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Rural Social Workers Action Practice Group (RSWAPG)

www.aasw.asn.au

12th Biennial National Rural Remote Social Work Conference

`Rural Communities`Rural Communities`Rural Communities`Rural Communities:::: Making it HappenMaking it HappenMaking it HappenMaking it Happen''''

ProgramProgramProgramProgram

30th and 31st July 2015 Parklake Hotel – Shepparton PROGRAM DAY 1 – THURSDAY 30 JULY

Time Session Speaker 08.30 - 09.00 Registration

09.00 - 09.40 Welcome and Official Opening

Peter Quin - Convenor, Rural Social Workers Action Practice Group

09.40 – 10.30 Keynote Speaker

Karen Martin & Leeanne Rule Victims Assistance Counselling Program Sunraysia Community Health Services, Victoria

10.30 - 11.00 Morning Tea 11.00 – 11.45 Concurrent Sessions

1 Presentation 1 A confusion of services: Rural doctors’ and nurses’ views on screening for postnatal depression and the role of mental health social workers.

Sue Armstrong and R Small

2 Presentation 2 Social Media for Social Good.

Juliet Summers

3 Presentation 3 Supporting Vulnerable Families through a Collective Impact Model

Pennie Mathieson

4 Presentation 4 The experiences of volunteers working with people with refugee backgrounds resettled in regional Victoria; Implications for policy and practice.

Rashidi Sumaili and Mimmie Ngum Chi Watts

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11.50 - 12.35 Concurrent Sessions

5 Presentation 1 Running a Rural Practice as a Mental Health Social Worker.

Charlotte Brewer

6 Presentation 2

‘Reaching for the Stars’, A Social Work Leadership Program.

Tass Kostopoulos

7 Presentation 3 Rural People: Resilient Futures.

Jo Brown

8 Presentation 4 A prologue: Community Social Care in a Natural Disaster. From ‘refuge to action’ a social workers experience of living a bushfire disaster.

Fiona Jennings

12.35 – 1.30 Lunch 1.30 – 2.20 Keynote Speaker

Meg Perceval Farm-Link Coordinator, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health

2.25 – 3.10 Concurrent Sessions

9 Presentation 1 Building Trustworthy Not for Profit Services in Rural and Regional Communities: Understanding and Preventing Trust Breaches.

Professor Karen Healy

10 Presentation 2 Ethics in Rural and Remote Social Work; nuanced and interdependent dilemmas.

Dr Geraldene Mackay

11 Presentation 3 Kids’ Stuff

Tania Brookes

How to offer a service beyond your targets in a financially sustainable way whilst improving the emotional regulation of young people in your rural community – a 12 month research project.

Emily Gilmartin

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Presentation 4 ‘McLeod’s Daughters’: Single women in rural and remote practice.

Aeron Morgan

3.10 - 3.40 Afternoon Tea

3.40 – 4.25

Concurrent Sessions

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13 Presentation 1 Critical Reflection in Supervision: Critically Important.

Lesley Ervin

14 Presentation 2

When Social Work communicates with Trauma. Community Social Work Challenges, organisations and profession in connection to vicarious trauma and its management in rural and regional social work practice.

Johnson Mathew

15 Presentation 3 Am l ready? Making the Transition from Social Work student to Social Worker

Kate McGurk

16 Presentation 4 ‘Down and out in the Bush’ What rural women tell us about their experiences of depression and rural services

Stephanie Johnson Jarratt

4.30 – 5.30 RSWAPG Annual General Meeting All Welcome

Peter Quin - Convenor, Rural Social Workers Action Practice Group

6.30pm

Conference Dinner 2015 Martin P. Butler Rural Social Work Scholarship presentation

Guest speaker: Tom Dawkins Rural Journalist Dawkinsforth Estate

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DAY 2 – FRIDAY 31 JULY

Time Session Speaker 08.30 - 08.45

Registration

08.45 - 08.50 Welcome Peter Quin - Convenor, Rural Social Workers Action Practice Group

08.50 - 09.10 AASW Update Karen Healey, AASW National President

09.10 - 10.00 Keynote Speaker

David Tennant CEO FamilyCare…helping families find solutions

10.05 – 10.50 Concurrent Sessions

17 Presentation 1 Breath of Life Theory as a way of imagining past, present and future

Dr Geraldine McKay

18 Presentation 2 Rural and remote social work practice: a Critical Analysis.

Meaghan Katrak

19 Presentation 3 Is Australian Red Cross applying the BEST approach to its placed based work in communities around Australia?

Shane Maddocks

20 Presentation 4 A Tasmanian Perspective of Rural Social Work ‘in a terrain that is no longer familiar’

Peter Willoughby and Fiona Jennings

10.50 - 11.20 Morning Tea 11.20 – 12.05 Concurrent Sessions

21 Presentation 1 Going the Distance – Rural Social Work in the Department of Human Services

Graeme Cheetham and Temeka Jones

22 Presentation 2 Mooroopna Kid’s Hub Emotional Literacy Program.

Dianne Boulton and Neta Kirby

23 Presentation 3 Maurice Blackburn’s outreach model of care providing social work support to rural communities.

Leah Du Plooy and F Sarrell

24 Presentation 4 It’s all sexual assault: A service response in the face of the clergy abuse crisis.

Shireen Gunn and Andrea Lockhart

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12.10-12.55 Concurrent Sessions 25 Presentation 1

Violence Free Futures. A Post Crisis Intervention Family Violence Program informed by feminist and restorative justice principles.

Paul Carrick

26 Presentation 2 Meditating past medical model management.

Gregory Riddett

27 Presentation 3 Uncovering personal strength in hard times: stories of safety from voices uncovered.

Dr Debra Manning

28 Presentation 4 Rural Communities as Contested Places: Community Action Planning (CAP) as a Tool for Change .

Rosemary Kennedy

12.55 - 1.45 LUNCH

1.45 –2.30 Concurrent Sessions

29 Presentation 1 Home is where the shed is: A yarn about building community and ‘stuff’.

Andre Zonn

30 Presentation 2 The bidirectional effects taking place for parents and young people when both struggle with mental health issues and live in a rural setting.

Michael Naughton

31 Presentation 3 Power of the Rural People: the story of Voices for India.

Alana Johnson and Denis Ginnivan

32 Presentation 4

Working with community based services – volunteers the key stone of service development and delivery.

Martin Butler

2.30 – 2.45

Close

Peter Quin - Convenor, Rural Social Workers Action Practice Group

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National Keynote Speakers

Karen Martin & Leeanne Rule Victims Assistance and Counselling Program, Sunraysia CHS Leeanne Rule, Social Worker, Mildura, Victoria

Leeanne has Social work experience spanning almost a decade with recent experience in providing support to people affected by violent crime in a rural setting. She has a commitment to assist people in their journey of recovery following a traumatised experience through the provision of psychological first aid and trauma-focussed counselling. She is driven to bring a practical and grounding approach to working with people affected by trauma. Leeanne is co-author to a published article ‘Reducing the Effects of Trauma’ in the first edition of the International Journal of Social Work and Human Services Practice (September 2013). Until the end of 2014 Leeanne was actively involved as an executive member on a local community engagement group with the aim of achieving a better connected community, highlighting safety and access issues and providing support to community initiatives. Karen Martin, Social Worker, Mildura, Victoria

Karen Martin has 13 years of experience in working with individuals who have experienced trauma as a result of a violent crime, such as Sexual Abuse, Homicide, Assault and Family Violence. She is passionate about helping people reduce the impact of trauma and restore a sense of normality to their life. She was instrumental in developing an intervention model to address the long term effects of trauma, in a rural practice as a result of limited opportunities to access psychological support. Karen is co-author to a published article ‘Reducing the Effects of Trauma’ in the first edition of the International Journal of Social Work and Human Services Practice (September 2013). Karen has had extensive training in Trauma debriefing and is a member of the Northern Mallee Critical Incident Support Team, which aims to restore the effective functioning of the individuals and groups involved in traumatic or unusual events / incidents.

Meg Perceval Farm-Link Coordinator Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health

Ms Meg Perceval, Coordinator of the Farm-Link project, a suicide prevention program for farmers funded under the Commonwealth Department of Health’s National Suicide Prevention Program, has worked in rural suicide prevention for 7 and a half years. Farm-Link aims to improve the mental health and wellbeing of people living and working on farms. Meg holds a Bachelor of Medical Science (Neuroscience and Pharmacology), and a Diploma of Project Management. She is currently undertaking her PhD in Behavioural Medicine with the University of Newcastle. Her research explores rural wellbeing and suicide prevention – discovering the critical factors and how to address them. Meg has written an evidence-based wellbeing and suicide prevention education program called “SCARF” which has had, and continues to have, ongoing extensive implementation and evaluation. Meg is based in Inverell, in the New England North West are of New South Wales,

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Australia, where she lives on a farm with her husband and three sons. Meg is passionate about the health and wellbeing of rural communities. David Tennant CEO FamilyCare…helping families find solutions

David Tennant commenced his appointment as CEO of Shepparton-based FamilyCare in May 2010. FamilyCare has been a major provider of community services in the Hume region since 1984 with around 100 staff and offices in Seymour, Wallan, Kinglake and Cobram. David has held a variety of roles in the community sector. From 1995 to 2008 he was employed by Care Inc Financial Counselling Service in the ACT, initially as a consumer lawyer, then as the agency’s Director from mid 2000. From April 2003 to November 2008 David was the Consumer Member of the Australian Code of Banking Practice Compliance Monitoring Committee. Prior to appointment with FamilyCare David was Civil Practice Manager with Legal Aid ACT. He has also spent periods as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and a Senior Manager with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. David has held a number of representative roles, including terms as Chair of both the Consumers Federation of Australia and the Australian Financial Counselling and Credit Reform Association (now Financial Counselling Australia). Along with his current position at FamilyCare, David is a Trustee of the Jan Pentland Foundation, a member of the Law Help Assessment Panel for the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations and participates in a number of local and regional networks and committees. Tom Dawkins Rural Journalist/Photographer, Dawkinsforth Estate

Tom Dawkins is an award winning rural journalist and author who lives at Naracoorte in South Australia wife his wife Katie and their one-year-old daughter Lottie. He grew up at Gawler River, north of Adelaide, where his family grew cereals and prime lambs for 150 years. He completed at Double Degree in a Bachelor of International Studies (Politics & History) and Bachelor of Environmental Studies (Environmental Policy & Management) at University of Adelaide from 2003-2006. He was appointed editor of South Australian agricultural newspaper Stock Journal at the age of just 24 in 2008. In 2010 he accepted a transfer within the Rural Press/Fairfax stable to Melbourne as editor of Stock & Land, where he remained for two years. Opting for a change of pace, Tom moved to Katie’s family farm at Apsley in western Victoria in 2012, where he combined freelance writing with livestock work. Since then he has continued to do freelance journalism and professional writing for the likes of RM Williams’ Outback Magazine, Meat & Livestock Australia, Dairy Australia, Australian Wool Innovation and Angus Australia. In 2014 he won the Australian Star Prize for Rural Writing, which is organised by the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists (ACAJ) to recognize excellence in print journalism in the rural sector. Also in 2014, his debut book telling the real-life story of a legendary South Australian livestock transport figure ‘Lady Lorene – The Truckie Queen’ was published by Allen & Unwin. He has a tremendous passion for rural Australia and draws on his considerable industry and community knowledge to promote Australian agriculture in all aspects of his work.

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