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Project Officer and Social Work Changemaker | Daniel’s Journey
29 Plays18 days ago
In this episode of A-Z Jobs Podcast, we sit down with Daniel, a Project Officer and social work student making waves in mental health and community support. From managing restaurants for 15 years to resilience coaching after natural disasters, Daniel’s career has taken a transformative turn. Now, he’s using AI to tackle workplace psychosocial hazards while running Pathfinders, a bereavement support group. Tune in to hear his inspiring story, the challenges of career pivots, and how he’s creating meaningful change in Far North Queensland and beyond. Whether you’re curious about social work, project management, or just love a good comeback story, this episode is for you!
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Daniel's Career Journey
00:00:36
Nate
Daniel, thank you for joining us on to A to Z Jobs podcast. How are you?
00:00:42
Daniel
Good, thanks for having me.
00:00:43
Nate
No problem. So let's dive right in tell me Tell me a bit about being a project officer. How did you get started in your career and what what inspired you?
Transition from Hospitality to Social Work
00:00:54
Daniel
So I started off this role about six months ago. Before that, I was a resilience coach for the same organization and I was delivering non-clinical mental health supports to the far north, specifically after the cyclone and flooding from last year's Jasper cyclone.
00:01:17
Daniel
At that same time, I was developing a group around bereavement, grief and loss called Pathfinders.
Pursuing Social Work Education and Field Experience
00:01:24
Daniel
And I run that at the same time as my new role as project officer.
00:01:29
Daniel
Prior to that, I was a restaurant manager and I was in hospitality for 15 years, basically since I left school, I've always done something related to hospitality, whether it was working in big hostels in Germany. I lived in Berlin for a number of years and worked in large hostels and hotels over there.
00:01:53
Daniel
Came back to Australia, continued working, and then COVID happened. And i found out the night before that, you know, like everyone else, the prime minister came on the TV and said, as of tomorrow at lunchtime, all restaurants and bars will be closed.
00:02:10
Daniel
So that was a bit of a whirlwind. And i spent the next nine months contemplating what I was going to do. Very lucky to be in Australia and be supported by the government with the JobKeeper payments that we received.
00:02:26
Daniel
And i got thinking of what I wanted to do and I'm, you know, i consider myself a bit of a people person. So I went over to the university and looked at what I could do and I found social work.
00:02:37
Nate
Mm-hmm.
00:02:38
Daniel
So I enrolled and started studying and so within my first two weeks, I heard about working as a support worker.
00:02:48
Daniel
So while I was studying, I was working in residential out-of-home care with children. So that's kids that have been taken for multiple different reasons, but taken out of the family home and put into care.
00:03:03
Nate
Fantastic. Look, like COVID, like so many people I talked to, COVID has been the turning point. It was the turning point in people's careers. For me, it was the turning point in moving to Hong Kong.
00:03:14
Nate
So I think a lot of people take, took that time to reassess what, what, what matters to them and what, what is important in life. that's fantastic. So social work, talk to me about that, that study. What was the degree like? Well, how long, how long was the degree?
00:03:29
Daniel
It's a four year degree and actually I'm still studying. So I'm a student still. I will finish at the end of this year. So I made the decision due to some family stuff that was going on to cut my study from full time to part time. And so I went to part time
Project Officer Role and Use of AI
00:03:48
Daniel
and I went and started working.
00:03:52
Daniel
So instead of a four-year degree, it's become a five-year degree. But I'm actually really grateful for the opportunity because I'll be graduating at the end of this year with a year and a half of experience in the field.
00:04:05
Daniel
So very, very, very grateful for it. Social work is quite broad in Far North Queensland. We do focus on areas around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understandings because we have a large population of Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders here, as well as other people, culturally and and linguistically diverse people living in the region.
00:04:29
Daniel
It's it such an exciting field because you're doing something that is good for the community. rather than you know hospitality, even though it was a great career and I loved it, it does get quite monotonous and you know you're not really doing anything for the betterment of the community or humanity. So it's it's good to do work where I go home at the end of the day and I know that I've done something good for someone or...
00:04:57
Nate
Hospitality though is such such it's one of those industries that i think I think everyone should be forced to do at least six months in hospitality because you get to see all different types of people.
00:05:09
Nate
You get to learn how it's the people skills, the transferable skills that you're going to keep with you in any career you have, that ability to talk to people, to calm down tense situations. There's skill sets that that everyone should develop at an early age and hospitality is the best way to do that.
00:05:26
Nate
So talking then about your project officer role. So how is that different to the how does that differ to the work you were doing in sort of the the more social work role? Are you still hands-on doing social work or it's more policy-based work now?
00:05:41
Daniel
but When I got my promotion, because I'd already developed my bereavement grief and loss group, I said to my boss that if I do this new role, I want to be able to continue doing Pathfinders because it's really niche gap in the community where we don't really have anything online. Sorry, face-to-face. There's online resources and around specific types of grief and loss, like mothers who've lost a baby to stillborn, or things like that, or parents that have lost a child to suicide. There are some online resources, but nothing broad about grief and loss and face-to-face in Cannes. So I decided that I wanted to do that. So I i run a group every week and I also do one-on-one coaching with people.
00:06:27
Daniel
But the project officer role is different. It's very, very different. So we received funding from the Queensland government to research and mitigate psychosocial hazards.
Challenges and Fulfillment in Social Work
00:06:39
Daniel
So burnout, fatigue, workplace violence, organizational change. job demands, all of these things. So we we know in Queensland in the next three or four years, we're going to receive 100,000 employees to the field.
00:06:56
Nate
Oh.
00:06:56
Daniel
across the state in health and well-being and burnout and staff retention is a huge thing so the government is basically asking organizations and people like myself to research psychosocial hazards and then create resources to mitigate them So that's what I'm doing now. So I use a lot of AI in my work, creating video resources as well as practical resources that organizations can use to be proactive in their measures against mental health workplace related injuries.
00:07:31
Nate
wow That's a massive investment. That's exciting. It sounds like there's a lot of interesting things coming your way then.
00:07:37
Daniel
Yeah, it is a very exciting field and it's it's quite it's quite different because, you know, from hospitality, i was working as a restaurant manager and managing teams of 30 or 40 people on any given night with large functions of three or 400 people.
00:07:53
Daniel
And now I'm a team of one. So I have my... direct manager and then the the big boss that I can go to and ask questions. But apart from that, it is me kind of creating everything from scratch.
00:08:08
Nate
Oh, scratch. Yeah, it can be, it can be tough, but the the sense of achievement though, must be, must be huge.
00:08:18
Nate
So what about
00:08:18
Daniel
It's quite rewarding and profound to to to create something from scratch from your own intellectual property and then see the benefits of it.
00:08:27
Nate
see it get out there? That's great. And what about the best, what's the best number one best thing about your job?
00:08:36
Daniel
The number one best thing about my job is helping people over a period of time and seeing their resilience and their mental health improve.
00:08:49
Daniel
And for them just to clearly and come come back to me and say, you know, Danny, you've helped me a lot. yeah So that's to be able to like look someone in the eyes and they can see, I can see that they're doing better when they first started seeing me.
00:09:04
Daniel
That is the most profound and rewarding thing for my job.
00:09:10
Nate
Yeah, nothing can replace that. That's something think
00:09:14
Nate
that's something i
00:09:15
Daniel
Also on the on the other side, doing the project officer stuff, I'm working a lot with AI and creating video resources. of In the last six months, I've taught myself like four or five different programs, the Adobe suite, generating AI videos and creating resources that are innovative and when I show people then you know the look on their face going oh wow you created this all by yourself and this can actually have a great impact so it's exciting to see once the project officially launches which will probably be the end of April to see how widespread it can be launched and how many people it reaches
00:09:57
Nate
that's fantastic so what about what's the most challenging so you've mentioned working on your own i imagine that's quite a big challenge has there been anything else that you haven't enjoyed in the career or anyone should be aware of if they coming into into either social work or sort of project work with the government
00:10:19
Daniel
I think for me, one of the most challenging or frustrating things is to understand that not everyone works at the same pace.
00:10:27
Daniel
So, you you know, when you work for an organisation, you have to understand that there are... you know middle management upper management then depending on what organization you work for there are members or you know there could be a council that or people a committee that is deciding certain things and you have to sometimes wait around for a decision to be made before you can move on with certain aspects of the project that can be quite frustrating Yeah, that's probably the probably the main the main kind of source of stress is having to like wait and wait for an organization to...
00:11:06
Daniel
decide what they want to do. Also collaborating with other organizations. so a big part of this project as well is meeting with other external organizations and collaborating to create resources around psychosocial hazards.
00:11:19
Daniel
And it can be quite difficult because everyone has their own workloads and they've got their own priorities and things like that. So engaging and collaborating with external organizations can be quite difficult.
Advice for Aspiring Social Workers
00:11:33
Nate
so with with your with your career path then you've sort of you've gone in you've done you've done a university degree you've obviously gone up gone with the focus of wanting wanting to to sort of develop a career towards where you are and the government and doing some policy work as well as developing your own resources if if someone was someone was interested interested in doing social work more purely for the but the handson i want i want to help just disability support work or if i want to do like you did with the out-of- homeme care work
00:12:04
Nate
is there a quicker path to that that social work then i suppose after that then for the for them project officer work was there a quicker path for you or did you have to go through that university path to get where you are
00:12:20
Daniel
yeah I don't know if there was a quicker path. I think that, you know, Rome was not built in a day and social work is a very, very broad field.
00:12:32
Daniel
There are, roles where you're really hands on and you're working with clients face to face. There's roles where you might see a client, you know, once a week, but then the rest of the time you're behind a computer because you might, you might be managing teams of people who are more face to face than yourself.
00:12:51
Daniel
I think if anyone is interested in changing to careers into social work, it's in the doing. that's what people That's what social work is about. it's about in that It's learning as you go and discovering what parts of social work excite you.
00:13:06
Daniel
So if anyone was interested in social work, I would just suggest do a bit of research, find out all of the different avenues that you can go down in social work. And then if you really think that it's something for you, just start, just get into it, you know.
00:13:23
Daniel
Sign up, find your local university. There's plenty online that you can engage with as well. I go to JCU here Cairns. in cairns But yeah, it's really about the doing. And the thing that I did was I started the degree and then I went and straight away started working as a residential support worker because I was allowed to while I was studying.
00:13:46
Daniel
And that's when I really got to understand, okay, this is for me and this is really interesting. it's I would suggest go and get the degree or start the degree and then start working in the field if you can, doing something that is hands-on,
00:14:05
Daniel
frontline work and then you can understand, okay, if I can do this, because it can be very, very challenging support work with children or with persons with disabilities.
00:14:16
Daniel
But if you can manage that, then you know, okay well, I can actually help the people who are going to be doing that work later on as I progress through my career.
00:14:25
Nate
yeah i it's probably advicey you could put towards most careers as you need to get in there and try it if you you know so many people get in there they do the university university degree they come out the other side and then the the career isn't what they thought it was sorry absolutely a hundred percent agree getting there test out the career before you make that that four fiveyear commitment otherwise you're going to to find yourself in a tricky spot another way like probably not for social work because you need you need some sort of qualification but
00:14:58
Nate
looking at sort of volunteer services as well if you're interested in working with children or out of home care maybe just go go find some volunteer services first get a feel for it's like in the industry before you commit because as you said it is ah ah it's a challenging industry and you you really need to have that passion which you know but everyone has so it's important to really get in there and give that a try
00:15:25
Nate
so any tools resources anything you would recommend as a starting point for anyone or any blogs or podcast you listen to on a regular basis that helps you with your job
00:15:36
Daniel
Not specifically any channels or podcasts that I listen to, but YouTube, you know, Googling things, ChatGBT is a big one as well, you know.
00:15:50
Daniel
using those resources to benefit your own knowledge base is really important. So if there's anything that I don't know or I'm interested in, I'm just quickly Googling it. I'm looking on YouTube if there's any resources that I can have a bit of a better foundational kind of knowledge base.
00:16:07
Daniel
And then from there, then I would go further into it and start reading scholarly articles and things like that, or talking to colleagues or people that you know who are in the field.
00:16:18
Daniel
lived experience is super, super important in social work and professional supervision.
00:17:03
Nate
it's a good point and so you mentioned about talking to people so in that in in that sense it's almost like a mentor could develop into sort of a mentor relationship did you did you have a mentor at all did you have any any sort of guidance on your journey
00:17:17
Daniel
Lots of different people. Yeah. My partner is a social worker.
00:17:44
Daniel
You can become a...
00:18:16
Daniel
There's no stupid questions, I think, as well. Don't be afraid to ask certain things.
Work-Life Balance and Career Reflections
00:18:23
Daniel
How do you switch off? How do you maintain a good work-life balance?
00:18:42
Daniel
And being able to switch off super important.
00:18:45
Nate
yeah oh absolutely and and burnout it's fantastic that the queensland government are putting so many resources into it it's an area that there hasn't been much education and it's an area that does impact people quite significantly particularly in the health industry and you you just look at what they these amazing nurses and healthcare professionals did during covid as well like the burnout we must have learnt a lot from that period and it's great to see great to see some resources going in to prevent it
00:19:17
Nate
what about what about yourself do you have a quote or a mantra what do you have anything that keeps you going in your tough times is there something you remind yourself or any any top quotes you have
00:19:29
Daniel
Lots of different quotes that I kind of draw
00:19:36
Daniel
Don't sweat the small stuff. There's so much going on.
Conclusion and Parting Thoughts
00:20:26
Nate
yeah and must be it must be hard the reminder reminder of you know the the wording in that email isn't so important anymore after you see someone losing their house you sort of you can really put into perspective your daily life compared to others know don't sweat the small stuff
00:21:09
Daniel
You've got Friday, you can recharge your batteries on the weekend. Make sure that you do that.
00:21:20
Nate
fantastic thank you for your time it's been great getting to know you it's been great hearing your journey so thank you very much for for jumping on the podcast with us
00:21:30
Daniel
Thanks so much for having me, Nate.