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Most of my work is focused on the importance of safety for children. Children feeling safe,
and I don't just mean physically but emotionally and psychologically, is one of the most important
things, in terms of development and, what I mean by that is you can't explore, and therefore,
develop, as well if you feel unsafe. So, our job, our job is to try and create enough safety
to allow development to occur. Well, some of the things that I've been really
able to develop has been around helping practitioners, both within child protection but also the
broader service system that's responsible for vulnerably children and hard to engage
children and really focus on the experience of the child and the experiences of families,
trying to take care of the children that we're involved with. Whether it's their biological
family or whether it's within the out of home care sector. I'm starting to see a real cultural
change around how important supervision is, not just for staff to feel good about themselves
but what outcomes happen for children and that's the thing. Supervision, for me, is
not just about a feel-good idea. It's actually about what it does, in terms of approving
staff's ability - our practitioner's ability - to actually engage and remain engaged and
to think and reflect about their work, which actually improves the outcomes for children
and that's fundamentally why we do the work, isn't it?
I've work in different settings. I've never worked as hard, nor seen staff work as hard
as in this environment. Them recognising you, I think, means much more than people that
don't actually know what you do day in, day out, and these are our awards. It's out time
to actually stop and celebrate, despite the difficulties of the work, what actually we
do. We can't lose sight of actually who we're working with is children and families and,
what I like to do in my consultations, is to try and orientate people to think about
the experience of the child. Now, when we talk about voice, what do we mean? We actually
mean experience, like what is going on for the child and, I think that if I can help
whomever is working with the child, think about what's going for the child, they'll
have more empathy and, if they have more empathy, they'll hang in there.