would be without you so used to your face being out there and advocating for social workers and am Hs. Ws as well. 

[00:06:22] Ashton Hayes: Yeah. I feel like sometimes that’s a, an uncomfortable. Side of it. But I do think that if we want to connect with people, particularly in this sort of post pandemic, if I’m allowed to call it post space, that’s really what keeps us connected more so than, than previously.

[00:06:42] Marie Vakakis: And then from general social work, what led to the more. Sort of individual mental health space. So being an A-M-H-S-W then focuses less on macro and more micro in a way. So coming from legal, uh, [00:07:00] criminology, bigger picture stuff. Yeah. What interested you about. That therapy 

[00:07:04] Ashton Hayes: space. I think that fairly early on in my career, I was given the opportunity to do some training around being trauma informed.

[00:07:14] Ashton Hayes: And at that time it just wasn’t a phrase or a concept that was used at the same levels as it is now, and that training really ignited my passion for. Being trauma informed in all of the work that we did, and I could see spaces in my workplace back then and I could see just generally how adapting to that way of working not only with clients but with colleagues and you know, eventually as I moved into management with my team, was just a much better way of working and it was a way of creating safety.

[00:07:51] Ashton Hayes: Amongst all of the layers of people and systems that we work through. I think that essentially what happened [00:08:00] was I was running a big child protection team in Southwest Sydney, which I loved. A lot of those people I’m still in contact with. I was really lucky to have that opportunity, but I realised that as I progressed through my career, I was moving more and more away from direct practice in that.

[00:08:15] Ashton Hayes: Wasn’t really suiting me and so inspired by one of the women that I worked with. I decided to look at going into direct therapy. Now. That obviously was a process. It involved leaving my job that I loved and working in a direct practice job. Basically what it did was it got me back in touch with people directly, and I did a lot of early intervention work back then, and it just was about being able to support people through some pretty traumatic experiences, and that was really important to me.

[00:08:51] Ashton Hayes: And here we 

[00:08:52] Marie Vakakis: are. Here we are now supporting other people to do the same thing. But we’ll talk a bit about that in another 

[00:08:58] Ashton Hayes: episode. 

[00:08:59] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. [00:09:00] So what about you? I studied psychology at high school and I just thought it was interesting. I could have easily have done, I liked health and biology. I liked science that felt practical, like things I could touch and feel.

[00:09:14] Marie Vakakis: So anything around like physics and chemistry, I was like, no, no, that’s over my head. And. I changed schools in year 11, so I don’t know if I just missed the careers counselor. Meetings, or I just, we didn’t have one. I wasn’t sure, but I had no idea what to do. So I was like, well, I like psychology. I’ll apply for a bachelor of psychology.

[00:09:31] Marie Vakakis: And I did that. I was doing psychology and a diploma of modern languages. So after high school, I took a gap year and I went and taught English in Ecuador. So at 18 I did a teaching English certificate, a TEFL course, and there was, back then, you know, in the, was it early two thousands? There was like a pinboard with like ads for jobs and I was like, which country speaks a language I want to learn?

[00:09:56] Marie Vakakis: I was like, Ecuador, that’s in South America. That’s cool. I’ve learned about the [00:10:00] Galapagos Island from my really nice biology teacher, and so I picked up the flyer, applied for a job in Ecuador. Got it. And went there. Wow. So I just went straight there. I did a bit of traveling first visited some family in Greece, and then came back and thought, well, I’ll add Spanish to my degree.

[00:10:16] Marie Vakakis: So I expanded that to do a Bachelor of Psychology and a diploma of one languages. I was doing Greek and Spanish across, like I was across so many campuses. I was doing one, my degree was at one uni, and then the diploma of Modern Languages was done somewhere else. But then they didn’t offer both languages, so I was enrolled.

[00:10:35] Marie Vakakis: At like three different unis to do all these different subjects. So it was a real nightmare. And then I consolidated it all to one uni. Mm-hmm. And then I, I dropped the diploma ’cause I was like, well, I don’t wanna be a translator. I learned best in. Real life situations and talking. So I was still very interested in languages and I did an exchange to Mexico while I was at school as well.

[00:10:56] Marie Vakakis: So I, I did a semester of my studies, my psychology [00:11:00] studies there, and criminology was my other subject. So I really liked the conceptualisation of human behavior and how that interacts with space. And then I finished By then it was a Bachelor of arts ’cause that’s how the only way I could consolidate and I wasn’t qualified in anything.

[00:11:18] Ashton Hayes: Right. 

[00:11:19] Marie Vakakis: I didn’t know it was like study psychology, become a psychologist. But no, that wasn’t the case. And I didn’t like research. I mean, I was okay with statistics. I thought, well, the idea of a honors was not, not really appealing. I probably didn’t have the grades to get into something that competitive because I didn’t know that.

[00:11:37] Marie Vakakis: That was something I wanted to do. So I didn’t work that hard. Sometimes it was just like rock up to pass. But also I liked things that were more practical and tangible. So the idea of rote learning for exams mm didn’t really interest me. So I went back to Mexico for a little bit, traveled around. And applied for a whole bunch of master’s programs.

[00:11:56] Marie Vakakis: And one of them was social work. Hmm. And so I didn’t know what [00:12:00] social work was. I just looked at the subjects and I was like, oh, cool. There’s kind of human development, there’s mental health, there’s systems, there’s all these things that kind of incorporated psychology and mental health and public health and like all these different layers.

[00:12:14] Marie Vakakis: So each subject looked really interesting. Mm-hmm. And then it just kind of. Went from there. There was kind of an accident. I fell into it. I didn’t know what it was. 

[00:12:22] Ashton Hayes: It is, it’s funny that, isn’t it because. I hear variations on those stories from people where a lot of the time it wasn’t a straight from high school situation.

[00:12:34] Ashton Hayes: It was a, a pathway through lots of different other experiences. I’m super curious to know, do you speak Spanish fluently now? 

[00:12:43] Marie Vakakis: No, it’s very, very rusty, but I, I was pretty good for the amount of time I spent there. ’cause I had to do all my studies in Spanish, so it was just, I. Jump off the deep end and go full immersion.

[00:12:53] Marie Vakakis: So I literally rocked off the plane in Ecuador into this like small country, not small country town, this third biggest [00:13:00] city. So a little town called Wanka, a little city called Wanka. And I was like, I don’t know a single word. And the first words I learned weren’t actually Spanish. That was a local native language, right?

[00:13:10] Marie Vakakis: So I’m like, that was extra confusing. But my host family put post-it notes on everything for me. 

[00:13:15] Ashton Hayes: Oh, I love, so 

[00:13:16] Marie Vakakis: they put like on the window. Window and on my door. Door. And they were so cute and they didn’t speak English. Their children did, but they weren’t there a lot. And so it was this beautiful retired couple who were using their houses, sort of, um, like host hosting.

[00:13:31] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. With the, I think they might’ve had university students, but I was linked to the local English. Language school. Okay. And so they took a lot of effort and made a lot of effort for that. So they taught me a lot. And you have no choice. It’s full immersion. Mm. So that was pretty cool. But it’s rusty.

[00:13:49] Marie Vakakis: It’s definitely rusty. So I’ll have to spend some time back there. 

[00:13:53] Ashton Hayes: That’s a really good excuse to do some traveling. Yes. And so I guess. When you’d [00:14:00] done your travel and then you’d completed your master, how did you go from that to being an A-M-H-S-W? 

[00:14:06] Marie Vakakis: I tended to follow what I was interested in. So in my master’s program, we had one lecturer, guest lecturer from, it was the, I don’t know if he’s still the CEO, so former or current, I’m not sure, but founder of Wintering Ham.

[00:14:19] Marie Vakakis: Have you heard of Wintering Ham? It’s a homelessness service here in Melbourne, and they worked with people who were. In the age care system, but had been homeless and so we’re able to navigate different funding requirements to get them to access the age care system because of their lives being homeless.

[00:14:36] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. The health conditions that were present meant they were qualified for aged care and he, he just was really interesting speaker and he talked about that you spend the best hours of your day, the best days of the week for the best years of your life at work. Yeah. How do we make work a really enjoyable place?

[00:14:53] Marie Vakakis: I was like, oh, he sounds really. Cool. So I went and got a job there. Mm-hmm. At at the lowest entry level. It was like a disability [00:15:00] recreation coordinate, like something just recreation based. Mm-hmm. And then worked my way through. The different roles there into case management. And that was in Geelong, so I was traveling an hour each way, but that’s, I just wanted to stay in that organisation and then I negotiated with them to do my, like an honest thesis.

[00:15:18] Marie Vakakis: Okay. So I did a project with them on how to support the staff when they’re working with challenging behaviors. Mm-hmm. Or behaviors of concern from. Residents who had alcohol related brain injuries. So I got to learn about the psychology of that, the mental health aspects, the behavioral interventions.

[00:15:37] Marie Vakakis: But because the ethics approval to actually work with the participants was so hard, I went for working with the staff. So that formed part of a bigger project. Mm-hmm. Which was pretty cool. And then I was, I loved the work, but I was like, I want to intervene a little bit earlier. Yeah. I really liked supporting.

[00:15:55] Marie Vakakis: That cohort. I did a lot of really interesting work around, like I learned about hoarding and [00:16:00] substance use and like. Even exercise, like how to motivate residents in those facilities to exercise. And we do shopping trips and, and really about bringing joy and laughter and dignity of risk into the day-to-day stuff.

[00:16:15] Marie Vakakis: But I wanted to go earlier, so I got a job in mental health case management for a service that worked with like 16 two, just before the aged care system. And then from there again, I was like, really like this? But I think we can intervene earlier. So I took on the youth portfolio. We only got people from 16, so it’s not like it was very young.

[00:16:34] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. And then I was like, I want even younger. So I got into working in schools and then this is where it all changed. I was like, I love this. All right, I get it. Went and studied a graduate diploma of youth and adolescent mental health because I love learning and. That’s just my answer to so many things is just go learn about it.

[00:16:52] Marie Vakakis: I was sitting there with young people. Cool. I get this, I’ve got my degree, I know how to work with young people, but they come with parents. 

[00:16:58] Marie Vakakis: Yes. 

[00:16:58] Marie Vakakis: And I dunno what to do with [00:17:00] parents. Like here’s a brochure, he’s like a fact sheet I printed out from from Headspace and so I went back and studied family therapy and that was the.

[00:17:09] Marie Vakakis: That’s now what I love doing. So I work with the family through that. I did couples therapy, so now I’m a on the certification track for Gottman Couples therapy of the Masters of Family Therapy and. That’s sort of where it, over that time, moved into the A-M-H-S-W, so I was able to do that one-on-one work.

[00:17:27] Marie Vakakis: Mm-hmm. Bring in the system. Yeah. And then I used the podcast as my way to stay connected with the broader social work industry, I guess field of study, meet other people, share their stories. That’s my way of giving back and through. I only recently resigned from the position, but I used to coordinate for several years the local mental health professionals network.

[00:17:48] Marie Vakakis: Oh, right. And so I still able to do some macro stuff. Mm-hmm. But the day-to-day bit is a therapy, so that’s nice and interesting and juicy. 

[00:17:58] Ashton Hayes: Mm-hmm. It is. [00:18:00] Yeah. And I think that the beauty of social work is that it is such a meandering path, isn’t it? And I don’t mean that in a, from the concept of being unstructured, but just that when you see something that really lights you up, there is the potential niche into that.

[00:18:16] Marie Vakakis: I think it’s true and I, I liked that was one of the attractions was being able to move laterally. Mm. And I think it’s what can make our reputation watered down. Is that because we can work in so many areas and that base qualification is only the starting point, it’s actually not enough on its own. It means that people aren’t really clear what we do because you can work in and I, when I supervise students, I’ve had tens of them and the placement variety is so big, which is how the podcast, actually, the Inside Social Work podcast started was interviewing the different placements.

[00:18:50] Marie Vakakis: So you can do everything from policy. To hospital, mental health, criminal justice, family work, advocacy work, environmental. [00:19:00] It really spans across so many areas. Mm. And then if you overlap that with another qualification or certificate or training, which a lot of people I know have done, yeah. It then broadens that even more so.

[00:19:11] Marie Vakakis: It’s great for diversity in your career and it can make it a little bit hard sometimes to articulate what we do. Do you find that? 

[00:19:21] Ashton Hayes: I absolutely find that, and it’s funny, I remember at university, one of the lecturers said, had a question about how would you describe social work or what is it about social work?

[00:19:31] Ashton Hayes: And I remember a discussion we had about, you can’t. As a rule, you don’t just hang a shingle that says social worker, and people come and see you and go, oh, there’s a social worker. I must pop in. But if someone sees psychologists or if someone sees OT, or if someone sees physio or whatever, it’s quite clear about what is being offered.

[00:19:53] Ashton Hayes: And so I think the advocacy and. Identification of this area of specialisation in which people [00:20:00] work is a really important part of sharing about the extraordinary breadth of social work, but also the fact that we do actually tend to train. More and more we don’t sort of tend to stop once our degree is done.

[00:20:16] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. And we’ll do a whole episode on the difference between what we do and psychology. Yeah. But even that, there’s so many misunderstandings. Yes, absolutely. Like I did not do a single mental health subject in my psychology degree. So the half of the qualification has got nothing to do with mental health.

[00:20:34] Marie Vakakis: Yeah. It’s learning cognition. How we smell, taste, feel, how we perceive our environment, human behavior. It had nothing to do with mental health, and yet it’s synonymous with mental health support. It’s, yeah, so that’s my journey and that’s I guess how I became a social worker. Yeah. Fantastic. All right folks, so stay tuned for the next episode where we are going to talk [00:21:00] about what we’re doing now.

[00:21:01] Marie Vakakis: So we’ve shared a little bit about our journeys and. Coming up next will be what we’re working on now, who we work with, and how we do it.