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My name is Cat.
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I'm a social worker and I work as a Counsellor Advocate at CASA House,
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the Centre Against Sexual Assault.
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I think I always wanted to work with people.
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Specifically I wanted to work in a field
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advocating for women and children.
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I don't think I had the word ‘social work’
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when I was growing up to define that in.
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But I had the idea.
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And so I started a Bachelor of Social Work in university and narrowed my focus
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more specifically into gendered violence, social work and advocacy.
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CASA house takes a Rights, Options,
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Control model or framework to our support with clients.
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Rights, Options, Control are things that are taken away
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from someone when they experience violence or assault.
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We want to give that back to them when we support them.
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That can involve advocacy and navigating services.
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Most typically the police and medical units, but sometimes
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other social work organisations that come into contact with the client.
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It can also involve meeting therapeutic goals of healing and recovery.
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You advocate for their choice.
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You advocate for them to feel in control of the decisions that they're making,
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and you advocate to pause or slow down the process whenever they need to.
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We have a really great level of access
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to supervision, clinical supervision, and this collective care model.
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And so you never really feel alone in the challenges at work.
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You always feel like there's someone you can lean on
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or someone that you can share your decisions with
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and share your decision making processes with that it always feels like there's
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someone to turn to, to either validate your decisions or help you make them.
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I think it feels really exciting
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to be involved in a sector that is expanding
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and to be involved in a narrative
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that doesn't feel silenced anymore.
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Being able to engage in
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policy submissions or policy advocacy.
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Being able to engage in prevention workshops.
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Being able to engage in research.
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And to take a role as a worker
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and an advocate in that change, in that increased dialog,
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feels really exciting and feels like a real privilege.
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