Hello there and welcome to the De
Dyslexic podcast series, brought to you by Rethink Dyslexia, the podcast
where we are breaking barriers and doing things differently. I'm Shea Sel, your host, and
I'm so glad you can join us. I'm a fellow neurodivergent and I'm coming
from the lands of the Ruwan Drew people of the Koan Nation where I live and work. I would like to acknowledge and pay
my respects to all the tribes across our beautiful country and to all
First Nations people listening today. Our podcast was born in 2017, out
of a need to give a voice to the stories and perspectives of adults
with dyslexia, and our voice has grown stronger year after year. We're now a globally listened to podcast
with guests from all around the world. Join us for insightful conversations
about living with dyslexia and other neuro divergences across all walks of life. Our special focus is on adult education,
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review on your favorite podcast platform? So let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to another
episode of the Dear Dyslexic Podcast Show. Today I am lucky enough to speak to Peter,
who's from the Center for Disability Employment Research and Practice, which
I had to make sure I had on my screen so that I didn't mix up all the words because
that is a big title for dyslexic to say. So welcome to the show, Peter. Great. Thanks Shay. And for your own benefit, we abbreviated
to C-C-D-E-R because Yes, it is long. I should have asked you that beforehand. Well, something I learned years ago,
one of my previous counseling services, I came up with a fabulous name that
I loved and then I stupidly decided to use it as my email address and
people would ring me all the time and go, your email address is too long. Yes, I know. So a lesson learned there for people that
struggle with words and letters and things like that, so that's why we keep it short. Yes, my email address is way too long. I do need to change. I've been mean to ask it
person to change mine. But thank you for being on the
show and I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk at your upcoming
conference on disability employment. And I thought today would be a
good opportunity to talk about the work that you do and maybe you know
where disability sits at the moment. With so many changes we are seeing come
through NDIS and just in general with the new neurodivergent movement, which isn't
really new, but is very public now, and so it's a great chance to talk to you. But for our listeners who may not have
met you before or know much about now, I can't remember the acronym, know
much about where you work and research. Could you please tell them
a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm Peter Smith fan. I'm the director and founder of the
Center for Disability Employment Research and Practice for Cerp for
Short, and Cerp consists these days. We've been running for about 15 years,
and the Center was founded as an outcome of some of the work that I was
doing when I was at Sydney University. When those days, the
university didn't have. A great deal of focus on disability and
employment and the NDIS coming along. They still didn't have
much interest in it. And of course at that stage I was
working in the US with Carrie Griffin, who's one of the pioneers behind
customized employment in the us. And of course I kept coming
back to Australia and going, we need to do something. And my mentor at the university
still my mentor today is. Medical school and also the head
of disability at the University of Sydney and of Trevor kept saying,
oh, just wait, wait, wait, wait. And of course, degree. And then into a doctoral program. And I was overseas at
Carries place, one midyear. And he said to me, he said, you
know, you're gonna have to go back to Australia and do this yourself. And I went, yes, I. Myself and two or
three of my friends, we informally started the center about 15 years ago, and we
were focused on research and training using the the tools that Carrie gave us. And over the years we've
conducted research. We formalized the center
about 12 years ago, and. Specific, develop the evidence
for disability employment, and also training people in evidence
methodologies with an emphasis. So that's where we started all those
years ago, and here we are today in the next stage of our growth. Our Cedar College, which is our
training platform, developed and had accredited training with
the accrediting body in the us. So we have the only accredited
customized employment training program outside of the us. It's specifically written
for Australia and the NDIS. We have our employment program work First,
which again started as a small entity. And still is a modest entity by employment
standards, but it's where we actually use the methodology and also allows us to
get feedback and refine the methodology firsthand rather than, you know, sitting
in a lab somewhere waiting for someone to say, look, this is what's happening. It's like, well, we see it every day. The other side of it, of
course, is our research. And we've just recently established
a not-for-profit, which is where our research now resides. And the, the logic behind that is that
it opens us up to more opportunities to attract funding for our research,
which is a problem in Australia. So that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I used to spend most of my life. Traveling and being overseas. But Covid put a stop to that, which is
good because honestly after 20 years of travel, it's nice to be at home. So that's a little bit about me. We're Melbourne based, but of course
we have people that work with us all over Australia and we support people
currently in Australia, New Zealand. Asia and actually in Saudi Arabia as well. So we're a little global, but
we're still focused at home and that's why one of the reasons why I
was really excited to talk to you, because I guess we're a replica of you, but in the
neurodivergent space and everything we do. Is around what the evidence base
is that we've created, particularly with dyslexic individuals. And we are in the process, and I don't
know what our chances are, but my charity is turning into a research center so
we can do exactly what you are doing. So it's exciting to learn and understand
the landscape more because I think when I started, I didn't see it as
disability, employment, or disability. Support. It was just helping dyslexic adults
like myself, and it's grown to be really shaped by disability and disability
policy and what's happening at the moment, both in Australia and globally. And so it's exciting to talk
to other organizations that are much bigger than us, even though
we have a global footprint. It's very tiny. But here we can kind of learn from Really, I think you'll find that most
organizations that are at the forefront of what we do are actually small. They have global footprints, and
that's simply because, you know, the people that are making the changes
are all over the world and they like to work with people that are
doing the same things they're doing. So we can share our resources and share
our knowledge base, have greater impact. I mean, I work with people at a
number of centers in the us, uh, UMass Utah University, Cornell
University, where I was based prior to Covid and a number of institutions. So we're not limited. You know, as individuals anymore and
organizations because the world truly is global when it comes to research. The irony, of course, is that
we have more collaborations overseas than we do in Australia. So it's, I always find that quite funny,
but at the same time, it just means that. We end up working with and successfully
working with building a network of people like yourself who are focused
on individual aspects of disability. And dyslexia is a fascinating one
because I've never looked deeply into dyslexia despite the fact that I have
a brother with dyslexia, you know? So you imagine 60 something years
of my younger brother with dyslexia. And to be brutally honest with you,
most of us in the family, which is kind of myself and maybe my other
brothers, never really thought about it. You know, because guess what? That's just Scott. That's who he is. So I think it points to something
a little bit, you know, from my point of view is that it does
say that disability is every day. It's everywhere. Most of us have it in our lives. Most of us just accept
it as part of the person. It's the other aspects of
society that make it a challenge. Yes. And I think for dyslexics, I don't
know if we've always felt like we're part of the disability community. Because you know, the environment
disables us, and that's why I shared that paper with you. That's just been published trying
to gain a better understanding. I think when I started, that's
why I didn't think I'd be working the disability space. So it's been interesting over the last
eight years to kind of unpack it and to see where it really fits in society. Because a lot of times people
wouldn't say that we are disabled. Because we have trouble
reading and writing. If you see me getting a doctorate,
you wouldn't think that my reading and writing is disabling
enough for me to get a doctorate. But I have a lot of support
to be able to do that. So I think it's that understanding of
what those differences mean and how we're supporting individuals and that it is just
them, but they still need some support. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I was born of a neurological
condition and I've never really thought of it much in the sense
that, is this something I should say? Look, I have a disability. No, I never have because you
know, it's just who I am. It's probably a bit like
my brother's dyslexia. It's just who we are. It's not something that we've made
much of, but you know, sometimes, to be honest with you, even with the
disabilities I've acquired, I still struggle with the notion of saying, oh
look, I need that because I'm disabled. I. And I think maybe that speaks
more about me than anything else, or maybe my upbringing. But I think it's interesting that
when it comes to disability, you know, in order to get supports,
you've gotta prove you're disabled. And yet those supports are there
to enable you to live a life. Like everybody else. So there seems to be this contradiction
between we'd want you to be like everybody else and have a normal life and access
the same thing everybody else has. But by the way, in order to do that, can
you prove that you're really disabled? I mean, it's probably one of the
paradoxes for me is if you look at disability employment services in
Australia, you know the mainstream workforce program, about half of its. With psychiatric disability, mental
illness with some varying forms. And then you go and look at the
disability employment service, exactly the same profile. Half of its clients are people with
psychiatric or psychosocial disability. So it's quite an interesting
thing that we all these programs. Supposedly for different cohorts and yet
they actually service all the same people. I mean, it probably, where it gets
different is with the NDIS, which I think is probably the better of
of all of the programs because it actually provides those right, sort
of support those individual supports, and it's been fascinating to watch all
the toing and goings over the last. Where the minister was trying
to change the legislation and do all this sort of stuff. But you know, one of the interesting
things is that I did a review of legislation, disability employment
legislation in selected countries, which was published in 2023, and
the thing to note is that the legislations we have are fine. You know much. The change that Bill Shorten brought in
was simply about making more explicit what was implied in the legislation. It really didn't change anything
other than go, you know what? We just gotta make it more explicit
for people where disability and support in many programs falls down as we
have generally pretty ordinary policy. The application of that policy is, and
its interpretation, is pretty poor. You know, you look at support coordination
in LAC and the NDIS, there's such a divergent view of views amongst people. You can have people in the same
office with different opinions of what they can and can't do. So that the failing isn't so much in the
legislation, it's more on the application of everything under the legislation. And do you think part of it
also is like you don't resonate with the label disability? A lot of dyslexic people don't
kind of resonate with it. In different environments, society
doesn't really see a lot of the hidden disabilities as disability
because culturally we've been told that disability looks. A certain way. So do you think that part of it is
the social context around the labeling and the language that then impacts on
policy and understanding policy and, well, I think so because you know, most
people's understanding or experience of disability is what they can see, you know? And the large portion of
disability is invisible. So most people when they talk about
disability or their experience and they say, oh yes, I've
seen people with disabilities. See 'em all the time. What are they talking about? They're probably talking about someone
Down syndrome, someone with Cerebral Pal and someone in a wheelchair
or some sort of mobility issue. You know, the obvious disability,
which is not to say that's an issue or anything, it just simply says that
for most people the visual and if they can't see it, it doesn't exist. So when it comes to the bulk of dis. It's invisible. I mean, autism is probably
a very good example. You know, I mean, I've got five family on
the, and I defy anybody to stand there and look at all and go, tell me which one is. There isn't, because that's just nonsense. You know? I mean, I spent a couple of years
researching and studying autism at uni and you know, other signs there, maybe
they're very subtle, but I would suggest that most people in the general public
who are untrained couldn't pick it. And why should they? 'cause at the end of the day, you know, if you have a
disability that's for you. That's for you in the sense
that it is your disability and not the public's disability. So I guess there's two questions. One's around lived experience,
but the first one is how did you end up working in this space? Was it because of your
studies in autism or No, it was actually in my forties. I had, after a string of. I kind of upended everybody and we
moved back to the northern rivers. So my kids who were quite young
at that stage could actually have family around them. And strangely enough, my brothers
elected me to go and work in the family businesses, which was like,
okay, that's, I drew the short straw. But you know, during that period I
started thinking myself, you know what? I wanna go back to school
and do what I wanna do. What I've always wanted to do, I'd
had a business career and that's fine. So I went back to school to study applied
psychology, and I moved to Brisbane. One of my daughters was studying,
so my wife sort of moved her career to Brisbane, which she could do, and
I went back to school and studied. And oddly enough I was, and most people
find this kind of weird, I went and worked in a petrol station up doing night
shift so I could study during the day. Oddly enough, what you find is most
people in a garage of a nighttime doing night shift are people studying. It's quite funny. There's a cohort of students working
by night and studying by day. But it was during that period that I
decided that I needed to work in my field, and I went to work for Uniting
Care, and they put me in their disability service, which I was a bit of a surprise
to me, but they did say to me that if you love it, you'll never leave. If you don't, you'll be gone
in three months, 25 years ago. And what happened, of course, is
during that period I met a great guy at Sydney University, one of the
lecturers who was running a program, Russell Shuttleworth, who's at Deacon. In Geelong these days, and I had this
philosophy where every time I had a question, I'd go and look for the answer. And that's how I got to study at
Sydney University was that we had clients in direct support that
wanted to work and uniting care bosses would say, we don't do that. You can do that in your own time. And that led me to study, and
it was working with Russell at Sydney Uni that he said to me
that when you've got a question. Enroll in a degree, enroll, at least
you get a reward for your effort. And I kind of went. Interesting. Well, you know, several degrees later,
little did I know the pathway it put be on, and it was just from working
in direct support that I ended up in disability employment in the early
days of it before it became the DES system, when it just went from there. And when I started doing my PhD, which is
over a decade ago now, it didn't take me long to realize that I couldn't work full
time and do a PhD. So I was actually, in those days I was working for Disability
Employment Australia, the one of the peak. I ended up, oddly enough, going to work
for the Center for Disability Studies as a consultant and doing work with them, and
it kind of just went from there because what used to happen, Shay, this is kind
of strange, and I think everybody should have someone like this in their life. Trevor would ring me up and he'd
say, do you know this person? And I go, no. And he said you should. And he would never say why. And that's how I found myself working
in Vermont and all sorts of places. And it was that same inquiry that
led me to ring Carrie Griffin up one day and kind of go, okay, you do
this, can you tell me more about it? And he just said, come to America,
you're invited to my place. And it kind of all went from there I into
like a spider, you know, learning and. You never know everything and you never
stop learning, and that's the constant, I think, especially in this constant
changing environment we are in. Oh yeah. You can't stop learning, can you? No. My brain was going multiple ways
when you were sharing that story, because I had lots of things to ask. One, I think I needed Trevor in my life. Well, everybody does. I mean, Trevor's what, 92 now? Everybody in our field should
have a mentor, someone. Guide them that will give
them some of the history. I've just finished writing a
book chapter for Power Grave, uh, encyclopedia or an Intellectual
Disability, and I've written a chapter on disability employment methodology. And it was a great lesson because I
ended up reading papers that I hadn't read in ages, papers that I hadn't seen
before, and it filled out my knowledge a little bit more and highlighted
things that I, oh, I never knew that. And there things that I fix. Just immersed in what
you do in a narrow field. I mean, the field of disability and
employment is so broad that you really need to have that ongoing exposure
to a range of different areas. And I think this is, you know, when
you talk about dyslexia, your area of expertise, I'll bet it's probably
one of the most misunderstood areas. When you're dealing
with people in the NDIS. I think you'd struggle to find
someone that really understands it. Well, we're not even
covered under the NDIS. Yeah, so there you go. So unless you come through with a
dual diagnosis of autism, I have heard sometimes of people with significant
dyslexia where they can't read at all. So their functional literacy skills,
they don't have them, that they've been able to get some support. But I think there's only
two cases I've heard of. Generally. No, we're not. The only funding we can
access is job access. Which is the funding we
use to deliver support. Yeah. But we use it also for
the one-on-one support. So we have a lot of people come through
with under the neuro diversion umbrella, but particularly dyslexia that have just
need to have a peer, but also they just don't know what tools are available. But then you've got the barrier of,
we have some awesome tools now, but you know, is it going to allow it,
especially when you're working with clients in, you know, high security jobs. Yeah, I think it's probably a
really fascinating one because my guess is that dyslexia is
perceived as a learning disability. Consequently, they'd be going,
well, that's the education system. Mm-hmm. When in reality is it's broader than that. You know? I mean, I look at my brother and I was
talking to him a few weeks back and I said, you know, how do you get by? He said, you know, I can't read. And he said, I listen to things, you know. He said, I go to work, said I
headphones, and I'm listen, so written. And I'm fine. And it's fascinating because, you know,
I've never noticed that in my brother. Now admittedly at my age, I don't
remember much about our upbringing in that sense because, you know, that was a
long time ago, but I'd never noticed it. You know, my brother said to me recently
that his dyslexia, when he was younger, people just told him he was dumb because
he couldn't read, not recognizing that he actually had a disability. And I think that's probably one of
those things where dyslexia falls between the gaps because all the
education people go, well, it's our problem, but we don't understand it. We don't have the funding to deal with it. And then have all the other people at
the NDIS who are kind of probably going, well, that's an education problem. And I think, you know, this is
probably one of the things where it falls down is it's easier to say
that's an education system problem. That's an NDIS problem,
that's an employment problem. But the trouble is all those
departments don't talk. They don't work together. We work in the education system and it's
just fascinating to see the disconnect. We don't have a cohesive system that
supports individuals to grow, to learn, to be healthy, you know, to work. You just gotta find
your way through a box. Smash outta that one. Start again. Break into that one. And I can see why people give up. Yeah. 'cause I've been doing this
for eight years now, plus. This must be, I think it's our
sixth or seventh year of podcasts, and that's how we started, was
sharing stories of lived experience. And it's hard. At Rethink Dyslexia, we are
doing things differently. As a global leader in creating inclusive
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or book your free consultation today. It's hard to get the funding
because we sit across multiple sectors of education, health. Like the whole social determinants. There's not one area that I've
found apart from job access that's given us any support. See, I wonder what happens, you
know, if you think, I mean, they can claim it's an education problem,
but what happens when you're 18? That's right. You're not in the education system. Mm-hmm. Which I'm guessing is where most
people probably pop up with the problems because you're a long time
an adult as opposed to being a kid. And that's where the supports need to be. Not just education, but they shouldn't
be abandoned because someone's 18 or 21. It really, you know, it probably
needs to be a lot stronger. My suspicion is that a lot of people go,
well, they got this far, they'll be right. They'll work it out
themselves, which is wrong. And we see a lot of, particularly women
at the moment coming in late diagnosed, and I mean, you put a lot of strategies
in and yes, I mean, we work with some people that you know from exec level
and we know dyslexics are everywhere. So that would be the assumption,
like if you could get into an exec role or a board role, or you can
do your PhD, then you're fine. And it just means we've
had really good strategies. And when we talk to parents, we
say, you can't be there forever. You have to start teaching your
young people the skills to survive. 'cause I had my mom who would proofread
everything, but she'd drop everything. I'd have to send her an email
or a report in the middle of the day to proofread for me. So the extra stress that we put
on people, and it's like I'm quite autonomous now with ai. When my mom passed away, my auntie
would do all that for me, but I don't need her help anymore as much. Like she'll check something if it's
important, but generally I have AI tools now, so I'm lucky 'cause I'm in
an environment where I can use those tools and I know what they're, but lots
of people don't or they dunno how to access 'em and they don't dunno what's
around and you are left to float. Yeah. But there's also this presumption
that everybody has access to technology, which is really a nonsense. Uh, I mean, most people with
disability that are coming from the poorer socioeconomic, um, households
don't have access to the technology that most people take for granted. Yes, they might have internet,
but it's probably slow. They probably have a dodgy computer, but
they probably have a great game, boy, you know, or Xbox or something like that. So there's idea that technology is a
great leveler is a bit of a nonsense. Yes, it provides better tools, no doubt. But what happens if you
can't afford to access them? I mean, you're digitally poor and that's another challenge. Digital literacy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when we started this conversation,
we were going to talk about the umbrella effect, and I've seen the
umbrella effect with the neurodivergence movement, which is creating a lot
of conversations, a lot of positive conversations that, you know, five
years ago we would not have been having. And I think, you know, in the last
couple of years it's been huge. I think like everything where they. Or a particular aspect of disability
in time, there is a tendency to broaden who's under that umbrella. In order to give it enough, I
guess, volume, you know, so that it carries more weight from an
advocacy perspective, you know? Is that a good thing? No, it's more emblematic of the fact
that if you go back probably 30 years, one of the things that John Howard was
famous for was that he managed to destroy a unified voice in the disability. Movement and Korea and everybody went
into silos and that meant they had to compete and that was part of a
strategy to mean that he could reduce the mass into individual groups and
individual groups don't have as big a voice and don't have as much power. So it meant that we have this strange
situation where, you know, even though there are peak bodies that claim to
represent all in every disability group out there, the reality is that
there are so many groups competing. For the spending that the government
has a lot more control, you know, and the whole idea of, you know, umbrellas. Honestly, if that happens, that's fine,
but I don't think, you know, in terms of umbrellas, I don't think you need to
be expanding the definition of what you do or the group you represent in order
to bring more people into your tent. I think there's a very real possibility
that many of the people coming into that tent, particularly other neurodiverse,
will be, I guess they'll disappear in. You know, into the large number when
people will go, okay, neurodiverse, oh, that's people with autism. But you know, the term today encompasses
a broader spectrum of disability. Even intellectual disability is often in. You know, if you go back probably
a couple of decades, you know what the primary diagnosis most people
got with a disability or significant number got was an intellectual
disability and autism was their shadow disability or the secondary one. And it's my view that what's over the
last 30 or so years is that's flipped. Now autism is the primary
disability, and intellectual disability is the secondary one. And I'm not gonna go much further
on that because I'll start to get it weirdly political, but I just think
this is what you tend to see is that these things move around a little bit
and that's just simply a response to what's going on in the environment. Generally, the funding environments,
I'll probably be proven wrong on that, but certainly that's my observation. So how do you think we can
support people that get swept up into the umbrella effect? Because, you know, we don't choose it. We are placed under it. Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? You don't get a choice
despite what you say. I think that, you know, it's really
important that various disabilities have champions, that people that are prepared
to stand there and go, you know what? This is what the truth is. This is what I see every day. This is what I do every day. This is what it looks like. You wanna bring it, take it over
there to make it part of your group. That's fine. But this. Is what it is. And it's probably one of the challenges
we've had with customized employment. You know, because we've literally
come out of, you know, the support from Carrie Griffin and his group
associates, you know, all those years ago, which they still support
us, technically, technical alliance. The reality is that one of the
things that Carrie's all said to me is that, you know, part of my role. Not just to advance the evidence base,
but also protect the integrity of it. And I think that's what, you know, that's
probably more important in many ways. Not simply about the evidence for what we
do, but also protect the integrity of it. You know, otherwise you find a situation
where everybody claims to do something and very few of them have been trained. I mean, it's the reason we've gone out
a pathway of developing the cause of acre in the us, which is the accrediting
body and having the only accredited customized employment program in Australia
is because everybody says they do it. You know what? Very few people are actually trained
in it, so it's a bit of a, as Carrie said, sometimes you've just gotta
keep going out there reminding people that you know, this is what it is. And that's to take that position
is not a favored one for a lot of people who like to own things without
actually having the knowledge. So it's an interesting one,
and that's the journey you are probably on my guess, you know. But the good news is there are lots
of people like us who are there to protect the integrity of things. So that's how we work
with people like you. I like how you frame that because
sometimes I get overwhelmed by the noise or the amount of people I see that are
now doing neurodiversity training or neurodiversity training or a DHD training
or, and I get so overwhelmed I think, how are we ever really gonna make a difference
when there's like these multiple people. But I think it comes back to like
what you're saying, it's the integrity and I feel our integrity lies in our
research and creating that evidence base. Do your research, keep
your values, maintain your integrity, and don't deviate. The others will come and go and
eventually they'll get found out. But yeah, stick to your, what has kept you for
all this time doing it? 'cause it's a hard area to work in. Like it's really Oh, no. You see, but you see that all over
the world, you know, the reality is that what you've gotta do is if you're
values driven, then stick with it. I mean, what you discover in time, and I
think Carrie's often said to me, one of the things he said to me years ago was,
if you do things for the right reasons and trust the right people will turn up. You know? And I think that's always been
something you've gotta do. You know, for some people I'm a little
bit brash, maybe not the word, but you know, a little bit too, um, shall we say? Probably a little bit too country, but
you know, at the end of the day, you can't take the country outta the boy. But I did have a minister say to me
a couple years ago that one of the reasons I like you is because you're
not afraid to say the things that everybody else is afraid to say. And I thought, yeah, okay, that's fine. I said. Because everybody else wants
money from the government. I mean, who doesn't? But you know, at the end of the
day, if you're gonna do something, you do it for the right reasons and
you stay true to the evidence base and you stay true to your values. And you know, you won't make a million
dollars doing that, but you can get a bit every night going, I did the right thing. And that's what you've gotta do. Yeah. And I think for me it's the, the people
we help that you can't put a price on. No, you can't. That's priceless. I tried to explain that to
my husband and he goes, okay, well, you know, I had the same issue
with my father probably 20 odd years ago. When he said to me, he said, you know,
your brothers are really successful. They've got all, they own all this stuff. And he said. And I said, well, I'm not measuring
my life on how many things I own. I'm measuring it on
how many people I help. My wife would probably say,
well, it'd be good if you'd actually help us financially. But yeah, I mean, enjoy,
uh, your wife and my husband should get
together and have, I should probably have coffee
regularly commiserate. I have often asked him if he wanted
me to set up a support group for partners of neurodivergent people. Well, my wife will join. Uh, what has been one of your key
learnings over your journey of working in this space that, um, listeners
might find helpful or me in particular? 'cause I love these sessions 'cause
I feel like it's a like little mentor mini mentoring session from people. I think one of the things I've
learned over the years is there are a lot of people out there. Are trying to do the right thing. There are a lot of people that are
out there doing the right thing, but they're doing it silently. And sooner or later you come across
'em and sooner or later they come into your orbit and sooner or later
your orbit gets bigger and bigger. And what you end up eventually is an orbit
of people that you know firsthand that you can pick up the phone and talk to. And most people would eventually when
they see who's in your role, but they kind of go, how do you know these people? Well, I know them because we
have shared values and paths. You know, it's kind of, I think
that's the way you know it is just recognized that there are a lot of
people quietly getting on with it. I mean, my father gave me a book
when I was about 14 or 15 and having my going off the rails moment,
it was called a Letter to Garcia. I. And that was 50, 50 odd years ago. And it had a profound effect on how
I do things and it's worth buying. So much so that I actually, I lost a
copy of my father gave me, as you would, being a kid that I found another copy. And about four years ago I found a hundred
and something year old original copy in an antique bookstore was 19 oh something or. And I brought it and it sits here. It's one of my prize possessions. It's actually in a sealed zip bag, so
it can't be touched by the weather. It's something as simple as that. You know, as simple as the statements
that Carrie make about, if you do it for the right reasons, trust
the right people will be there. You know, just quietly do it. If you need to make a noise, make a noise
when you have to, push back when you have to, but just get on with it, right? There's all the people making a noise
out there that tell you you can't do it. They're not doing it and
they never will do it. They're the short cutters
on the world, right? Stick to your values, get
the right people around you. Do it for the right reasons. Just do it. You know, I hear people say all the time
that, oh, you know, we'd love to do these things, but you know, we need hundreds
of thousands of dollars for this research and you know, we can't do it because
the university needs 150 grant do at. No, you don't just do it. It's time. That's all. It takes time, and we
have seven days in a week. Use them. I mean, if you've done a PhD, you know
that you use your 24 hours in a day and you use your seven days a week. I mean, up until recently, I mostly,
and I still do, to be honest, I still don't go to bed much before
two o'clock, and I'm usually up by 6 30, 7 o'clock, and I use my days. Some not as four as I'd
like to, but you know what? You can use them. You can do things. That's what you gotta do. I mean that's me. It works for me. It might drive someone else nuts. Uh, probably my wife. I think my PhD has zapped
all the energy outta me. 'cause I used to get up at five
o'clock in the morning to do my PhD before I'd go to work. 'cause I worked full time till near the
end and yeah, now I'm lucky to get up. When my daughter surprises me,
I'm like, what are you doing? It's early. She's like, it's get up time. Like, oh my gosh, I think I
need a couple years to recover. My wife has a fucking dog on
the bed knowing it's time. It's like, okay, fine. Well, hopefully when my daughter's
a bit older, it might, I might have some of the energy back. You. You'll get, get there. Well, I feel like that's a really
positive note and I feel very positive having this conversation on a Friday
afternoon because this sector can knock you about and sometimes you
end up working with some difficult cases and seeing where you can't help. And I think for me, sometimes I
feel quite deflated when I've tried so hard, but we can't change the
outcome and we have that all the time. Yes. But you know, it's also the
recognition that, one of the things I've learned in psych school was
that you can't save everybody. And as harsh as that might sound,
the reality, that's the reality. But if you stick to your values, I like
that saying, I need to write it down. Other people will come. Absolutely. I've really enjoyed our conversation
and I'm really grateful for your time, Peter, and learning more about your
history of where you've come from and what the work you do, because it aligns
so closely to what we do as well and it's really nice to be able to talk
to other organizations that are doing similar work to us and I'm really excited
the opportunity to come and speak at. So thank you and thank you
for coming on the show. Not a problem. Look forward to seeing you
in a couple of weeks time. Me too, thank you. Thanks everyone for listening. Have a great weekend. Bye for now. Byebye, if you haven't done so already,
make sure you sign up to our mailing list so you can keep up to date with everything
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