{"id":7259,"date":"2018-12-13T07:05:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T23:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/disability-no-barrier-for-social-work-student\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:09:06","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:09:06","slug":"disability-no-barrier-for-social-work-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/disability-no-barrier-for-social-work-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Disability no barrier for social work student"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Meredith Grose is a self-confessed people person. Although she completed a Bachelor of Commerce, and worked for many years in human resources in government, she decided she was better suited to allied health and in 2014 enrolled in a Bachelor of Social Work<\/a> at Â鶹ֱ²¥. Meredith is totally blind, so completing not one but two tertiary degrees is no mean feat.<\/p>\n

Most students feel some trepidation before starting their degrees but, second time around, Meredith already knew what lay ahead and that her studies would require a different set of skills to a typical student\u2019s, and more determination than most.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really have any expectations, I just knew it was going to be hard and I was right about that. For the first three semesters we had to do general health sciences units and we only had a couple of social work units, and I was told at the beginning that if we got through that then we would probably manage,\u201d Meredith said.<\/p>\n

Meredith accessed Curtin\u2019s Disability Services<\/a>, which are available to all students with disabilities, had scribes for lectures and workshops and made use of technology to assist in reading textbooks and documents.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurtin has a disability and counselling service. So I had a disability officer, who I\u2019ve had from virtually when I put in my application, and she was always my go to person if things went incredibly wrong. I\u2019m the kind of person who would try to sort out something myself first and, if I couldn\u2019t, I\u2019d go to her and say, \u2018I can\u2019t do this\u2019. I\u2019m really fortunate that I had that person that I could ring up and vent to, which I didn\u2019t do that often. She\u2019s not a part of the school, so there was no conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally the lecturers and unit coordinators were supportive and they\u2019d all tell me they\u2019d learnt more from me than I possibly learnt from them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“I would go to my lecturer or coordinator as a first step, but there were times where I knew I wouldn\u2019t have got that far. I\u2019m conscious that they\u2019re busy and they\u2019ve got 200 other students, or whatever it is, and my needs are immediate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI use various things [to support me]. If it\u2019s something basic my phone will take a picture and read it back in voice, or I have had groups of transcribers who transcribe lecture notes into an accessible format. Just because something is available electronically, doesn\u2019t mean I can read it. It depends on the format, and some publishers are more committed than others to providing materials in an accessible format.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had scribes in the workshops and lectures, which took a lot of pressure off me and meant that I could actually be involved in class activities rather than use my brain for 45 different other [requirements]. The scribe would also be a support to move around the room, or if the lecturer put something on the board but forgot to tell me, or gave me handouts and materials I couldn\u2019t read \u2013 that on-the-spot kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the support that Curtin offers to students with disabilities, Meredith describes her ability to advocate for herself as critical to her success as a student. She cites the values embedded in the course content as particularly relevant to her circumstances, informing both her self-advocacy at university and her support of clients on placements.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fortunate I\u2019ve got a voice and I can use it. I am very good at advocating because I\u2019ve had to be.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“It\u2019s always in the back of my mind that there are other students who may have anxiety issues, or other issues, who are not as competent or as confident as I am. In that sense I\u2019m in a fairly fortunate position.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most useful things I\u2019ve learnt are being persistent, being patient, advocating for self-determination and listening. And that\u2019s what I\u2019ve learnt on placement with my clients as well, it\u2019s all those good social work values that they teach you.<\/p>\n

\u201cRespecting the person, advocating for self-justice, walking alongside in their journey and working out which way they want to go, not enforcing your beliefs and your attitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meredith describes her social work placements as an invaluable way to develop on-the-job knowledge and skills, as well offering an opportunity to experience different aspects of social work, and narrow down an area to specialise in after graduating. For Meredith, that area is counselling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did my first placement at Advocare, which is an agency that advocates for people that are either having difficulties in the aged care system or are trying to access the aged care system, or issues around elder abuse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy final placement was at Centacare. That was a counselling role and that\u2019s the direction I\u2019m looking at. You never knew what was going to walk through the door [and that\u2019s what I liked]. I saw one client and in session two she said \u2018I can do this\u2019 and that\u2019s a good feeling because that\u2019s the aim. I did a lot of telephone screenings and you learn a lot from them. I didn\u2019t always see every client that I screened, but I made sure I\u2019d take detailed notes for whoever was going to see that client. That was important to me. I told their stories succinctly and included as much detail as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get out and see what\u2019s out there. I know working with children is not an area I\u2019d want to pursue, for safety reasons for me, and I think hospital social work would have its challenges and I wouldn\u2019t want to do that either. Those really traditional roles are not for me but it\u2019s a broad church and there are many directions I can go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meredith Grose is a self-confessed people person, so decided to pursue a degree in social work, despite the challenges of studying as a totally blind person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4182,"featured_media":7260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-7259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"Social Work","qualification":"Bachelor of Science (Social Work)","link":"https:\/\/study.curtin.edu.au\/offering\/course-ug-bachelor-of-social-work--b-scwk\/","description":"","faculty":"Health Sciences"}],"credits":{"author":{"title":"Arianne Chavez","url":"#","target":""},"photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Meredith-Grose_Social-Work.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Zoe","last_name":"Taylor","display_name":"Zoe Taylor"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 17:13:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7259"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=7259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}