Question: What are we doing to better support the mental health of our staff and our clients?
Answer: We have implemented an integrated practice model into our service delivery – Liz is our key worker who is making this happen!

 

5 to 12 October is WA Mental Health Week 2024!  

This year, the theme is empowering communities, thriving workforces: a journey towards investing in our mental health 

In this post, we will explain what the integrated practice model is, and how it helps to better support the mental health of our staff and our clients. 

What is integrated practice? 

Put simply, integrated practice means putting the strengths of lawyers and social workers together to provide a more holistic service to clients and help each other to overcome the limitations of our individual roles. 

Research shows both lawyers and key workers (social workers) can experience dissatisfaction and disempowerment in their roles.   

For example, lawyers’ roles are limited to providing legal advice and assistance only. This might lead to frustration that they cannot help clients further with their non-legal issues or to address their mental health issues or emotional distress. Lawyers are also usually not trained or qualified to respond to mental health challenges or crises, and may feel that they are not able to adequately support clients in these situations.  

On the other hand, key workers can provide support to address the underlying issues in their clients’ lives that may be amplifying, or even causing, the legal issues they have, but cannot help clients to navigate the legal system itself.  

Both lawyers and social workers at Circle Green also spend significant amounts of time communicating with and thinking about people who have experienced some kind of trauma. This repeated exposure to and empathetic engagement with survivors of trauma can cause vicarious trauma symptoms, secondary traumatic stress and burnout if not managed appropriately. 

The integrated practice model has been demonstrated to be effective to reduce these mental and emotional pressures from lawyers and social workers.  This in turn leads to a more holistic and trauma-informed service delivery for clients and facilitates a safer and healthier workplace for staff. 

When lawyers and social workers work together in the same organisation: 

  1. clients can receive both legal assistance and further support to address issues in their personal lives, leading to more meaningful and positive outcomes; 
  2. our lawyers are less likely to be left feeling dissatisfied or frustrated that they have not been able to assist distressed clients in a meaningful way;  
  3. social workers will feel more empowered by knowing that their clients are receiving help to navigate legal systems while they provide complementary and alternative modes of support; and 
  4. the lawyers can debrief with social workers as a way of managing their own mental health and wellbeing.

 

Put very simply – lawyers and social workers make a good team!

This is especially true in community legal centres, where our clients are often the most disadvantaged and marginalised in our community, and often have complex needs.  

So, what do key workers do exactly? 

Liz is an integral part of our team, and we are lucky to have her. Read on to see what she has to say about our integrated practice model and her role at Circle Green:  

At Circle Green, we recognise that legal advice is often not entirely sufficient to meet the needs of clients who are experiencing other difficulties and challenges. We are committed to making a positive difference to the community and have embraced an integrated practice model of combining lawyers and key workers to best support our clients.  

My name is Liz, and I am a Key Worker at Circle Green. I have been working in Community Services for the past 18 years and I am so excited to work alongside our fantastic lawyers to provide a wrap-around non-legal support service to our clients. 

Working from a trauma informed, person centered and strengths-based framework, we incorporate our support into a brief and solutions-focused approach.​ 

How we support clients varies greatly, we can offer short term counselling and referrals to other specialised services that can provide ongoing support.​ 

Our collaborative and integrated approach supports clients to navigate their circumstances by providing legal advice and specialised services to ensure the best possible outcome for each client we support.

Hear what our clients have said about the integrated practice model! 

“To be offered such genuine and caring emotional support with non legal issues has been an invaluable positive part of the process. … My key worker (Liz) helped me to feel less scared and intimidated by the legal process. My key workers beautiful and kind nature is something that is much needed within Circle Green and I have no hesitation in saying that my positive outcome had a great deal to do with the appointments I had with my key worker (Liz).”  

 

“I also wanted to let you know I had a call from the Circle Green social worker Liz on Monday. She is wonderful and I appreciate the extra level of support she could offer.”  

 

Do you need assistance? 

If you have a workplace issue, you can request free legal help by completing this form.