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What I've Learnt - Susan Barton · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to what I've learned.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: This week on the podcast, I'm thrilled to have Susan Barton.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: If there was ever a true living saint in this world, then her name would be Susan Barton, founder of Lighthouse Foundation, a hub for the homeless and especially neglected and abused children.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: With six children of her own, Susan has still managed to foster hundreds of children, up to 20 a year, sheltering them from abuse, early childhood marriage, domestic violence, and neglect.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: When she runs out of space, her and her husband renovate or add a room where there's a way she'll find it.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Running one of the most innovative, progressive foster homes in the world, Susan and her team provide sanctuary.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: As she always says, it's not just a house, but a home.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We have so much to learn about love, dedication, and determination from this wonderful woman.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now, sometimes I'm lucky enough to interview people on my couch, in their homes, or in a studio.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we're on Zoom, at the mercy of birds chirping and doorbells ringing, or in this case, Susan's handy husband doing some work on the house in the background.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think Susan's story is so important to tell.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: So forgive some of the noise as we tell it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Susan.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot to cover.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can you start from the beginning and tell us a bit about why you were in Sri Lanka and how that changed the course of your life?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to be going through the process of adoption.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so what a group of us Australians did was start uh garnishing clothes and that sort of thing for children and to send them over.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened in the meantime is my adoption got uh accredited and I was ready to adopt in Sri Lanka.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd started sending money over to a nurse as well from France to go in and start helping, picking up abandoned children that were being let go of and trying to feed them and then look for their parents and reunite them.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And to cut a long story short, she really needed support to establish the crate over there and fix up cots and paint them and get them ready.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I happened to go over and I was a naive girl from the suburbs who just assumed that everyone loved their children as I loved my children.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm so seratorial about my kids, you just don't muck with my kids, or you you know, you've got to deal with me.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went over here, I realized that there were so many babies dying of malnutrition in the world, and we had all these adults around, and still they seemed to be oblivious, or they were doing nothing, or and um I was asked by this French nurse to take a really sick baby, Senil, to the infectious diseases hospital, which I did, and while I was there, I noticed in the far corner this little baby with really deep laboured breathing, and what I thought was thick black hair, but when I went over, I noticed that it was all um infected with scabies, and it was the scabies all sitting on the child's head.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked the nurse if I could look, you know, hold this baby because I was missing my own two sons at home at the time.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I now have six children, um, and I rocked this baby well into the evening and was looking into its eyes and talking to it and just singing lullabies.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, gosh, if you were my baby, there would be nothing right now that I wouldn't do to find you the help you needed.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while I thought, well, actually, you are my child, you're a child of humanity, and right now I'm the only adult here.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to do something, and yet I put that baby down in that cot and found out that the next day he passed away.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it rocked my world.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even to this day, I can hardly talk about that without it having a huge impact on me.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of, you know, I think you pose the question to me, what's one of my failures?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I always think that that was, you know, because had I known more and had I felt more competent and um had a bit more power and control, I may have been able to do something.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I came back to Australia, a very different girl, one that knew that I couldn't live in the world and know those things and not do anything about them.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I went on my own journey of discovery and and I haven't stopped really.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 70 in February, and I continue to thrive on learning and picking up on that education.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I probably wouldn't have got at school, but I wasn't privileged to go to because I came from a very poor family.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: We lived in the commission flats, and um, an education wasn't something that my mother or I thought was possible for me, you know.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Getting to year 10 was probably thought of as, you know, fantastic in our family.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I've thrived on learning ever since in whatever arena that I think that I have got a deficit or that I need to learn to be able to do more of what I'm doing at Lighthouse.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it seems that while, and I wouldn't call it a failure, what happened in Sri Lanka, I would call it the beginning of a very important journey, one where you've managed to contribute enormously and save so many other lives.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that is important that you see that as actually your success because that's what actually led you on this journey.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there are so many people I know and I've heard about who are so grateful for the work the Lighthouse Foundation does.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a very challenging arena to work in.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe you could talk about is there a story of hope and I suppose inverted commas success that you can reflect on that you have seen the Lighthouse Foundation and the work and the team that you have created that you would like to, you know, talk about?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know there's some amazing people that you've helped, young, vulnerable children.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess um what I'm most proud of at Lighthouse is that um we look at young people and take them in long term.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just numbers to us where you count and say, oh, we had a thousand people through our organization this year.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, for us, the important thing is the impact and the outcome of these young people, because they could be your child and they could be my child.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if it was my child, what would I want in an organization that would provide the love that I wasn't able to give them and the um sense of um fulfillment and hope in life, because that's the most important thing we can give our children is hope for the future and the um support to let them live their passion in life, I think.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have, because we didn't accept recurrent government funding those many years ago, we've been able to develop a program that's really rich and evidence-based and best practice, and probably one of only three around the world that operates in the way we do, which is trauma-informed and therapeutic practice.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we bring children into a community and we hold on to them till we believe they're ready to move out.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: But not only that, we unpack all that damage that's been done to them.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, an example of that is one little girl who is around 16 and she's a single mum of a little baby, and she was brought up in a family where feces on the ground around the house was just normal.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't know any different.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And her father was a pedophile and had three pedophiles living with them, so she was part of that um really deep abuse and neglect.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so coming to us um was a whole new world to her.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the work we had to do was to develop um our relationship with her and to have it so her, so deeply connected to us and our carers that she didn't want all long for uh going back to reconnect to that damaging way that that was all she knew.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a whole body of work that we do to have those young people really deeply and richly connect to the carers that they um that nurture them and look after them so that they have that um that fills that whole or that longing for being loved and to be cared for and not to be lonely, you know, because loneliness.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, loneliness is obviously a huge issue, and also trust is a huge issue.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when these people first of all, how do these people, these children or these vulnerable people come to you?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know some are under 20, um, but you also deal with 20-year-olds as well.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I know predominantly you do under 22.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: But how do these people, these children come to you?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do they find you?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: How do you find them?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you build that trust?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because there many of them have been that trust has been broken.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, on the first question, it's word of mouth, and we wanted to really demonstrate our outcomes, and which I can talk to you about.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Ernst and Young have done a report on us that have said that we've probably got one of the richest evidence-based practices they've ever seen, and we have probably an 87% success rate in a group of young people where in the community it's you know, we really expect the worst.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't expect to have any great outcomes at all.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, most fail.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm really proud of that, and that's really because we practice in that way, I told you.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the trust is that we build trust, and it's young people come in and they uh our carers are trained to work with them to build that trust.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't expect them to have it automatically.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the carers getting up every morning at 7 a.m.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: and getting the kids ready for school.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 300 um orange juices that they've squashed in the morning to hand to the children, it's the being there at the end of the day and a roast on the table, and it's having the family meetings once a week where they're there and present and not letting them down and them demonstrating what a good enough parent would be like.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: These young people come from now child protection, so we get um children from as young as two and even younger, really, um, right up to 21, although we'll hold a young person right into their mid-20s if their emotional intelligence is of a young child and we kind of look at really the emotional intelligence rather than their aggregate age and look at working with that child or young person and bringing them through to kind of bring their emotional age and their their real age into alignment.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I understand.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's interesting too because um I suppose you know your uh the Lighthouse Foundation has become the the absolute hub of where people know they can they, you know, some of these people who are um exposed to these vulnerable children, they know that any day, any time of the day or night, you are available or your your team are available to look after these vulnerable children.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you've created uh it's probably the most well-regarded centre for neglected children, probably in Australia, but certainly in Victoria.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that that is a credit to you.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: What is one of the what is one of the greatest challenges?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm assuming that coronavirus being, you know, obviously affects the most vulnerable even more.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So how is that impacted in what you're dealing with, if it has, I'm assuming?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's hugely impacted, but I was just going to go back to say what's another unique aspect of Lighthouse is that we bring the community back into the children's lives in a government setting, that's kind of that that's risk and OHS and all those sorts of things that have reduced any community interaction with these very vulnerable and damaged young people.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think it's the complete opposite that actually children thrive and develop in communities and amongst the people that love them.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our children belong in the community.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: We don't put them away.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really what we give them is a type of prison.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And rather, what we need to bring to them is a rich, diverse community.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So every time we open a home in a community, we surround them with a community committee that acts a little bit like a rotary so that the people out there understand what that means.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we're always looking for people to join those committees and support and hold our hand and co-parent with us, really.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how many of those homes have you got now functioning?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think there's 12, there's two currently under renovation and being rebuilt.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we've got homes all around Melbourne, you know, so in every area, you can sort of think, you know, or any every district, there's a home.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got children that are from early enforced marriage and trafficking that is that have been sex slaves.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a home for adolescents, we've got homes for um single mums and bubs, and the youngest has been a mum of 12 herself, and we've had really pointy end young people that have come from um shocking, like they've witnessed their mother's um murder in front of them, and then they've lost the other parent and been, you know, orphaned really.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we're just starting a project that's a year into the making of foster care.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things is we're really looking for foster care is particularly in the north, to help us parent our young people.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a really um, I guess, a hybrid model of what foster care is that you would know usually when they often break down.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: We hold your hand every step of the way in our foster care and we co-parent with you.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just getting back to how COVID affects us is that we've had to send our carers in to a really, you know, challenging situation.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And not one of them have said, no, I won't go.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of them said, not only will I go, but how can I help?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you need?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the worst thing is that they have to go in with all this PPN and our organizations based on relationship, and when you can't see a face and when you've got gloves on, and yeah, it's pretty horrific.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Especially with children, is seeing seeing the smiling face and the eyes and the sense that this person can trust and take care of you.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I can imagine that that sort of doubles the the the challenge in terms of that process.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, they draw faces on them the masks, and you know, you feel in a great idea, yeah.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just to make it a bit more of a fun thing rather than a scary thing.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what about tell me?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, right now, how many children do you have in need that you are looking for foster carers for?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this next how many homes are you building in the next year or two because you're talking about expanding that program?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give us a little insight into that and what you're looking for in terms of support?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Property Industry Foundation has just held our hand, and um we've pulled down our Clayton home and we're about to rebuild it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll be looking at everything that's needed in a home to set it up for to make it look stunning and beautiful for a group of young people to come in.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Our um home in Ivanhoe, we're looking for 10 foster parents.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have one already, so we've got nine to go, and we're doing that in partnership with the government.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really wonderful thing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're really supporting us getting these 10 foster parents.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's anyone out there in the community in the northern suburbs, we want to hear from you.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you want to just ask questions about what do you do and just take the first step and find out more, and then the second step, and then we can kind of let you know and see what your needs are and how that might work for you, or do you need a bigger home with more rooms and how can we help you find that?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, all those sorts of questions.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Can you just elaborate a little bit just so that we understand?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, when you say you have 10 foster positions, one is taken, can you just, and you've got this home in Ivanhoe being built, can you just elaborate a little bit so we understand that the foster carer, what their role is in that context, just briefly.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: So people understand when they, you know, what they can sign up for and how they can be of help.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get a little child from child protection or they've got some in their group homes, we look, we're Ivanhoe Home is our like hub home where say you take a child but you think you can only do it four days a week.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what we'll do is that young person we've built up a relationship with, and we're sort of like the aunts and uncles and big brothers and big sisters, and you might be the official parents, but on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you know you were will really need a break.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll take that child back into our fold because they're known to us.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, whereas when you're in often a normal foster care family, those children might go to 18 different foster carers before they find the right one.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And by then, trust is broken, it's so hard to get back, a loss of familiarity, a loss of their story, which is tragic, and a sense for them that it must be them that is the, you know, that's broken because no one can love them.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to stop that at the very early.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure that if you put your hand up for foster care, we do absolutely everything that enriches and supports you for you to take in that child.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the areas we're looking at is from Alphington and Abbasford through to McLeod, Ivanhoe, Rosanna, Viewbank, Yulambe, all those areas, Fairfield, Fitzroy, anyone that thinks they can be a partner to work with us to look at.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be you might want to be a respite carer to that child, but be one it wanting to be in their life all the time, but you want to do every second weekend.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what is it with?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have foster cared for how many children in total over time?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Including my own six children.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've had 16 and 17 living with me at any one time.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've got six at the moment?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got six with you at the moment?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, they're my own children.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've got your own.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you are a really extraordinary woman.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: You really are.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: My I, you know, I'm always in awe of you, Susan.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: 12 grandchildren, but I'm getting a bit too old to um foster in the way that I would want to see a child cared for.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: So my support goes behind all those who now want to do it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't I'll become a bit of a grandma figure to them.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the patriarch of the um, yeah, of the the lighthouse crew.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have no doubt.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you have so much experience, and it's interesting that um, you know, when people say, Oh, it's all too much, or they're a bit concerned about how it might impact their life, there you're a living example of having had six children yourself, and then, as you say, 16 to 17 foster care children through the last 20 to 30 years.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's oh no, I've had it's probably hundreds I've had through my home.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: But at any one time, I would have had including my own children, up to 16 kids living with me for years on end.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But next year, next April, we celebrate the 1000th young person that's come through.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, 30 years as a charity, it'll be over 1,000 young people by then that have gone through the program and become, you know, now alumni young people.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: That is quite extraordinary, and and really, you should see that as an extraordinary success.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I know the journey continues.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: What would be your absolute hope for the next probably two to three years?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: What would be your top priority?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what would you like to see change?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I would like to see that we end homelessness, especially for children in Australia.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just shocked that it it's not done with all the intellect and the social capital we have in Australia, and this is a lucky country and in our own backyard, that this would be a blight on us.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be easily done.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's simple, it's complex, but all of us together, government, corporate, uh, community, it is absolutely workable.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we just need to look solve the housing shortage.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: We need to look at um corporate and government and community holding hands and looking at um social equity and um affordable housing, and there's so many rich um practices already happening out there.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to get behind it all.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we need to look at that that young children need more than just a roof over their head, they actually need a family and a sense of belonging into the community.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they need a home, as you always say, it's not a house they need, they need a home.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep, exactly.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's my dream to see that in my lifetime.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope, Susan, that you do.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you are an absolutely wonderful Australian.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have done extraordinary work, and we are so grateful that you've come on to the What I've Learned podcast and given us an insight into the extraordinary work that you do.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you and good luck with everything.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we will stay in touch as always.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone wants to call me, I'm only a phone call away.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Love having a couple just like you, Deb.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many projects we love people to get involved in.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not our committees, then we've got these beautiful Ken Don jigsaw puzzles for Christmas presents.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to buy some, especially if you're a corporate, we'd love you to buy them off us for your corporates and uh keep making a difference to these young people because you too are their family and caring for children's everybody's business.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely agree.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And let's hope that this is a better Christmas.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Susan, you were just talking to me about an interesting notion of what you've learned and how you learn.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can you just elaborate on that for me a little bit?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because that was quite interesting.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I, as I said earlier, I only went to year 10, and so I was horribly um embarrassed about my lack of learning.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I made a pact with myself very early on, and especially when I left that child and did nothing, that I wouldn't um let something stand in my way if I didn't understand it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I said, my mum really parentified me.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: She was like a child, and and so I looked after her.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided that I would choose who I wanted to be as my parents in my learning.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I chose people that had masteries in areas that I felt that I was lacking in.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, Harvel Hendricks is my one for having a really authentic, deep conscious relationship with my husband, not an emotional romantic one, although that's part of it, is how do I get to that really deep, authentic love and how I nurture him and give him everything he needs.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in turn, that comes back to me.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking about um Brene Brown and being vulnerable and how to be again authentic in your relationships and how to seek and keep the love that you want.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, finding those people are really important.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um you even mentioned um, you mentioned, you know, even the money and new seminars you go to, you know, you So I'm a yeah, I realize looking at my personality profile, I'm a concrete learner, and so I really need to practice over and over again so it becomes real to me.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I do is I dive into a workshop, and one that's been profound for me is the Money and New workshop with um Robert Kiyosaki and DC, who took me under their ring really and took me all over the world, taught me about um franchising.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who would think a Yig 10 girl from you know the Housing Commission would learn about franchising and how to write down policies and procedures and how to duplicate that one home that very long time ago to now homes all around Melbourne and having 1,000 young people having gone through the program and it being one of the um programs that's held up as best practice around the world and having written a book on trauma-informed practice and teenage self-esteem, and really that's through um really looking at skills I don't have and building those and then putting them in practice.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I can see what you've learned, and I really am grateful that you've come on to give us a few of your uh tools and um really, really insightful, and uh, I suppose in some ways there's a sophistication that you know you talk about year 10 education.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, that's sort of, as you've just pointed out, not really the only way to learn.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why this is great, this series, because there's lots of ways to learn, and you've just shown how incredibly sophisticated you've become and skills you've acquired and continue to acquire, and really that's the lesson, isn't it?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: That you never stop learning.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's so exciting because you get to choose what you want to learn.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I've gone to a university that's just been open to me just devouring, because I'm a uh I love learning and everything that you know I I want to know.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to delve into it and and it comes to you, and you get to meet the most amazing people who then become part of your family and they support you in your endeavours as you do to them.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's quite a passionate learning that I get to have, which I'm deeply, deeply grateful for.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we're very grateful to chat to you, and we look forward to hopefully speaking to you again.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: You take care.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you've learned as much as I have.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: The show will be coming to you free every month, and a subscription is the best way to ensure you get each episode downloaded straight into your pocket.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: For more stories or for an opportunity to tell your own, head to my website, mindfell and publishing dot com.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, stay curious, kind, and connected.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: With life again.