Transcript for
Practitioner narratives about supporting social and emotional wellbeing for children and families

Narrator (00:02): 

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast. 

Nancy Jeffrey (00:07): 

Welcome today. I just wanted to start today’s podcast by doing an acknowledgement of country on which we are recording today, which is the beautiful lands of the Larrakia people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and all those young ones that are emerging. So thank you for tuning into Emerging Minds Podcast. This is a combined podcast with Alison Elliot, a family therapist and mom of 12, Yvonne Clarke, a psychologist, and Lukas Williams, CEO of Kaurna Healing. So today’s discussion is a practitioner’s narrative about supporting social and emotional wellbeing. 

(00:43): 

We’ll be sharing reflections from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, each offering their own perspective on what supports strong social and emotional wellbeing for children and families. Social-emotional wellbeing is an Aboriginal-developed framework that describes the healing and protective factors that supports strong social and emotional wellbeing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities. It helps practitioners stay connected to what matters most to parents and families. Let’s begin by hearing from Yvonne as she shares what social and emotional wellbeing means to her. 

Yvonne Clarke (01:20): 

To me, it’s the name giving to a process to help families connect better to their social aspects, which is family, community, et cetera, and to their own emotions, their feelings, their self-worth, different aspects of their emotions. So it’s a guiding framework as well, as well as a name. And there’s lots of these guiding frameworks around the place called Social-Emotional Wellbeing Wellbeing. The model that I work with is the one developed by Aboriginal people and for Aboriginal people, which is about connections to different domains of social and emotional wellbeing. 

(01:55): 

So these domains are things that are important to Aboriginal people, such as our connections to community, our connections to our family and our larger kin group, extended family, our connections to country, our connections to our bodies, our physical and our mental… our minds, connections to our spirit and ancestors. So it’s about connections, the social and emotional wellbeing model that Aboriginal people use. And that’s the one I usually describe to parents because I see many. I have seen many Aboriginal parents. 

Nancy Jeffrey (02:30): 

Yvonne shares that social and emotional wellbeing for her begins with connection. Now let’s hear from Lukas Williams as he shares what that looks like in lived practise. 

Lukas Williams (02:39): 

Way back when I started my journey, I was also dealing my children as I… I’ve got six kids, and I took one of my young people in my, my nine-year-old son at the time, and I just went and picked him up from a courthouse. He’d just been in trouble, and he was… we were threatened that he’s going to be jailed. So I had to think quick about what social-emotional being was for me and for him because we didn’t know what it was. And one of the things I started to have to do is not only understand the words, I had to learn the practises of it. 

(03:06): 

And so I’d go out on country, and I’d paint him up with his ochre that he could wear, and we’d do things on country that I knew made him strong. And not only did it make him strong, it then made me strong. And then we’d come home, and I’d teach him language, and I’d teach him different types of things. I teach him how to look after himself, his spirit for our proper way. So I had to learn what was important, not only the words of social-emotional wellbeing, but what other practises. And those things for me was hunting, taking him out on country to go hunting, taking him out on country to collect food, going out to perform ceremony in the way that we could with our babies at the time. 

(03:41): 

There’s different ceremonies, but that’s what I’d do. And today he’s a 20-year-old man, and he travels the Northern Territory across all my communities doing work exactly the same as me. So I know that those tools he took on board because I practise it. Sometimes we need to know what the practise is and not just the words, because words are just words. So one thing I really encourage you to do is learn the practise of what social-emotional wellbeing means for you and your family. 

Nancy Jeffrey (04:03): 

Lukas speaks to us that wellbeing grows through everyday connection. Now let’s hear Alison speak about cultural identity and belonging. 

Alison Elliot (04:12): 

So with the cultural identity, for me, it’s the bigger thing that’s holding the child. And if that’s not there, like that sense of who you are and your spirit, like how you fit into the world, it’s more than just your family. It’s the much bigger container or cradle that’s holding the child. So it’s really important that that’s built up. So if there’s been big historical things happened, how do we reconnect that? Because that is a thread that’s going to really hold. When some of the family might not be well, or things are going on, the bigger cultural identity is, “It’s okay, I’ve got this as well.” 

(04:51): 

And that could be your connection to country and totems and everything, learning all of that and your responsibilities, because that comes into as the child grows. If they miss out on initiations, which is where you’re stepping into who you are fully, your role, then you have to create a contemporary way of still feeling responsible in the world. So I think that that identity is crucial. I mean, the world’s in a lot of trouble. So for little ones growing up, I get a lot of hope when I see so much work now in rebuilding our cultural identity because it’s like, that’s going to help us for future generations. 

Nancy Jeffrey (05:30): 

When those connections feel strained, gentle support can make a difference. Here’s Yvonne on walking alongside families who may be feeling disconnected. 

Yvonne Clarke (05:40): 

There’s lots of things that people can be connected or disconnected to. But if it was… they were talking about country, and just from telling me their story, I sort of thought probably we could have a yarn about how they could connect to that… to country. So that could be about their identities if they can sort of talk about the countries where their ancestors came from, their language groups, whether or not they might tell me a story about they were taken away when they were younger and feel disconnected, and it would depend on what their story is. 

(06:14): 

So we would spend a lot of time yarning about a lot of that stuff and then sort of work out a plan of how they might then start to connect a bit more. Do they regularly visit family from their communities where they are, or do they visit other community members? Do they… Are they involved in lots of Aboriginal community stuff? Do they go physically to the place of their ancestors, or do they find a special place where they feel connected to? It doesn’t have to be their own country. It can be any country. 

(06:45): 

Do they… Some people like to go to their country and take some stones or whatever they’re allowed to take or they might just feel a special affinity to something on the landscape. And if it’s okay to take, they can sort of take that and have some connection. So there’s lots of different ways. And I know some people who are incarcerated do some of those activities as well. So it would depend on what’s available in the parents’ life, what they like to do, how the yarn would go. So there’s no cookbook recipe to how somebody connects. It depends on their own story. 

Nancy Jeffrey (07:23): 

Yvonne reminds us that connection looks different for every person and every family. Yvonne reminds us that trauma and disconnection can shape identity and belonging. Now let’s hear Alison reflect on how trauma can affect parenting. 

Alison Elliot (07:37): 

For me, making sure that the parent feels that they’re doing what they know. So it’s like I was saying, if you didn’t get something, you can’t actually just magically know what that is. So if you didn’t get enough touch as a little one, like as in held, rocked all of those early things with help with what we call regulation, which is basically when the big storm comes, how do I make it a little bit less? And when the sadness comes, how do I make a little bit less? 

(08:09): 

So it’s like that little one that’s learning, “When I cry, somebody comes within five, 10 minutes max, and they pick me up, and they start to feel into what’s that cry? Is it hunger? Is it nappy? Is it I’m cold, I’m hot, any of those things? So it’s regulating how loud I cry, how long I cry,” that kind of thing. That’s really early. If you didn’t get that, I’ll always go, “How do you do that then as a new parent? How do you suddenly magically know, ‘Oh, this is what I didn’t get, and now I’ve got to learn how to get that.'” 

Nancy Jeffrey (08:48): 

Alison reminds us that parents are often doing the best they can and that learning about trauma can open up new ways of understanding and care. 

Alison Elliot (08:56): 

There’s a couple of ways it can go. Often, you end up trying too hard, so you end up trying to really get it right all the time, and then there’s this exhaustion because you’re just wanting to do everything that you didn’t get. So that can often create a fatigue, which then creates exactly what you didn’t want. So we call it kind of like a overcompensating for what you didn’t get. And you can also go the other way and feel like you’re never going to get it right. So there’s a lot of internalised shame in that. 

(09:30): 

And so you end up doing the same thing as what mom or dad or your experience. So it can go both ways, knowing that you’re doing the best you can at that time, but then that awareness, I guess, of learning, like being open to learning, because there’s often a lot of pressure of, “I don’t know, so then I try and make it up.” So having that education and actually knowing what it is, it’s some of the… like even knowing what trauma is and what it does in my body and what it does in my little one’s body. 

Nancy Jeffrey (10:02): 

Alison reminds us that trauma can shape parenting in different ways. Now let’s hear Yvonne talk about the connection between culture, mental health, and wellbeing. 

Yvonne Clarke (10:11): 

They are very interconnected, but at the same time also separate. I mean, I often separate mental health, and there are clinical aspects of mental health which might get diagnosed or looked at separately from wellbeing. But you know that at the core of it, there could be wellbeing and connection stuff, which has contributed to poor mental health. So you know they’re connected, but they could be… depends who’s talking to them. 

(10:36): 

They could be seen as separate. Mental health is a lot more specific. Social-emotional wellbeing’s broader. So how would I describe it to parents? Well, I’d just sit down and have a good yarn. Yarn as practically as possible, give them lots of examples about social and emotional wellbeing and connection and identity and yarn with them about how they might identify, how their kids might identify as Aboriginal, what their connections are, whether they are linked to family and community or those aspects before I’d even get to stuff around mental health. 

(11:11): 

If they’re repeatedly telling me certain worrying things that the child doesn’t know who they are, or the parents don’t know who they are, and there’s sort of lots of things happening and dynamics and issues within the family, and that the child isn’t talking or is very closed off. There’s lots of things you’d need to tease out in an assessment with family. It can be formal assessment or just a really good yarn exploring lots of things. 

Nancy Jeffrey (11:40): 

Yvonne leaves us with a strong sense of hope grounded in the resilience carried by children, families and communities. 

Yvonne Clarke (11:46): 

And there’s always hope of children are very resilient. Generally, they bounce back really easy. They’ve got… If they’ve got a big family, they’re nurtured in many ways, and they laugh, and they play, and they do wonderful things together. 

(12:01): 

There’s always hope and also inviting creativity in kids and drawing and playing all those lovely things, if we think about when we were kids that we used to do, and how resilient we might’ve been back then. Lots of kids still carry that resilience. So even though there’s trauma that’s passed down, there’s also that resilience that’s passed down from generation to generation, and it’s what keeps us surviving, but also, in many cases, flourishing and thriving. 

Nancy Jeffrey (12:32): 

Finally, let’s hear Alison reflect on parenting and the care it takes to help children grow strong. 

Alison Elliot (12:38): 

There was some years ago called the Mask of Motherhood where you just pretend it’s all great and it’s all easy, and then suddenly you become that, and then you’re like, “Hang on, why did my sisters and friends not tell me this? That it was really hard.” It is. It’s probably the biggest job on the planet being a parent, and it’s not valued in that way. 

(13:04): 

There’s a lot of value on other roles. But as far as parenting role, it’s not being valued. I mean, probably in all our indigenous cultures definitely values on these different roles, but it’s since it’s got this… since the woundings of the historical staff too, I feel like that’s when a lot of the value on really making sure that little child’s growing up well and everyone’s got a say in their wellbeing. 

Nancy Jeffrey (13:30): 

Thank you for tuning in today. As we close, remember that social and emotional wellbeing invites us to see the child, not in isolation but in connection, in connection to family, culture, country, community, body, mind, and spirit. As practitioners, our role is not to fix, but to listen, connect and walk alongside families, strengthening the relationships that support wellbeing. 

Narrator (14:00): 

Visit our website today at emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. Brought to you by The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds, the centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.