The Lighthouse Foundation: Transforming Youth Homelessness Through Relationships and Community

In a world where vulnerable children and youth often fall through the cracks of support systems, the Lighthouse Foundation stands as a beacon of hope. Founded 33 years ago by Susan Barton AM, this Australian organisation has pioneered a therapeutic approach to youth homelessness that focuses on healing through relationships, community involvement, and long-term support.

Susan’s journey began over four decades ago when a life-changing experience in Sri Lanka opened her eyes to the suffering of vulnerable children. Witnessing malnourished babies in dire conditions prompted a profound personal transformation. Upon returning to Australia, Susan discovered that while Australian children weren’t dying of severe malnutrition, they faced different challenges, with youth suicide rates among the highest in the Western world. This realisation sparked her mission to create safe homes for homeless youth, beginning with fostering teenagers who had nowhere else to go.

What started as Susan opening her home to vulnerable young people evolved into a comprehensive therapeutic model. The Lighthouse model isn’t merely about providing shelter; it’s about creating healing communities where young people can form meaningful relationships and begin their journey to recovery. Their approach has yielded remarkable results, with 87% of young people leaving Lighthouse never returning to homelessness again, effectively breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Central to Lighthouse’s success is their understanding that relationships are the primary vehicle for healing. Their therapeutic residential care homes provide young people with consistent, emotionally available adults who don’t just “do to” but “be with” children and their families. The organisation supports young people up to 25 years of age—far beyond what most services offer—and continues relationships through their “On For Life” program, recognising that healing takes time and that young people need ongoing support, just as they would in a family environment.

The Lighthouse model incorporates several unique elements that distinguish it from traditional approaches. Community committees surround each home, creating a network of supportive adults who act as surrogate extended family. Regular reflective practice helps carers understand their own emotional responses and how these might impact their work with young people. Their psychosocial screening ensures that everyone in the organisation, from therapeutic carers to board members, aligns with their values and approaches.

Perhaps most revolutionary is their approach to birth families. Lighthouse understands that children who have been abused by their parents don’t stop loving their parents—they stop loving themselves. By working non-judgmentally with parents and involving them in their children’s healing journey, they honour the importance of family connection to identity and recovery. Their Young Parents and Babies Programme supports young parents to heal from their own childhood trauma while raising their children free from inherited emotional wounds, embodying their philosophy: “We care for the parents so they can care for their children.”

The Lighthouse Foundation demonstrates that therapeutic residential care can be a powerful intervention rather than a last resort. By focusing on relationships, community involvement, and long-term support, they provide a model that challenges traditional approaches to youth homelessness and offers hope for meaningful, lasting change.

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About Susan and Ben:

Susan Barton AM founded Lighthouse Foundation 33 years ago and has dedicated her life to helping the most vulnerable children and youth. Her mission is to change the way Australia looks at the issue of child and youth homelessness towards a more therapeutic approach where we create caring communities where all young people – from babies to young adults – can feel safe, form meaningful relationships, and begin their journey to recovery.

Susan has co-authored two books on childhood trauma, was awarded an Order of Australia for services to youth in Australia, was named Melburnian of the Year in 2009, and was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women for her significant achievements and contribution to the Victorian community, in 2012.

With over fifteen years of experience in therapeutic residential care, residential communities, and educational settings, Ben brings a wealth of understanding and passion to his role at Lighthouse Foundation.

Ben honed his reflective skills at Fairways, an award-winning children’s services charity in the UK. It was during his time there, that Ben encountered Therapeutic Residential Care for Children and Young People: An Attachment and Trauma Informed Model for Practice, written by Susan Barton, alongside Rudy Gonzalez and Patrick Tomlinson.

Inspired by the Lighthouse Foundation’s values and vision for high-quality care, Ben joined the organisation in 2018 as a Therapeutic Carer, supporting children, young people, young parents, and babies in need of a secure base.

In 2021, Ben became the Manager of Youth and Family Services; leading Lighthouse Foundation’s nine therapeutic residential care homes.

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Transcript:

Colby: 0:01

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast.

Susan: 0:04

And children grow in the love of someone. If you can hold with them and stay with them during that really difficult time, they’ll usually find a little spark of hope and see it through and get out the other side. Every time we open a home in a community, we build a community committee around that home and the um. The importance of that is that they’ve got all these surrogate parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and there’s a really deep responsibility that I’m a conduit for the young people who can’t tell their story to those who don’t know their story.

Ben: 0:45

And we contract all our forensic carers to engage in reflective practice. Children have been abused by their parents. They don’t really stop loving their parents. They stop loving themselves and we really see parents as an integral part of their identity and their healing process. And that was all the child needed. Really. He didn’t need to affix, he just needed to be heard. We care for the parents so they can care for their children. When I was a child, playing was very terrifying because it it meant abuse. Um, you’ve, you’ve taught me how to play with my children, so she was very grateful for that.

Colby: 1:23

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode are two representatives of an Australian endeavour providing homes and therapeutic care to the young people who need it, where they need it and for as long as they need it. Before I introduce my guests, I’d just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I’m coming to you from the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the continuing connection the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture and community. I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. My guests this episode are Susan Barton and Ben Pryke of Lighthouse Foundation.

Colby: 2:13

Susan Barton AM founded Lighthouse Foundation 33 years ago and has dedicated her life to helping the most vulnerable children and youth. Her mission is to change the way Australia looks at the issue vulnerable children and youth. Her mission is to change the way Australia looks at the issue of child and youth homelessness towards a more therapeutic approach where we create caring communities where all young people, from babies to young adults, can feel safe, form meaningful relationships and begin their journey to recovery. Susan has co-authored two books on childhood trauma, was awarded an Order of Australia for services to youth in Australia was named Melburnian of the Year in 2009 and was inducted into the Victorian Honor Roll of Women for her significant achievements and contribution to the Victorian community in 2012.

Colby: 3:09

With over 15 years of experience in therapeutic residential care, residential communities and educational settings, ben brings a wealth of understanding and passion to his role at Lighthouse Foundation. Ben honed his reflective skills at Fairways, an award-winning children’s services charity in the UK. It was during his time there that Ben encountered therapeutic residential care for children and young people, an attachment and trauma-informed model for practice written by Susan alongside Rudy Gonzalez and Patrick Tomlinson. Inspired by the Lighthouse Foundation’s values and vision for high quality care, ben joined the organisation in 2018 as a therapeutic carer, supporting children, young people, young parents and babies in need of a secure base. In 2021, ben became the Manager of Youth and Family Services, leading Lighthouse Foundation’s nine therapeutic residential care homes. Welcome, susan and Ben. Thanks, colby.

Ben: 4:23

Thank you, colby, thank you for having us.

Susan: 4:24

Can we acknowledge the traditional owners of our land, the Wurundjeri people, and thank them for the beautiful country we live in.

Ben: 4:34

Yeah, we pay respect to elders past, present and emerging and we extend that respect to Aboriginal children, young people and families who entrust lighthouses with their care.

Colby: 4:43

Yeah, well, thank you for that. Now, was there anything about either of those bios or anything that you would wish to add at this point?Susan: 4:53

I don’t know, I’ve placed over a bit of time.

Ben: 5:01

Oh God, would that add to the bio? No, I was thinking Colby. It made me think about, uh, the podcast you had with lisa cherry recently, I believe it was, and it reflected on being a parent. Um, so just to add, that’s our professional roles, but, um, I’m also a father and a husband and take those roles with the same level of seriousness and care that we give to Lighthouse Foundation young people.

Susan: 5:27

Yeah, okay, and if you want a more personal one, I have six grown-up children and 12 grandchildren, and I would like to push for a 13th if my kids are cooperative.

Colby: 5:42

Well done, that’s lovely. I know if you’ve listened to a couple of the other podcasts. It seems to be excruciating for some people to sit and listen to their bios. Yes, on the one hand, and on another hand, there it’s almost an opportunity to reflect on how much you’ve done across a career in this space, and we do spend a lot of time, I guess, focused very much on the task that is at hand, what’s right in front of us, and don’t always have the opportunity to sit back and reflect on the span of our activities. Yeah, so I thought I’d just get going by asking, perhaps starting with you, susan, if you could tell us a little bit about Lighthouse Foundation, the work that you do and perhaps even how you came to found Lighthouse Foundation all those years ago.

Susan: 6:52

Yeah, thanks, colby. Well, it’s a bit of a long story so I’ll try and encapsulate it very succinctly, but I actually started probably 43 years ago. But I actually started probably 43 years ago showing my age, and I happened to. A group of Australians were supporting a project over in Vietnam, and then there was the fall of Vietnam. So we had to refocus somewhere else with our wish to make a difference, and that place ended up being Sri Lanka, and we found out in Sri Lanka they needed a nurse to help and set up a nutritional crèche for all abandoned children, and so we sent money over and the French nurse was employed, and then she arrived and realised there was such an enormous task to set up. She put out an SOS to the global community for anyone that might be able to come and help her, and so I’d never been out of partly my suburb, let alone my country, before, and I strangely put my hand up and found myself over in Sri Lanka.

Susan: 8:07

My mum was minding my two sons and I thought it was going to be a very short stint and it ended up being a little bit more elongated. But what happened there was she asked me to take a really sick baby to the infectious diseases hospital. While I was there I noticed a severely malnourished baby with abscess, scabies and flies sucking on it. I was just stunned that that would happen to children, because that doesn’t happen in our country. And I in that time also saw many babies languishing in cots three at a time in excrement, and it so shocked me that that happened in my world. And I looked at myself and I wondered couldn’t I be doing more about this and shouldn’t I be doing more about this? And who was I as a human being that was allowing this to happen? And I was looking at it and had no power to intervene. And I found out that one of those little babies died and I came back to Australia a really different girl, one that knew that I couldn’t live in the world and see that going on in my watch and do nothing about it.

Susan: 9:32

And I knew then that I needed to find out more about myself and what was holding me back. And I started then looking at what was happening in Australia around homelessness and realised, although our children weren’t dying of severe malnutrition, we had one of the highest suicide rates in the Western world. And that stunned me and I thought but I love teenagers so much and I guess that was a seed that germinated and to the point where I thought, oh, I can foster children. And I found out that kids over 16 that didn’t have money attached to them was so easy to be fostered. You know, they’re almost pushed at you and before I knew it I had a home full of children. It started with a little Aboriginal sibling group and then it grew to having including my own children. I had 16 kids living with me and was looking at fostering another one and went oh my god, I’ve run out of bedrooms. And when I started eyeing off the bath and thinking I could put a mattress in there, I knew that I was stepping out of what I was doing, which was loving these children, to really setting up another orphanage.

Susan: 10:54

And at the same time I happened to my cousin, thought I needed help and sent me to a course called Money Anew, run by Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote the book Dad, rich Dad, poor Dad, and If you Want To Be Rich and Happy, don’t Go To School. And that kind of sung to my heart a little bit, because I’d only gone to year 10 and my stepfather then pushed me out into the workforce before I was ready, and so going to that course changed my life. He taught me about the processional effect. You know, the honey doesn’t really know what they’re doing, they’re just going from tree to tree, but it makes honey, and so if you’re on course, what you’re meant to be here on the planet to do the rest falls into place. He taught me about policies and procedures and, most importantly, he taught me about franchising. He said so you need to do what you’re doing. That is having such a strong outcome compared to the system that you need to duplicate that. Well, I thought he was mad and I thought, oh, how am I ever going to do that?

Susan: 12:08

And at the time we got some funding from one of our philanthropy supporters and they paid for a psychologist to come on board.

Susan: 12:20

And so Dr Sarah Crome, our first psychologist, followed me around for a year and looked at what I was doing organically with the young people, which is really just loving them so much.

Susan: 12:32

And my measurement was how much I love my own children and I’m so territorial about my kids. You don’t come. I say you don’t fuck with my kids or you deal with me. That’s how you know kind of territorial I am, and it was my measurement to know if I was doing the best job I could is to measure my love for them against that of my children and to make sure I kept working on that until I did that. And Sarah Chrome really was the first person that put all that I was doing into a framework that had a psychological underpinning and references to it, and really it was just attachment and relationships, loving and object relations, and so that was really. The rest is history. We went from there to having an independent report done just a couple of years ago that 87% of our young people leaving us never into homelessness again and changes the trajectory of intergenerational trauma.

Colby: 13:42

Wow, that’s wonderful. What an inspirational story. And Ben or Susan, one of you, I wonder if you’d like to just kind of expand a bit on what the Lighthouse Foundation is doing at this time, what their services encompass? Yeah, thank you.

Ben: 13:59

Cobby, certainly so. Ultimately, lighthouse Foundation is a trauma informed organisation that supports children, young people and families here in Victoria, australia. Our key modalities of healing are through relationship. We support with caretakers who don’t do too, but be with children and their families. And, as Susan explained, time is a critical component to healing to allow deeply ingrained expectations of people and self to change. It can be very slow but deeply meaningful work. I believe we provide a sense of belonging. The community helps young people to feel safe and accepted and part of something meaningful. We’re purposeful with intention. We respond with empathy and understanding that you know.

Ben: 14:47

Children, young people, may have had a bad experience, but they’re not bad people and through season susan’s vision and values, we we believe in you and we put great thought into everything we do.

Ben: 14:59

I’m privileged to work alongside young people and carers in our therapeutic residential care homes. So we have a Young Women’s Freedom Programme which supports young women who are survivors of forced marriage and modern slavery. We provide them a safe therapeutic environment to heal. A Young Parents and Babies Programme which core aim is to support young parents to heal from their own childhood trauma in the hope that they can raise babies free from those inherited emotional wounds and we support young people who’ve often experienced complex trauma, who are unable to live with their biological families currently, and we support them up to 25 years of age within therapeutic residential care homes, which is a different experience to many organisations who are kind of maybe forced to stop providing care at 18. We continue to provide care to 25 and actually much longer through our on for life program and sense of belonging so our on for life is really important to us and probably what sets us apart.

Susan: 16:03

Um, we we were, because we didn’t at the time get any recurrent funding. We were able to create Lighthouse, really in the way we thought was best practice for young people, and really we looked at what families do. It’s a family system and you know my kids, god, they come back when they’re 40. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of them. You know, with six of them, there’s always someone at home or someone that needs moving or someone that’s broken, their washing machine’s broken down or all the sorts of machinations of what a real family is.

Susan: 16:42

And exactly like our young people, some of our young people now on our Alan for Life program are in their early 50s and it’s such a joy for us to see them coming back, even if it’s because of relationships broken down. How, you know, we can walk beside them to help them, give the time and space for them to think and see what their next steps are, but also to celebrate with them when their child’s growing up and getting married themselves or having a child or um, you know, we’ve got a couple of our kids that are millionaires now and and then we’ve got other kids that have got, you know, know mental health issues, but we see them shortening the time each time they have a whoopsie. The next time they’ve learned something. So the time to get back on their feet and get going again is shorter and shorter each time. So it’s really, like Ben said, a privilege to walk beside them and sharing that joy of their parenting and breaking that cycle.

Colby: 17:50

You said something very interesting in a couple of spots in there, susan Talking. Initially you were saying how, if you’re kind of doing what you’re meant to be doing on the planet, the money tends to follow. And you’re not the first kind of founder who I’ve had on the podcast who’s said something very similar to that. If not, you know the same, maybe with some slightly different words. And I always, I mean mean, in my own practice, I’ve always followed the motto that you, you just make sure you provide a good service and uh, and money follows. It doesn’t always. It can be a bit of a bumpy ride at times, it doesn’t always follow like that, but but overall, um, it does, um, yeah, and then you and then I think, if I understood you correctly, you were, you were kind of saying um, because you didn’t have recurrent funding from, I guess, from um government funding bodies you were able to create a service based more on what you thought a service should look like in this space. You weren’t constrained by funding bodies and their requirements.

Susan: 19:15

No, I wasn’t constrained by the quantitative exercises it might be, it was more qualitative for me, but I also always did it alongside a psychologist, either clinical or community, who understood what I was getting at and could always relate it back to a framework so that it had real rigour to it.

Susan: 19:43

And I think that was probably, know, really important for me, that, you know I wasn’t just going off going doing, oh well, I’ll just love every child, and that’s what we do, but also that it had had something to um, harness to, that was of value in the community and I guess hence the book.

Susan: 20:06

You know we’ve had some fabulous psychologists I mean I shouldn’t name any because then I’ll get stuck but Dr Sarah Crome in the beginning, you know, rudy Gonzalez and Taimur Hussain had a real influence on the place. Laura Petrie, ben beside me, simon, who is our CEO, and I think you’ve had on before Simon Benjamin they’re all people that played a large role in bringing forward everything they know and adding to it. So it’s not a static organisation. We keep learning and growing and as we branch out to different um I guess for one of the better word young people or cohorts as some people call them um, we have to change and grow and think more and think differently. So I think that’s also important that we can then relate it back to well, how does that have an underpinning with a psychological framework?

Colby: 21:09

Yeah, and you referred to attachment theory and being one of those significant frameworks. Yes, yeah.

Susan: 21:17

Yeah, well, I used to call it love and I get myself into trouble all the time, so it’s much better to say attachment.

Susan: 21:24

But it’s really about a relationship and children grow in the love of someone. You know, I think it was Chilton Pierce that said it only takes one person to love a child and they’ll usually make it through and that’s always been my experience, even young people that are suicidal. You know, if you can hold with them and stay with them during that really difficult time, they’ll usually find a little spark of hope and see it through and get out the other side. So I always see us as a containment. You know, a great big glass bowl of holding and the young people, you know a great big glass bowl of holding and the young people, you know, grow and learn in that until they’re ready to do their interdependent living, you know, outside that containment area. So for us it’s about giving them the opportunity and the time, as Ben said, to grow and learn and have hope. You know, and I think if you can find a spark of hope for them, that’s really what will. You know, see them through, and that’s love and attachment.

Colby: 22:36

And, I think, especially suicidal young people. You know having that experience of being a person of worth. When you love a young person, their experience of that is that I am an adequate, worthy person. Yeah, and young people, indeed everyone who has a healthy sense of their own worth, or has at least some semblance of a healthy sense of their own worth, or has at least some semblance of a healthy sense of self-worth, do tend to make better decisions for themselves in their life. Going forwards, ben, I want to go over to you because we kind of skipped past you a little bit, but you have an accent. You started your career in the UK. How did you come to be working in this space?

Ben: 23:31

Yeah, thank you, colby. Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, so I actually started off in play in primary schools. I couldn’t believe my luck when I was offered the chance to be paid to play football. It wasn’t quite the Premier League but I was having a great time in primary schools, great joy alongside the children, and it was one of the head teacher there saw my kind of ability to be with children and help co-regulate I wasn’t quite sure of that terminology at the time. She invited me to work in the primary school and support children.

Ben: 24:18

At the time it was in the UK, there were music professionals who had social, emotional, behavioral difficulties and social, emotional, behavioral made sense to me. The social experience of where the trauma may come from. Then the emotional impact. Then we see that through behaviour and I was unsure on the difficulty part, like maybe difficulty for the young person but certainly difficult for the school to tolerate and accept as well. And it was in the school environment. A wonderful school and a wonderful head teacher who was really focused on community, would integrate families. They would have alternative educational on a Friday, cooking and play experiences.

Ben: 25:00

But I saw a young child steal food from a lunchbox during. I think she’d excused herself from the class and I witnessed that and I saw a teacher and I saw that experience and I thought, oh, clearly the child’s hungry, maybe they need some food or have not had breakfast or I’m not sure what’s happening in their home life. I saw a teacher come out and I expected them to provide that level of care but instead they shouted at the child for stealing and it just didn’t make sense to me and it just didn’t make sense to me and I thought I think I need to work in an environment, more in a home setting really. So I found myself working in a 20-bed residential care community setting. There was three homes on site. It’s like a developmental process where the children would move through homes on site. It’s like a developmental process where the children would move through.

Ben: 26:01

We had a school in the middle, mechanics, um vegetable patch and you’d live there for a week alongside the young people. Then you’d have a week off and that really gave me an experience of the importance of relationship and containment and living alongside that, what that can offer. And it’s a beautiful setting, not too dissimilar to Hurstbridge farm, like adela holmes spoke about, but there wasn’t the systemic levels of holding for staff to process, being that close to uh, expressions of trauma, and I noticed I was starting to get quite physical symptoms of back pain, um, which I thought was from a, an injury, um, but had a, had an MRI scan and, um, there was nothing physically wrong. So it got me thinking about, um, the unconscious, really, um.

Ben: 26:47

I moved to another organization called Fairways and there was a mentor there called Michael Crutchley, who was a mental health nurse, um, and we go out and ride our motorbikes together and each share stories with me about high quality forensic residential care, which included, uh, the book that susan rudy and patrick um published, and, and we also spoke a lot about pepper harrow, which was so interesting. But richard rollinson was on there and had a community, had decision-making together and involvement, and I believe that the only this is my interpretation the only kind of expectation is that you came to a community meeting every day and ruptures were repaired. So, after reading the book that Susan had published, I convinced my I was assistant manager at the time at Fairways and convinced my wife to quit our jobs and fly to Australia, and I was lucky enough to become a therapeutic carer in 2018 at Lighthouse Foundation.

Colby: 27:48

Wow. Well, that’s an incredible story as well. Thank you, ben, and we’ve obviously had a bit of a chat before this podcast, you and I, ben, so I’ll come to a couple of things from that, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t leave behind. Move on. I guess, before just going back to something that you were saying, susan, about in in the correct parlance it would be after care, but the decision that has been taken by Lighthouse to continue to provide support, direct support, right through to 25 and indeed subsequent support it reminded me a lot of what Kieran Modi, who was on the podcast from Udayan Care, was talking about in terms of they support through to 25, and then they have alumni and she does a lot of work, or her organisation does a lot of work in terms of supporting care leavers. It was also mentioned by the Livramento people in Portugal, but if you can just tell us a little bit more of your thoughts behind how, I guess how Lighthouse went in that direction of supporting young people beyond 18.

Susan: 29:15

Funnily enough, I’ve been over to Kira Modi’s place and she’s been over here, probably about eight years ago, to look at what we were doing, and we talked about the importance of On For Life and having a psychologist with your team to make sure that the frameworks, to make sure that the frameworks keep evolving. And our book’s been translated into Portuguese and Japanese, so now I know the link, which is good. But for me it was really again modelled on the way I cared for my young people. And you don’t stop being a mother and a parent just because they’re moved out people. And you don’t stop being a mother and a parent just because they’ve moved out. In fact, they’re at age 16, 18, 20. Even if they’ve come from a really good enough family life, they still aren’t always quite ready to do it alone. They always need an attachment or that umbilical call that brings them back to ask questions or check in and all that sort of thing. And so it was really important for me for us to develop that against a lot of pushback at the time, not so much at Lighthouse but with the system. You know the Australian system and how they operated but I was determined that we were going to do that, and so we just pressed on.

Susan: 30:40

But we also developed from there our community committees, because I think young people need not just their mum and dad or one parent, they also need a network of people, like you do when you come up in a family, you know you’ve got your school parents and your parents have got friends, and so you become part of a strong, resilient group, and so I wanted to build that for the young people.

Susan: 31:12

So another unique thing about Lighthouse is every time we open a home in a community, we build a community committee around that home, and the importance of that is that they’ve got all these surrogate parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and what I call corporate parenting, where everyone can take some responsibility for caring and nurturing and developing these young people.

Susan: 31:43

So on the community committee there might be a school teacher or a policeman or a person that’s lost a child to suicide or the local I call it the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and they all come together to parent that child. And it’s just been quite amazing really, some of the things. Some of them have become foster parents of a 16 or 17-year-old and said well, before they transit into, you know the community. Why don’t they come to live with me for a year or two and let them see parenting as we do it? So when they become parents they’ll have learnt something. So they’ve all you know there’s been some amazing stories of people. I keep saying I’d love to write a book about all the people that have been part of those community committees, that have got stories of their own and what brought them to help me parent these young people.

Colby: 32:43

That’s remarkable, and how do you access them, susan?

Susan: 32:50

Again that processional effect. I just go out and tell the story, anybody that reaches in or anyone that donates, even if it’s a dollar, to me they are the king and queen of the place. If it’s a dollar or if it’s a million dollars, I love them all the same because all that helps. But going to Rotary meetings I’m a Rotarian myself going to talks at corporates, just I say yes to everything because I think I was saying to you at the beginning, there’s a really deep responsibility that I’m a conduit for the young people who can’t tell their story to those who don’t know their story, and if I can share part of their story with their, okay, then most Australians want to help in some way. I’ve just got to provide that pathway for them to be able to do that.

Susan: 33:49

And everyone’s pathway is different. Some don’t want to have any contact with the young people. Others want to be right in there and helping the house and doing a barbecue every week, or you know things like that contact with the young people. Others want to be right in there and helping the house and doing a barbecue every week, or you know things like that. So just finding unpacking what it is they want to do to help this young person. An example might be the ANZ in August are putting on a big Diwali event and there’ll be thousands of people all doing Indian and Sri Lankan dancing, and that funding will come to Lighthouse and we’ll be able to promote and tell our story there. So I’m not just telling it for the day, but there’ll be people there that then want to do workplace giving and donate $5 a month, you know and so they become a surrogate parent in their own way.

Colby: 34:39

So there’s all sorts of ways you can parent, I believe, and so we just have to find that in each person that comes forward again, it reminds me of the work that Kieran and Udain Care are doing as well, the way the, the way in which they use volunteers in their model of care. And you know, I just highlight the similarity between the two to make the point that it is possible to one access people who are concerned and committed and really want to be part of facilitating better life outcomes for children and young people in need, and there are really positive ways to utilise those people for the benefit of the young people.

Susan: 35:35

Yeah, and just on that. I think the important thing to then remember is that the level of support and screening you give and so we do psychosocial screening, and to me that’s a real key to keeping the organisation safe, just to mention that, yeah.

Ben: 35:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that’s a really important integral function of the forensic care we offer. So we don’t really ask of young people what they’re not willing to do for ourselves, and a psychosocial screen really allows us to understand people’s unconscious motivations to be in the work. Do they have a reflective capacity, emotional capacity and are they willing to ask for help, which we think is a really important component? Some of the committee members we have a chair of our Young Women’s Freedom Programme who I believe has been 14 years but before her her brother looked after it for about five and then all her family are involved.

Susan: 36:34

So it’s like her home and I’ve almost got to put my hand up to see if I want to tiptoe in. And there’s Rolf Tedisco, who’s an immigrant from Italy. He wanted to open a home. I said, oh, the governance around it. Rolf is so overwhelming, why don’t you do it under our umbrella? So he’s got the Springvale home who takes care of most of our really pointy and young people and he’s proud as punch and he’s been with that probably 25 years now, you know. And so when people come in, their loyalty and long-term commitment is probably what we look for, and honour in those people and the emotional intelligence of our staff really is what we look forward to that warmth and humanistic qualities.

Ben: 37:25

Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m sorry, colby.

Colby: 37:27

No, I was just going to you first, because people want to hear more of you and less of me.

Ben: 37:34

I was going to say that chair I was speaking about uh katherine. She’s also on our care subcommittee, um, so the the openness of communication goes throughout the organization. So she’s there to uh hear stories, share stories of the young people, what she sees, and provide a voice to the ceo and the care subcommittee. Members of the board, just to help us keep on track really and monitor for drift.

Colby: 38:02

Yeah, yeah, well, that, yeah, it’s interesting. It seems to be an opportune point to bring in that, and I have flagged this with you that we’ve started a little an aspect of the podcast where we get the previous guest to think of a question to ask the next guest on the podcast, and so I’ll be making, or have made public, patricia Sheridan from the Moore Group’s podcast today. Now, the question that she put to me, apart from she wished me to pass on her best wishes to you and your organisation, what really was around this issue of fidelity, which I think you’re starting to touch on in what you’re saying now, ensure that the carers that you have in the organisation remain aligned with the values of the organisation.

Ben: 39:07

Yeah, thank you, colby. Well, I think the psychosocial screen is a fundamental component of that. I think it sends a real clear message to therapeutic carers and it’s not just carers, everyone amongst the agency. I think it sends a real clear message to therapeutic carers and it’s not just carers, everyone amongst the agency. I think Simon spoke about that. We expect the same from our finance team and our marketing team that the primary task is the children and young people. So we’re interconnected to make sure that we remain focused to the quality care of children and young people. And the psychosocial screen sets us apart there. I believe you know it’s communicating to young people, to carers. We take this work seriously, um, and with kindness. Uh, so if you enter lighthouse, that’s the expectation a deep level of thought and care, um, I’m happy to share a little bit about my own experience of psychosocial screen, where I’d said to Andrew, who was the manager of clinical services at the time, I said, oh, I’ve done something similar to like this before at Fairways.

Ben: 40:11

It was a print profile, because they ask you what do you think your unconscious motivations may be? And this was, you know, was seven, eight years ago. I hadn’t done as much internal work or thinking at the time and I said, oh, it said I had a desire to feel special. And he said, oh, why do you think that’s where that’s come from, ben, and I wasn’t aware at that time that I am. Now I said, oh, I’m not sure, it’s just a test. And he said, oh well, lighthouse, we encourage you to think into those parts of yourself. And that’s really important actually, because as a therapy carer, I need to be aware of my own emotional availabilities and what might light me up to make sure that doesn’t impact the work of the children and they remain focused. So I mean, that’s an important, a really important part of my learning. Really, we’re a learning organization.

Colby: 41:07

It expects deep, deep thought and I think all my podcast guests, who are representatives of well-respected and, I guess, successful however you might define that have talked about the need for fidelity, the need for alignment through the whole organisation. Simon talked about Simon, benjamin talked about. You know what we do with the kids? We do with everyone in the organisation. There’s that alignment all the way through.

Susan: 41:45

And particularly, you know it has to be the board included. And to get you know a whole lot of professional people to talk about their feelings is hilarious. However, we’ve managed to hold on to that probably more challenging aspect of it. But it’s really interesting that once people get into the habit of it, after three or four months they actually they’re the ones calling for it. They actually they’re the ones calling for it and there’s something intangible about the warmth and connectedness you get from sharing your feelings at a board level that they feel and take away with it. It’s actually they don’t want to leave the board and we have board members 12, 14 years.

Susan: 42:38

You know that long-term loyalty, which is fabulous, I know, from a governance perspective, they like changing you. You know there’s three year on three year, but there’s something to be said for. You know, having those grandparents around as well as new blood staying on board and holding the culture throughout and having that emotional intelligence and then having to share the journey alongside the young people in that way that they’ve got to do the same practices, I think holds us all together. And when you do get wobbly because there’s always times no matter how great you are, you know you have different leadership and different people coming into the organisation and you grow wider and so you’ve got to make sure even more that you hold tight to those. You know different practices that we have and hold them dearly.

Ben: 43:40

Now I can speak to that a bit more, colby, if you like, because, as we spoke about, the model of care has kind of evolved and adapted. It’s like a living thing and it’s kind of since Susan and Patrick and Rudy, yeah, it kind of developed the model. It was co-designed, youdesigned with Patrick Tomlinson, which I think was really important because it shows a level of involvement and ownership for the organisation, and since then it’s kind of evolved to four key domains really, which is the home, a home environment where you want to provide a secondary care experience where the home is a warm, beautiful home. That is maybe different to what our children and young people have experienced of feeling worthy. We have young people interventions, so that could be a daily, weekly and monthly intervention. So we have daily reflections that the carers are involved in. We have weekly one-to-one times where the carer or the psychologist are solely available for the child for that time, whether they wish to step in or not. We will hold that space and that’s the same for the carers.

Ben: 44:46

We have weekly clinical and operational supervision, depending on the program and the level of need required for those children. That may be fortnightly of program and the level of need required for those children. That may be fortnightly, um, but I’ve recently gone weekly, uh, and so has the clinician in in the focus of central care program. So we’re trying to um step in early, really, before feelings get too big for staff, um, and understanding young people. When you say it out loud, an hour a week, there’s only 52 hours, you know. A year it’s not actually very much, but people seem to think that’s too long to sit and be with, yeah, and then, as I said, we have community, which is an important component as well, and we contract all our prognostic carers to engage in reflective practice. So you can’t extend the clear communication, communication really. Now, if you want to be part of this organization and care for young people, we expect that practice of you, um, and I can share an example from this week, if that’s of helpful around focus on feeling and how that supports, uh, our understanding of children, young people go ahead, yeah.

Ben: 45:57

So we’ve just recently opened a new Fremont residential care home, so the young person has recently returned to the area, which can be quite scary. We believe it to be of great benefit to be closer to family and we’re hoping to interconnect in with family and bring them into the residential care home, but ultimately still a scary experience to leave people that you’ve, you know, the safety of their old residential care home in those relationships, to come to somewhere new. And we had a phone call on the weekend where the young person had asked I’m out with my friends, can you come and pick me up? And then he he said, oh, I have a weapon. And I was unsure, you know, did he have a weapon or was he just feeling very unsafe? Because I’d read in the referral previously that when he changed homes before you know, he was found with a weapon on him or seemed to have a weapon, we believe, communicating this feeling of unsafe. So the group really took it serious. Um, and I spoke to the carers directly on the on the uh in the home and they said no, benny, it sounded like um, he didn’t sound like he was joking. We need to take him seriously, which we did, you know. We enacted a process to go up and make sure he was safe and our carers were safe and brought him home and he fell asleep in the lounge and they put a blanket over him.

Ben: 47:18

Um, and then I still attend the reflective practice space alongside the carers, uh, fortnightly in in the home, um, and they were speaking about a razor. They were saying, oh, we’ve seen that, we’ve noticed the razor in the shower and it was getting quite big for them, the razor. They were saying, um, you know, he’s moving into adolescence. It’s quite an important part of development. It’s something you sometimes do with your own father. And then they say, but we want everyone to be safe.

Ben: 47:46

And then they were coming up with a uh, an intervention of like well, maybe you know, we could get a lock box and he can have a key and we can have a key and we can lock it up. And I, we’ve asked him to focus on the feeling. What is the feeling that the razor has given you? And it’s one of um. You’re feeling quite unsafe and scared, and that gave us an insight into how he may be feeling in his world.

Ben: 48:08

Where we hadn’t focused on the feeling, you could see how that, you know, intervention of the razor could really escalate.Ben: 48:14

But that wasn’t the case.

Ben: 48:15

We were able to bring in one person, brought in the feeling of um, how he may have felt like a black sheep of the family was his words many years ago, another one was able to hold on to like the empathy and hope, um, and then so the group could hold that and tolerate that distress, um to respond with empathy.

Ben: 48:34

So when he called a couple of days later and said, you know, started to give him and his friends started to give the character a bit of grief, ultimately, on the phone they were able to say, oh yeah, if Billy’s there, let him know we’re thinking about him and we care about him, which was a really important message not just to him but also to his friends. There’s adults out there who show you care and think about you, where if we hadn’t had that space on feeling they may have been reactive or put the phone down. And actually the fact he was calling us when he’s outside the home, when he’s new, was a wonderful win for us. It shows that he’s holding us in mind when he’s not in the home and that’s what you know we do as well. We we hold our young people in mind.

Colby: 49:20

Yeah, lovely yeah, there’s so much we could talk about um.

Colby: 49:27

I wanted there was something just going back to to what you were saying as well, susan, before um, talking about um reflection, holding, you know, holding people in mind, but also reflecting on what’s happening for us and having that experience of sharing and other people connecting with us around our experience.

Colby: 49:56

And you talked about how people, for example, on your boards or committees hanging around for a very long time and other family members getting involved, and the thought that was going through my mind is that this jurisdiction is probably more characterised by staff just going through the system at a rate of knots. Yeah, that there is a lot of changeover in the workforce in these jurisdictions, maybe not in your organisation, but certainly in this jurisdiction, and what I had in mind listening to you talk about um, your experience there at lighthouse, was the importance of um not just the children being feeling heard, but but the staff, or the everyone connected with organisation, feeling heard and acknowledged and valued around their experience, which is, I guess, another way of talking about you know what we do with our children, with the children we should be doing at all levels of the organisation, as Simon said. There’s one thing, though, that I really wanted to also speak to you guys about, which is the involvement of birth family.

Ben: 51:26

One of you mentioned that I think it was you, ben no families.

Ben: 51:31

Yeah, families, and from our pre-meet conversation, ben, you talked a little bit about that and I think it would be really useful at this juncture to hear a bit more about how Lighthouse connect with involve birth families. You want me to go? Yeah, yeah, thank you, colby. I guess we really ultimately think that children have been abused by their parents. They don’t really stop loving their parents, they stop loving themselves and we really see parents as an integral part of their identity and their healing process. We all entered the world attached to our mothers, as Susan said, and a lot of the time we crave that attachment to our families to remain. We work non-judgmentally with our parents and we really try to understand their own history and involve them in the young person’s experience and their own experience and clear that we’re not the parents that they are.

Ben: 52:36

When I was a care in our secure base program, every Monday I would meet a father in the park so he could play with his son and play on the swings or ride bikes together, and I was just there in the background providing support to them both. That was enabled to transition into one of our residential care homes where he was able to get the experience of really he would like own the barbecue cooking for his son. Read his son a story. Kiss him good night to bed, um, and then him and I would just, you know, sit together once his son was asleep, you know, have a cup of tea and chat. And he would also come to Youth Resource Centre here, which is the heart of the organisation.

Ben: 53:27

He may do parental courses, like Circular Security, alongside some of our other staff members, and there was an experience once the sense of safety was kind of formed with all of us, that the child was able to sit alongside his kind of key carers not not myself, but some really important people in his world in the living room and he was able to say to his father um, you know, where where were you? Why didn’t you keep me safe? Um, and the child was crying and the father was crying, and whilst the father couldn’t give him an answer, he was able just to acknowledge it and apologise and that was all the child needed. Really, he didn’t need a fix, he just needed to be heard.

Ben: 54:08

And once that young person was ready to kind of fly the nest from lighthouse, we also created a book for the father of memories that we had together and stuff that we’d learnt from him, and he was able to say you know, I wish I had a lighthouse when I was a child, so really we’ve got great respect for families and, yeah, really think deeply into their own experiences and try to involve them as much as we can. Yeah, really think deeply into their own experiences and try to involve them as much as we can.

Colby: 54:39

Yeah, yeah, I am on record as saying the most healing relationship for our children is the relationship with their parents. Yeah, the most healing relationship. Yeah, that leads into Ben. We also talked a little bit about the Mothers and Babies Program, and I was keen for you to talk a little bit about that as well in our time together.

Susan: 55:10

And keeping our siblings together too. Yeah, the White House.

Ben: 55:14

Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to work in our Young Parents and Babies programme. I believe it was started with yourself and Vicky Vidal, Susan, is that correct? Yeah, and really at. Its aim, as I said, is to support young parents to heal from their own childhood trauma in the hope that they can raise their own babies free from these inherited emotional wounds. Ultimately, we’re trying to provide an environment where we care for the parents so they can care for their children, the developmental programme, so as the young people kind of attach and join, we’re just really trying to see if they can seek support and receive care for parents. It’s a really wonderful programme.

Ben: 55:59

You get to see changes very quickly, as you know, in the first two years of life, and we’re similar to what we were saying in reflective practice. We’re there with kindness and boundaries, but we don’t rush things. We allow things to kind of percolate and come to fruition. So an example of that is we had a young mother who I’m very proud of. The experience that she received of what she gave her children is very different and when she first joined she was unable to play with her children. But we just noticed that and we would role model, play ourselves, you know cues and um, bedtime routines and things like that. And one time she was able to say, um, yeah. Then in time, we saw her starting to push the child on the swing or, you know, play with the trucks, etc. Take an interest in their world, and she was able to, you know, many years later, reflect to us that, um, when I was a child, playing was very terrifying because it it meant abuse. Um, you’ve, you’ve taught me how to play with my children, so, uh, she was very grateful for that um. But if we’d rushed that in the early stages, if we kind of thought, why is she not playing with her child? And tried to make that happen too quickly, we would have missed that opportunity and not playing with her child and trying to make that happen too quickly, we would have missed that opportunity and not had given her that experience.

Ben: 57:23

We have young mums, uh, now that they kind of form a little community together, don’t they, susan? They’ve, uh, they live together now in the community and the two of them have started their own business together, um, and that they pop back. I think we currently have about 13 families uh being supported closely through One for Life in terms of like their own little community that comes together. And just a couple weeks ago I looked after one of the uh, a little boy who was six months old when I first looked after him and now would be five years old, so his mum could attend a business course on beauty just in the community. So really able to kind of come back and reach out for support when needed, yeah.

Susan: 58:09

I think that we’ve got 1,350 young people that have graduated the program now and that’s long term. So it doesn’t sound like that it is. You know, I often think you know if a young person’s been abused for 10, 15 years, that needs to be equalled on the other side of you know that good parenting another 15 years. So for me, you know, when Ben talks about about you know we shouldn’t be quantifying time, it’s when they’re ready. So I think that’s an important thing. You know, you’ve got a lot of abuse to abuse to unpack and it will take as much time as it takes and not to rush that process.

Ben: 58:56

Yeah, we had yeah in there. Something we really wrestle with in the programme is phones, you know, and the gaze that we all have towards our phones and we ask of our young parents, during kind of bath time or dinner time, that we have a little kind of clear container on the side and we ask them to put the phones in. And that can be very difficult in the early stages but, um, I’ve seen so many times after eight weeks or so, but, um, yeah, you, you notice them just being left in there overnight so they can respond to the baby. And that’s a lovely kind of it doesn’t feel that big but it’s a lovely little measure that I I take in of growth one of my previous podcast guests, um, said something very chilling, uh, at the time or it is chilling, she.

Colby: 59:49

I mean, she was talking about, um, this attachment relationship or this, this relation, relational dynamic that exists for young children, that has three parties to it the child, the parent and the device these days, and what is going to be the longer-term implications of that? I think we just yeah, we will see, but it is. Yeah, it gave me chills hearing her talk about that.

Susan: 1:00:22

Well, I think the mental health issues will skyrocket. Really, you know, unless we have some boundaries around it, you know some positive ways of dealing with it.

Ben: 1:00:33

It’s probably worth mentioning Colby that we’re realistic in our task and sometimes we may work with parents who have kind of 10 out of 10 of adverse childhood experiences on the study In time. We wish for their children to have less and their other children to have less. It’s not always realistic that we might not have an instant quick fix, but we want to give people an opportunity. Yeah, and I think that’s where that program is philanthropically funded, because it’s very hard.

Susan: 1:01:11

We don’t get a lot of recurrent funding. The government have partnered with us now and we’re very excited about that and I think they’re keen to look at our model of care. We’ve got a CEO, brenda Boland, who comes from Child Protection and I think that as a leadership, she’s showing them the work we’re doing and I think they’re really excited to hear about our work and partner with us. So that’s great. But, as Ben was saying previously, we’ve really done it from philanthropic partners and to pay for two living carers, a salary you know that’s a couple of hundred thousand to run the program, couple of hundred thousand to run the program. So, um, but if you look at you know incarceration and that long, long term consequence. We’re much better doing that early intervention piece and putting the time and money and investment into our young people early.

Susan: 1:02:13

But it is always a challenge for organisations that aren’t recurrent funded. So one of the things probably in our world and of interest to you is that we’re looking at how do we self-fund into the future. So we’re looking very much at getting a futures fund established so that we’ll be able to live off the interest rather than continually go cap in hand, and we still want to do that. We want to reach out because we believe it’s community that help heal our young people in that kind of resilience membrane that they all belong to us. But also we want to be able to, as good parents do, be able to afford. You know what we, how we live, and so we need to demonstrate that ourselves. So we’re looking at developing. We’re going out to developers to help us find lots of land. We’ve got a corporate that will build houses for us. So we’ve got a whole range of projects we’re working on to be self-funded, but it’s a long-term strategy.

Colby: 1:03:25

Yeah, yeah, that’s wonderful. I just wonder you raised the issue of government being interested. It kind of leads me into what you know if you could sit down with them and I’m sure you will what are the key things that you would want to be communicating to them about how to deliver therapeutic care to young people in need and their families?

Susan: 1:04:00

Well, I think we understand their constraints and the governance that underpins what they do, and so, really, I’m excited to work alongside them to come up with a way of working that really focuses on the best practice for young people Do you want to?

Ben: 1:04:25

Yeah, for me as we were speaking, I truly believe in residential care. I think, as we’ve spoken about, a lot of the trauma experience where our young people experience this is in a home with unsafe adults. We want to give them a secondary strength of a safe home and emotionally attuned and available adults and I find, as we spoke about, the young parents and babies program is a wonderful way of providing high quality preventative care. If the money was invested early in programs like that, you may not see the significant distress or complexities that we see in adulthood. But what I find is that often government are willing to put the money towards 16, 17, 18 years old when they’re leaving care, but not so much the preventative space of parents and children. I really think that would make a huge difference to society.

Susan: 1:05:22

Yes, so we’d encourage that as much as we can, and for us it’s about like Vicky Vida has paid for our mums and bubs home for the last probably 15 or more years, and their family have donated this building we’re in, so they’ve really given us that foundation underpinning. That is just. You know, you can’t put words on that or understand how that’s really been able to formulate our way forward but also give us a sense of empowerment to actually build a model of care we believe is second to none, and about those trauma-informed practices rather than the roof over their head. The roof over their head isn’t the main story, it’s just part of, isn’t the main story? It’s just part of. It’s the trauma-informed practices.

Susan: 1:06:23

And if we can have an impact on the way young people are cared for in out-of-home care in a much more, you know, empowered and loving way, that would be amazing for us. So, you know, and also we’re learning things from government too that we may need to put in place as well, because we understand that we’re, you know, in a lot of cases, the guardian of these young people and it’s a huge responsibility. So working as a team for us, with government as a partner, is really important for us, you know and and our next steps to have had an impact in that arena would be amazing for us.

Colby: 1:07:05

Well, I’ve really enjoyed our chat this morning and hearing more about Lighthouse, and I’m sure the people who will listen to this podcast will take a lot from it as well. So thank you to you both for coming on and for all that you’ve shared and your continuing endeavours on behalf of children and young people and families in need. I do give my guests an opportunity to ask me a question without notice. At the end, I wondered if there was anything that you particularly wanted to ask me before we sign off.

Susan: 1:07:46

Well, I just wanted to give a shout out to Patrick Tomlinson, who helped us or co-authored the book and gave us an opportunity to be global in sharing our model of care, and also Mulberry Bush for opening their place to us when we visited, and for me it’s having that global sense of community I think is very empowering for trauma, informed practices and the more we can share with each other and promote what we do I think is important. But do you want to answer that next question?

Ben: 1:08:25

No, I guess I’ll give you a talk about it the other day and you were wondering with Colby whether there’s an opportunity to create like a free music community or a group process where we could all come together to think and share our experiences.

Susan: 1:08:39

Yeah, like every two months is there an open forum where we can all share and have an agenda. But you know whether that’s possible or not.

Colby: 1:08:49

Well, it’s interesting because you will have heard, I guess, from the podcast that I’ve done with people in the UK, and Simon brought it up as well, was the community have heard, I guess from the, from the podcast that I’ve done with people in the uk, that they there’s, and I and simon brought it up as well was this the community of communities?

Colby: 1:09:03

yes, that they have yeah that they have in in the uk where there’s a number of org, social care organizations, that um meet collectively, I look, as I understand understand it, I should say and that they kind of order each other as well to kind of keep yeah, keep in a supportive way to keep everyone you know on track and maintaining the vision of those organisations. I think it’s a really interesting point that you raise, susan. Let me first say that Patrick and I talk a lot about this podcast and he also puts me in contact with a number of the podcast guests that we’ve had on, in contact with a number of the podcast guests that we’ve had on. He’s a remarkable individual who has a global network, and so I think that question is probably one that I would like to have Patrick’s input into about a global, would like to have Patrick’s input into about a global. I think what we’re trying to do with this podcast, amongst other things, is establish, in a way, establish a place where global, good or great practice, informative practice, kind of comes together, is is collected. I understand what you’re saying it would be good to to have a forum. Oh, I think it, I think it’s possible.

Colby: 1:10:49

I I think everyone who’s come on this podcast has, you know, been really excited to come on and be a part of, amongst other things, changing the story that exists around therapeutic residential care or around residential care. I do think that there are residential care being seen just as the final resort. You know the place. You send kids that you can’t send anywhere else. I think it’s got hairs all over it, as we would say. It’s a real. Even if we, even if policymakers, just continue with that thinking about residential care and its role, I think it is highly problematic. You know, like we need to. If that’s what your thoughts are about residential care, then it needs to change. You need to invest in and be a part of the change. But I, you know, the reality is, through this podcast, is that we can easily show that there are, is that we can easily show that there are fantastic therapeutic endeavours occurring in residential care worldwide. There’s more guests that I’m really excited to have on from organisations like your own who demonstrate that.

Susan: 1:12:15

So yeah, I think, yeah, it’s about having that groundswell where there’s enough of this that force policy to change because there are better outcomes and, collectively, when you evidence all that, then you’ve got. You know. Robert kiyosaki always said to me so you need to have artifacts, artifacts, artifacts a bit like like Patrick and all these books and talking about it. So you need to have that collective. If we all did something together, collectively, and it was on the global stage, then that’s when you make real change, I think, you know, rather than working in silos and pockets. But I think, as you said, your podcast is a really big part of getting that sort of you know, your kind of the linchpin to get us all together and maybe, you know, get that happening.

Colby: 1:13:09

I think it would be really exciting to do that, and all of my podcast guests, I think, who I’ve had communication with about wanting to, are willing and wanting to reappear and talk more. So I think that what you have kind of proposed is probably another way in which we can ensure that the voice of people who you know, who have substantial experience and expertise in this sector, can come together and influence.

Susan: 1:13:47

Yeah, what about a world conference with each of us speaking? Sorry, I’ve gone a bit wild.

Colby: 1:13:58

If you’re asking me, me, what I what, what I think about, I think it, you know. Look, I think I think we’re heading in a direction of their. You know we’re making these connections between good practice, um endeavors around the place. If you’re asking for me to organise it, I’d need a little bit of help. This is not my day job. I think my wife, who also manages our practice, would have a bit of a. I hope she wouldn’t have a heart attack. She’d be very supportive, but she’d be asking me where the money comes from. You know, susan, as you say and not just you, others have said as well, if it’s the right thing to be doing, if it’s the right thing to do, then yeah, the money will come, the support will come for it. Yeah.

Susan: 1:14:51

But also Robert told me about also. You’re on purpose, but you’ve got to take action as well. Robert told me about also. You’re on purpose, but you’ve got to take action as well. It’s to be, you know, be and do and be and do and be and do you know in equal measure, is you know?

Colby: 1:15:08

Yeah Well, we’ll definitely rope Patrick in to such an endeavour and others, but look, thanks again for agreeing to be on the podcast A great pleasure. Yeah, pleasure was mine as well. Thank you Ben, thank you Colin, and yeah, I’ll look forward to speaking to you another time.

Susan: 1:15:31

Yeah, well, now Ben’s not nervous anymore and me will be right, that was my question.

Ben: 1:15:37

Patrick’s very encouraging of us to come on, but I’ve not seen him on Spotify yet. I’m still waiting, yeah.

Colby: 1:15:46

I’m going to treat that as an observation rather than a question.

Ben: 1:15:51

Thank you, colby, lovely to see you in person.

Susan: 1:15:54

Thanks, colby. Thank you, bye-bye Thank you.