Today I was having a conversation on WhatsApp with my dear friend Rebecca. Her real name isn’t Rebecca, but for the sake of complete anonymity, we’ll go with that. Rebecca is Nanny’s real granddaughter, and we consider ourselves cousins and very close friends — best friends, really.
She has struggled with mental illness her whole life due to sexual abuse when she was a child. She now works as a peer worker, and they absolutely love her at her workplace. She’s done really well for herself. A few years ago, she purchased a unit, and while she’s built up a life for herself, her mental illness — and now her physical health — still significantly affect her quality of life.
It’s nothing new that we were talking over WhatsApp; we’re basically in an ongoing conversation every day. But today, she mentioned that she sees a social worker who has a master’s degree specialising in trauma therapy. I asked her how much she charges per hour, and Rebecca said $197.
I’ve got to say, I think that’s a lot — for a social worker. I know everyone’s got to make a living, and yes, she has a master’s degree, but essentially what that is… is $200 an hour to see a social worker. And while Rebecca can afford it because she works, the majority of people who need a social worker couldn’t possibly pay that.
Rebecca also said there was no way to get any money back from Medicare on a mental health care plan for some reason. She says her social worker is worth it, but I don’t like that.
I studied social work a bit, and if I’d ever finished my degree, I always thought I’d want to work in a government department like Families and Communities or Housing SA — though I’m not sure what they’re called now. I always imagined myself being effective in helping people navigate the system: walking with them to other departments to submit forms, waiting on hold with them until we got answers, advocating properly for them.
I’m not saying I would’ve been better than anyone else, but there aren’t many jobs I know I’d have done well, and that’s one of them.
But Rebecca’s social worker charging nearly $200 an hour? That just doesn’t sit right with me.
You know what else I think sucks about social work? Sociology. I’ve studied it a couple of times in different capacities, and the language is so pretentious. I can just imagine these young, first-in-the-family-to-go-to-uni students going home to their parents and using all this ridiculous terminology, and the parents probably rethinking their decision to support them on their “university journey.”
I know if I had kids and they came home talking to me like that — turning into little snotty-nosed intellectuals — I’d be hoping I had a husband who knew me well enough to step in and tell them: “Never talk to your mother like that.”
I’ve done some volunteer work for a refugee organisation, where my role was to visit refugees in their homes, offer friendship, and help out wherever I could. A couple of years ago, I was paired with a Syrian woman who’s exactly the same age as me. Her husband has a severe acquired brain injury, and it has impacted her life in every possible way.
She was his sole carer in a refugee camp before they came to Australia, and although she now has support through the NDIS, her life is still incredibly hard. They have two children, but her husband can be aggressive and violent at times. He can’t walk, but there have been incidents where the police had to be called.
At one point, they were working with a migration agent to try to bring her husband’s brother to Australia so he could help care for him. One day, the woman showed me an email from the migration agent saying that they needed to provide certain forms, or they’d lose the $6,000 they’d already paid.
I was really worried she’d lose that money, so through her husband’s carer — who speaks Arabic and a little English — we managed to make a plan to sort everything out. I drafted a statutory declaration for her and took her to the police station to get it witnessed straight away. The next day, I picked her up and we went together to see the migration agent.
In the room, it was me, the woman I was supporting, her husband, and his carer. No one spoke much English except me and the migration agent. We weren’t in there for long — she asked a couple of quick questions and went through the forms we’d brought in. Then, without hesitation, she looked up and said:
"That will be $6,000, please."
I just couldn’t believe it. I honestly couldn’t. If I were in her position, I don’t think my body would even let the words leave my mouth.
Between them, this family survives on the disability pension and the carer’s pension. Out of that, they have a house to run, two children to feed, and — on top of everything — they also send money to family in Iraq and Syria, where some relatives are still living in refugee camps. I have no idea how they could possibly afford that kind of payment.
To be fair, I know some of the money would go towards visa costs, and I understand that migration agents need to make a living too. But I also know myself — and I just couldn’t have looked two people in their situation in the eye and asked them for $6,000.
It’s an interesting question when you think about people like social workers, migration agents, lawyers — even doctors and specialists. How can they ask for so much money from people who don’t really have it?
I’ve never worked in any of those professions, and now that I’m in my second act of life, I’m on a creative journey with my end goal of writing and creating artwork. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a position where someone with very little money wants something I’ve created.
When I was making those 1,000 paper cranes and painting them as brolgas to enter into the Waterhouse Prize, I found out that if you’re a finalist, you can sell your work. I said to Mum, “If some kid came up to me and said, ‘I love your cranes, I really want them on my wall,’ I’d just give it to them. No charge.” Because it would mean everything to me that someone who truly loved it was going to have it in their home.
But if some Japanese businessman came up to me and said, “Origami originated in Japan — I want the piece to hang in my office,” I’d take $10,000 from him without hesitation. Not that an emerging artist’s work would go for that much — but hopefully, you see my point.
For me, if I could earn enough money to travel the world, buy my little apartment in town, buy a place for Mum to live, and maintain a studio at the Mill… then I’d be happy.
