My Career Exploration in the Land Down Under

Influence on My Career Goals:

For my entire life I have wanted to work with kids. I always imagined that I would be a teacher and work in a classroom. That changed after I explored Social Work in my Senior year of undergrad. After entering the MSW program at Ohio State, I began to understand a few things. The first is that I really have an interest in social work as a career. The second is that working with children and youth continues to be my true passion. And finally, that I want to look at global issues of children and youth. When this opportunity was presented to me in my first week of Grad school, I knew I most do it. Being chosen to be apart of this program gave me the opportunity to explore every part of my career goals.

Being able to visit another country gave me a great start to obtaining a global perspective on issues. I currently work and volunteer for groups at the Ohio Department of Mental Health Children’s Division and have had the opportunity to attend National Conferences in Mental Illness in the US. Visiting Australia allowed me to gain insight into how another county addressed the same issue. I found some of the comparisons very interesting. For example, in the US there is a lot of stigma around mental health and while there is also some stigma in Australia I found it to be much less. I really liked some of the awareness campaigns around mental health.

Other areas where I felt I learned a great deal about my goals were learning about youth, refugees, and native Australians. Before coming to Australia, I always thought I would want to work with younger kids who are in elementary school. After visiting the agencies, I am leaning toward a focus on older youth. The agencies that we visited have done amazing work for young people. Australian youth face many of the same barriers as youth in the US, such as finding services, homelessness, abuse, and drug and alcohol use. I felt the agencies in Australian youth were dedicated to removing barriers.

As I reflected and analyzed the practice of the multiple agencies, I actually found that the mindset around child welfare and youth mental health is far more open than ours. There seemed be more conversation and awareness among the general public. As I move forward in my career I will work to incorporate some of the ideas I learned in this experience into my own work here. I don’t feel I would have as much insight to the daily issues an agency addresses without getting to visit so many different agencies and gaining a well rounded perspective.

The VACCA Experience in Cultural Diversity:

Visiting VACCA definitely made me more culturally aware of Australia Aboriginal people. It was good that this was the first agency we visited because it was so informative about the history and development of Australia. This was a good perspective to learn before going into other agencies.

I found it very exciting and interesting that in Australia it is basically required to acknowledge the aboriginal culture in Welcome to Country during large gatherings and events. This visit made me reflect on the difference and similarities between how Australians treat the Aboriginals verses how the US treats or acknowledges the Native Americans.

I was very shocked to learn that this acknowledging of culture is a very recent change. It wasn’t until the past two decades that Aboriginals were even treated as humans. Before that, they were not treated well at all. Mostly they were looked at as wild animals or categorized as livestock. In most cases their children were taken away and given to whites.

It made me really reflect on how the United States has along way to go on how we treat the Native Americans, as well as the recognition of our history and willingness to take ownership of our past mistakes. I don’t see us embracing a National Sorry Day of validation for the way we have treated Native Americans, African Americans, or Asian Americans in the US. Mostly I feel we just right off our wrongs and expect people to move on and get over it.

In relationship to my own career goals, I found that some issues youth face are human development and can globally look similar, while others are directly related to culture and environment. I want to find a career where I can work with multiple cultures.

Other Thoughts and Experiences:

In addition to being able to explore agencies I felt that having the opportunities to explore Australia made a big impact on me. The extra curricular activities gave us a chance to really experience the way other people live daily lives. I liked living in an apartment gave me insight into living in another country and not just staying in a hotel.

This past month has been absolutely amazing, and I wish I could have stayed longer. I think Melbourne was a great experience and I enjoyed all the difference agencies, but at the same time I wonder how the rest of the country is in terms of there view point on child welfare and mental health. I feel I was able to get a full and diverse snap shot in the time we were there, but it would be interesting to spend more time exploring the government perspective on Mental Health and to learn more about how programs are funded and supported to meet long term goals.

This experience was important because I hope to work in or with other countries in the future. I fell that being emerged in the community helped me see what it would be like if I do get the opportunity to work abroad in the future. I highly recommend a study aboard for any student as it gives you the chance to see the world an understand different ways of thinking and addressing issues.