ermha365 CEO Karenza Louis-Smith has a thought-provoking conversation with Clinical Forensic Psychologist Dr Lisa Warren, Clinical Director of Code Black Psychology about the Stable Bases Model that the organisation developed to support young people involved in serious youth-to-youth violence to guide their developmental journey and foster long-term positive outcomes.
This episode was recorded at the Complex Needs Conference in Melbourne co-hosted by ermha365 and ACSO Australia with support from Swinburne University's Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science and funded by the Victoria State Government's Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
ermha365 provides mental health and disability support for people in Victoria and the Northern Territory. Find out more about our services at our website.
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ermha365 acknowledges that our work in the community takes place on the Traditional Lands of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and therefore respectfully recognise their Elders, past and present, and the ongoing Custodianship of the Land and Water by all Members of these Communities.
We recognise people with lived experience who contribute to GET REAL podcast, and those who love, support and care for them. We recognise their strength, courage and unique perspective as a vital contribution so that we can learn, grow and achieve better outcomes together.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Get Real is recorded on the unceded lands of the Boon
, Wurrung and Wurundjeri peoplesof the Kulin Nation.
We acknowledge and pay ourrespects to their elders, past
and present.
We also acknowledge that theFirst Peoples of Australia are
the first storytellers, thefirst artists and the first
creators of culture and wecelebrate their enduring
(00:21):
connections to country knowledgeand stories.
Celebrate their enduringconnections to country knowledge
and stories.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Get Real talking.
Mental health and disabilitybrought to you by the team at
Burma 365.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Join our hosts Emily Webb and.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Carenza Louis-Smith, as we have frank and fearless
conversations with specialguests about all things mental
health and complexity, withspecial guests about all things
mental health and complexity.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
We recognise people with lived experience of mental
ill health and disability, aswell as their families and
carers.
We recognise their strength,courage and unique perspective
as a vital contribution to thispodcast so we can learn, grow
and achieve better outcomestogether.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What does it mean to be a privileged young person?
Back in the day, I thoughtprivilege meant money.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Yeah, I probably would have thought the same too.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Man, have I got that wrong?
What do you think it is today?
A privileged young person is ayoung person who has adults who
see them, hear them, value themand allow them to maintain
really strong and secureattachments while they go out
there in the world and be theirauthentic selves, including
(02:11):
those moments where they get itwrong, those moments where they
get it right, the moments whereyou can turn up to a school
assembly and the moments whereyou've got to pick them up from
their mate's house becausethey've just broken the window.
Speaker 6 (02:23):
This episode was recorded at the Complex Needs
Conference in Melbourne lastmonth that Irma365 co-hosted
with AXO Australia with supportfrom Swinburne University's
Centre for Forensic BehaviouralScience and funded by the
Victoria State Government'sDepartment of Families, fairness
and Housing.
(02:43):
Irma365 CEO, carenza Louis-Smith, has a thought-provoking
conversation with clinicalforensic psychologist, dr Lisa
Warren, who is a clinicaldirector of Code Black
Psychology, and they're talkingabout the stable basis model
that the organisation developedto support young people involved
in serious youth-to-youthviolence to guide their
(03:06):
developmental journey and fosterlong-term positive outcomes.
This model came from anintensive review and much
stakeholder engagement on thedrivers of violence between
groups of diverse youth in theWest Metro region of Melbourne.
There is much more in thisdiscussion that applies a
nuanced lens to the issue ofyouth violence and offending.
(03:27):
Lisa is a recognised expert inthreat management, in particular
her research on the risksassociated with threats to kill.
Lisa's clinical expertise is inthe fields of complex patients,
perpetrators and victims,survivors of family violence and
coercive control, and those whocause repeated harms like
(03:48):
stalkers and persistent,unreasonable complainants.
We will definitely need to havelisa on the podcast to talk
about more of her work, but fornow, over to karenza and lisa
I'm here with lisa warren, whois the Director of Code Black.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Hello, Lisa, Hi Carenza, Welcome to Get Real.
Thank you.
Yeah, we're going to have somegreat conversations today.
Now you're one of thepresenters at the 2025 Complex
Needs Conference.
Now your conferencepresentation is creating stable
bases for young people who haveperpetrated serious
youth-to-youth violence.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yes, stable bases is a model that came out of a
project back in 2021 when wepartnered with DJCS to try and
disrupt the kind of thenarrative that was being put
forward about young people beingsomething to be feared, people
(04:42):
who were carrying knives andother weapons around with them
and a group in our communitythat were almost a bit beyond
hope, and when I partnered withYouth Justice, neither of our
organisations believed that atall.
However, we did understand thatbeing able to genuinely see and
value a young person when theyare carrying a knife, when they
(05:08):
are espousing ideas that tellthem that violence is kind of
something that's reasonable andneeds to happen to keep you safe
and is just part of being, youknow, one of the group we
realise that we need to bethinking about this differently.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
It's a really interesting and probably quite a
hot topic actually at themoment in Victoria, isn't it
Youth crime?
I mean, I think people arefrightened.
I think you know genuinely.
You listen to the radio, youread the print media.
There's a lot of rhetoric inhere, isn't there?
About crime, gangs, kidsrunning wild knives.
We're going to ban the sale ofmachetes and knives under a
certain size.
I guess my question is is thatactually real, is that happening
(05:43):
, or is that kind of whipped upa bit as well?
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The media is, I think , distracted by how serious some
of these events actually are,and even one event feels like a
lot when you have one youngperson killing another young
person.
It feels like a lot.
So that want to be able tounderstand why would young
people do this Like, why wouldthey hurt each other like this?
(06:09):
That, I think, is a kind of thereasonable question that the
media are exploring.
Unfortunately, the media, in myexperience, can get distracted
by the loudest voices, andsometimes those loudest voices
are the ones that are promotingthe most downstream
interventions that we areputting forward, like tougher
(06:32):
bail laws.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Yeah, because that's a big hot one right now, isn't
it?
You know we're going to havethe toughest bail laws in
Victoria now in the country.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Having seen Professor Tonya Nicholls present this
morning some extraordinarystatistics, it really worries me
that, with downstreaminterventions that are actually
counter-indicated, that whatwe're going to do is be
distracted by these loud voicesand invest in methods that are
simply not.
Are they not going to work?
(06:59):
They're probably going to makethe problem worse.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
So let's touch on that a minute.
So I think one of the thingsthat I've always thought a lot
about and hypothesised is, whenyou send a young person to
prison, we're actually sendingthem on an apprenticeship, right
?
You know, here's yourapprenticeship.
You're going to learn to becomea career criminal because
you've got a whole bunch of youknow new role models and mentors
.
You're probably not going toget a job at the end of this
experience.
So what does the kind of futurelook like for you?
(07:22):
And isn't it?
One of the single biggestindicators of how long somebody
might spend in the criminaljustice system is the age of
their earliest offence.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Absolutely and the way that we try and understand
what are the kind of the levelsof responsibility and
culpability for someone who hasa brain that isn't anywhere near
developed yet.
We've debated in Victoria whatthe age of criminal
responsibility should be justrecently and we've moved from 10
to 12, rather than what otherstates are doing, which is
(07:53):
moving it from 10 to 14.
We decided not to do that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
So if I'm, you know, a member of the public and I'm
listening to this conversation,I would be saying well, what are
the alternatives then?
Because we've got youth crime,we've got these things happening
, like you say.
We've got kids in schools andshopping centres harming other
kids.
That's a horrific thing.
What can we do differently?
If we're not going to havetougher bail laws or not going
to send these kids to youngoffender institutions, slash
(08:19):
jail, what do we do differently?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We invest in upstreaming.
I think that's perhaps thesimplest answer is where do we
identify vulnerable young peopleat those earliest opportunities
where they are not investing intheir own selves?
Part of the work that we'vebeen doing with djcs has really
got me rethinking about.
(08:45):
What does it mean to be aprivileged young person?
Back in the day, I thoughtprivilege meant money.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
Yeah, I probably would have thought the same too.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Man have I got that wrong what do you think it is
today?
A privileged young person is ayoung person who has adults who
see them, hear them, value themand allow them to maintain
really strong and secureattachments while they go out
there in the world and be theirauthentic selves, including
(09:16):
those moments where they get itwrong, those moments where they
get it right, the moments whereyou can turn up to a school
assembly and the moments whereyou've got to pick them up from
their mate's house becausethey've just broken the window.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
And so what do you think thedifference is?
Do you think that these arekids that don't have that
privilege?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
What it means to have to survive a day rather than be
able to be held in your day andvalued in your day enough that
you can focus on your owndevelopment is a big part of the
issue.
So if you see a young personwho's wandering the streets at
(09:55):
two o'clock in the morning andthey're 10 and 11, what are we
not doing to really hold andsupport that family so they are
able to show up?
And it's really easy to blameparents and blame families, but
that and certainly the researchbears this out as well is also a
mistake.
How do we show up as acommunity?
(10:17):
And I was again fascinated tohear the presentation about
colonialism and how we've reallygot to take some responsibility
around some of the damagethat's done.
And I recently had theprivilege of seeing Gabo Mate
when he was here and it reallystruck me as a physician.
He said, in fact, that weshould actually be going back to
(10:38):
the Indigenous ways if we'rereally going to make a
difference.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
That's interesting, isn't it?
Because that kind of comes backto I remember as a kid growing
up like you know, if you didsomething naughty, like if you
were out of order, my word yourmum and dad knew probably before
you got home.
And you know I don't know ifthis is necessarily this was the
right thing, but you get a cliparound the ear and you probably
wouldn't do it again becausethe community, like this kind of
extended family and this wholeyou know thing around the
(11:03):
community caring, was verystrong.
It's different today, isn't it?
I think the world's changed,you know, I look at my kids.
I think it's quite different.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
It's a more disconnected world, in part
because our cities are biggerand they're busier and there's
more happening.
You can connect without leavingyour room.
You know using social media,the responses to COVID and you
know Melbourne was one of themost locked down cities in the
world, so we learned how to bedisconnected.
(11:33):
I have two children that didYear 12 from their bedrooms and
it kind of qualitatively changedtheir ability to know what it
means to really connect in withanother person.
I've been watching at thisconference with 700 delegates,
the number of people that say ohwow, you're an actual human.
I've never actually met youbefore, I've just seen your head
(11:56):
.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
I've seen your head and shoulders.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And we've been working together for three years
.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, it's incredible , isn't it?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So a big part of the work that we put forward is back
in 2021, we did a worldwideliterature review around
youth-to-youth crime so-calledgang crime, knife crime and we
did some focus groups with about60 stakeholders in West Metro
Melbourne and mapped thatliterature to what was happening
in that area West MetroMelbourne and mapped that
(12:25):
literature to what was happeningin that area.
And what we found is and it'sreally striking and clear that
privileged young people areyoung people who have got the
space and the safety to focus ontheir own personal development
and they need adults who valuethem.
They need to experience thingslike trust and not just having
someone to trust, but someonetrusting them.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Yeah, I can understand that, I can see that,
and so I suppose the challengethen because this conference is
all about what works, you know,when we take that learning, that
research, that evidence base,how do we change that?
What does change look like andwhere does it begin?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Part of what I think would make an enormous
difference is the way that thesector shows up to collaborate.
The first admission that we allneed to make when we really look
at ourselves in terms of how dowe show up as a sector, is to
really recognise there is no onesolution, there is no one
service, there is no one sectorthat's going to be able to get
it right or be able to solve theproblems of what it means to be
(13:30):
ostracised in your community,to have to manage things like
systemic racism, to deal withdisability, when your disability
makes you vulnerable to peoplewho want to use you for things
like the mewling type offences.
These are not, you know, peoplewho are, we talk about criminal
masterminds.
In fact, when you look at thevulnerabilities, all of a sudden
(13:51):
the logic of what somebody didstarts to become so much more
apparent.
So what we've been reallylooking at is, if we were to
create a stable base around ayoung person, what would it mean
for them to be able to reallyfocus on their own personal
development?
And the analogy that we usedwas walking a tightrope that to
(14:16):
move from being a child to beingan adult.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Which is hard.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
For everybody, Even the really really privileged
kids that have got lots and lotsof adults who are really tuned
into them.
Yeah, it's still tough, it'sembarrassing and it's awkward
and you get it wrong and youknow, as somebody who has six
children themselves, I've seenit play out a number of
different times.
But in walking the tightrope,the one of the reasons that we
use that analogy is that nobodycan do it for you.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
But what we can do, though, is really stabilise that
journey and make that journeymore rewarding and easier, and
we found that there is six ways.
There's six really key,evidence-based methods to
stabilise the immediateenvironments of young people,
and the work that we're doing atthe moment is creating a tool
(15:08):
and a protocol to help servicesaudit are you actually doing
those things that work?
Is a mental health servicereally supporting things like
the development of self-identity?
How do I become kind of my bestunique self?
Is, for example, acommunity-based service or a
(15:30):
sporting team or the kind oflocal police youth officer
really creating opportunitiesfor self-growth?
So we've got these six baseswhere we all work together and
say how well are we actuallystabilising the world around the
young person?
We can do what young peoplereally need from adults, which
(15:50):
is to be seen, to be heard andto be valued.
So what are your six?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
bases.
What are they?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So base number one is trust.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And that's not just experiencing trust and kindness,
but it's actually being able tohave someone value that from
you.
And when you look sort ofdevelopmentally at, say, a five
and six-year-old child and yousee them doing a simple chore
around the house and a parentsays, wow, you did that really
(16:23):
well, thank you so much, thatwas really effective or that was
really helpful, you watch thembe really proud of themselves.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
Yeah, they're just puff out, don't they?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
They're just smile 100%.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Yeah, it's an important thing, isn't it?
It's that kind of recognition.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
What am I good at and what would this person trust me
with?
So that's one.
Another is being valued, sogenuinely being heard and being
validated.
Another is self-identity, whichis the big task of adolescence
(16:57):
is what kind of adult do I wantto become and how do I bring
some sort of consistency to that?
And we see in our deeply,deeply traumatised people that
stability, kind of a permanencein their identity, is something
that's very disrupted.
There's another base aroundself-growth and I suppose the
(17:22):
most practical of all of thebases is security.
There's a very good reason whyyoung people walk around with
knives is they are genuinelytrying to keep themselves safe
and to borrow from our legalcolleagues when they talk about
defensive carrying as think ofthe knife as the shield, not the
sword.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That's a powerful statement, because I don't think
people see it in that way.
I think you know people arefearful and then you have a
knife you're here to harm.
I think that's probably what'sseen.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
When we did the work with the focus groups.
It was a comment by one of theschool principals that really
struck me.
They had a young person sent totheir office who had a knife on
them at school.
The principal confiscated theknife and said what are you
doing bringing that to school?
Why have you got that on you?
And his answer was well, miss,someone's going to get me.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So that's the title of our stable basis report is
well miss, someone's going toget me.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
That's scary.
It would be frightening to bethat kid.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Absolutely so.
In addressing that base, wevery much take a trauma-informed
approach that young people needto be safe, not only feel safe,
and when you look at some ofthe neighbourhoods and some of
the local issues that areoccurring, it makes sense that a
young person feels unsafe.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
And I think when you touch on schools, that's a
really important place, isn't it?
I mean, that's you know.
Hopefully, most young peopleare going to school.
You know that's where some ofthese things happen and play out
.
And yet you know schools aren'tnecessarily funded or resourced
or have the staff or thecapability to manage some of
these complexities, and so theeasier option is to say, well,
sorry, it's going to expel youand exclude you from school
(19:02):
because it's too hard.
We've got, you know, a thousandother students and the five of
you.
You can just go because, yeah,it's which.
What do we do?
Do we support the 995 or thefive?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
that's a beautiful segue to the last base.
Oh there you go, which isbelonging.
Yeah, okay, that feelingincluded and connected is an
evidence-based way to have ayoung person really connected to
the institutions that they'reinvolved in.
(19:36):
And expelling them from schoolis systemic ostracism and it's
done under the guise of keepingpeople safe, and it's done under
the guise of keeping peoplesafe, but it is such a last
resort approach where there areother ways to ensure that there
is safety and that there'sopportunity for a young person
who's really struggling togenuinely belong at school.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
So if a school's listening to this podcast, their
school teacher and schoolprincipal that's easy to say,
but far that is bloody hard todo.
How can schools kind of changethat then?
Because I imagine that'sdifficult.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Absolutely, and my first statement to them is that
they're right.
It is hard.
If it was easy we'd have solvedit by now, but we can't also
have compassion fatigue.
There's always going to be thenext cohort of young people and
the problems that they're facingare going to be as complex, if
not more complex, than thecohort that preceded them.
(20:34):
And that safety is one amongsix considerations.
And I think when I've beeninvolved in care teams with
complex young people, when we'vegot teachers and principals
showing up to our care team, wecreate these far better
solutions.
My organisation, code Black,we're partnering with a school
(20:55):
at the moment who is reallystruggling with a young person
who behaves in a way that putsthemselves and others at risk
quite frequently, and weabsolutely acknowledge that
being at school is distressingfor this young person.
Not being at school is even moredistressing for this young
person.
So how do we gather around theschool as professionals to say
(21:19):
you've got child safetyobligations and you can't have
all your resources channelledinto one student, but excluding
the difficult ones is also notan option.
So we've got an entire planaround this young person where
we can connect together thefamily, the school, the clinical
(21:40):
team and really understand whatis the function of this young
person's distress?
What does it mean when they'retrying to escape or avoid
something that just feels toobig or too overwhelming?
What does it mean when we allstart to worry that avoiding is
becoming a coping method ofchoice?
And how do you challenge in aproductive and safe way, that
(22:06):
young person to be able to sayyou know what.
I can actually trust that I cancope with a bit of distress
here.
I know I'm supported in this.
I've got my identity that'sdeveloping here is that I don't
have to walk away fromeverything.
That's tough.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
That's powerful.
I'd like to talk a bit aboutCode Black as well and your work
, because I think peoplelistening are going.
I want to talk to her.
I want to talk to Lisa.
I want to hear more.
So you established and set upCode Black I did in 2009.
Why, what was the driving forceor the reason why you decided
to go out on your own and dosomething like this?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I liked the agility of the private sector, and the
longer I've worked in thecomplex space, the more I've
realised that it is actually thejoining together of the public
sector who has to take the bulkof the work.
I mean, the government isresponsible for a whole lot of
(23:05):
making sure that standardpractice is embedded in
everything that we do, but mywork has always been around.
But what happens when standardpractice doesn't work?
And one of the psychologicalvariables I've always had an
interest in is this concept ofpersistence, and why would
someone continue to do somethingthat, on the surface of it,
(23:26):
makes no sense?
And as somebody who's aclinical forensic psychologist,
and I work with an incredibleteam of psychologists, behaviour
support practitioners and we'vegot a whole team of
coordinators.
They're actually like the casemanager of the care team and we
love the work that they do,because their job all day, every
day, is to just bring everybodytogether and not only create a
(23:48):
shared understanding but createsustainable models of care for
these exceptional cases.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
And you often get called in, don't you into into
situations where, like this, isa really wicked difficult kind
of problem to solve?
Perhaps you could tell ourlisteners a little bit about
some of that work as well.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
So one of the, I suppose, services that we've
really worked to createsomething different is in our
workplace consultancies, andthat's about supporting the
organisations who are reallystruggling because standard
practice doesn't work.
As an example, we have a casewhere we have a man who has a
psychosis, who has been treatedwith a range of medications, and
(24:34):
when you talk to the doctorsabout their selection of which
medicines and which doses, atwhat time of day and in what
combination gosh, there's a lotof thought being put into how do
I give this person as muchrelief as we possibly can from
their symptoms, and there's thissadness that you see in the
doctors that none of it's worked.
(24:54):
This poor person is stilltortured by their symptoms, no
matter what has happened.
We, then, have worked with theallied health services and
psychologists and looked at allof the ways that the system has
tried to stabilise the world.
For this person to say, eventhough those symptoms are not
abating as much as we would likethem to, we can still create
(25:16):
immediate environments for youthat are tuned into you, and the
environment can do thetherapeutic work and give you a
place that is safe enough thatyou can relax and think about
something other than yoursymptoms.
So that's, I think, been areally helpful part of my work.
(25:36):
I will just share, if it's allright, a little story of a
collaboration that we had.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
We've been partnering with an architect for the last
couple of years, as in anarchitect, like someone that
designs buildings, uh-huh.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Okay, and he has been discovered by the University of
Columbia in America, and theirschool of architecture has just
sent 12 architecture students toMelbourne to visit a number of
places, including Code Black,where there's an emerging
speciality for creating designbuilt spaces for people with
(26:11):
complex disabilities.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Yeah, okay, so cool, very, I can imagine, because
that's built environments are ahuge game changer, right?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
if you have the right kind of bricks and mortar
setting and it works, that's agood thing absolutely, and I
think my favorite question thatI posed to them was how do you
create a built space thatendures over time?
Because that's been one of thechallenges of architecture that
you can create a therapeuticspace for the right here right
(26:43):
now.
But people change.
Their disabilities can changein terms of their capacity,
their own sense of self, how aperson would like to approach
their day-to-day life.
So how do you have a space toreflect that and evolve with
people as we develop?
(27:03):
What do they say?
We really dug down into thatconcept of a flexible space.
So what does it mean to be ableto move things in an
environment including walls?
So having things likeconcertina doors, Wow.
Yeah, it's really interesting, Iknow, and as a psychologist it
kind of blew my mind becauseit's so far out of scope and
(27:24):
that's an interestingcollaboration because I'd be
interested.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I don't know if anyone in this kind of
conference over the next twodays is going to talk about
partnerships with architects.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I hope they do, but I bet they don't.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
So there are going to be people listening to the
podcast.
They're going to be fascinatedin the tool that you're talking
about and the six I'm going tosay domains, but I think that's
the wrong word.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Bases Bases Thank you Six bases.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
How do people get in touch with Code Black, and you
know they want to hear moreabout your work.
What's the best way?
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I suppose, like lots of people, we have a website.
I'm slightly addicted toLinkedIn, so please feel free to
reach out to me there.
I think there's just suchbrilliant thought exchanges
going on in that environment.
We've got a little form on ourwebsite, so there's that.
There's certainly that there'sinfo at codeblackpsychologyau.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
That's our kind of general email that you can get
in touch with us and the finalquestion that we're asking
people, too, is you know, emilylikes this if you had a magic
wand, you know, and there wasone thing that you could wave
this magic wand and change, andit would really change how we
approach and work withcomplexity.
And whether it's about you know, young people, or it's about
(28:28):
something else, what would yourmagic wand be?
You know, if you could do that,your fairy godmother's sitting
on your shoulder.
Here you go.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I think that's alarmingly easy to answer.
Okay, it's about the person.
What does it mean to really seeand hear and support someone to
be authentic, and what does itauthentically mean?
And a number of thepresentations they talked about
really specific goals.
(28:55):
So this person I loved thestory of Rebecca that she wanted
to earn money and buy herselfTommy Hilfinger shoes.
I mean perfect.
Every human being on thisplanet has has just such
beautiful value if you care tolook yeah, I agree.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
Thank you so much for your time today.
Are there any last um pearls ofwisdom that you want to impart
to our listeners before we wrapup?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
I suppose just a reminder to say that the
complexity is sometimes not inthe person, it's around the
person yeah, I think that's very, very wise counsel.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Thank you so much, lisa Warren, director at Code
Black, for your time here todayat the Complex Needs Conference.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Thanks, Corenza.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You've been listening to Get Real talking mental
health and disability, broughtto you by the team at Irma 365.
Get Real is produced andpresented by Emily Webb, with
Corenza Louis-Smith and specialguests.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
Get Real is recorded on the unceded lands of the Boon
, Wurrung and Wurundjeri peoplesof the Kulin Nation.
We acknowledge and pay ourrespects to their elders, past
and present.
We also acknowledge that theFirst Peoples of Australia are
the first storytellers, thefirst artists and the first
creators of culture and wecelebrate their enduring
(00:21):
connections to country knowledgeand stories.
Celebrate their enduringconnections to country knowledge
and stories.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Get Real talking.
Mental health and disabilitybrought to you by the team at
Burma 365.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Join our hosts Emily Webb and.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Carenza Louis-Smith, as we have frank and fearless
conversations with specialguests about all things mental
health and complexity, withspecial guests about all things
mental health and complexity.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
We recognise people with lived experience of mental
ill health and disability, aswell as their families and
carers.
We recognise their strength,courage and unique perspective
as a vital contribution to thispodcast so we can learn, grow
and achieve better outcomestogether.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
What does it mean to be a privileged young person?
Back in the day, I thoughtprivilege meant money.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Yeah, I probably would have thought the same too.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Man, have I got that wrong?
What do you think it is today?
A privileged young person is ayoung person who has adults who
see them, hear them, value themand allow them to maintain
really strong and secureattachments while they go out
there in the world and be theirauthentic selves, including
(02:11):
those moments where they get itwrong, those moments where they
get it right, the moments whereyou can turn up to a school
assembly and the moments whereyou've got to pick them up from
their mate's house becausethey've just broken the window.
Speaker 6 (02:23):
This episode was recorded at the Complex Needs
Conference in Melbourne lastmonth that Irma365 co-hosted
with AXO Australia with supportfrom Swinburne University's
Centre for Forensic BehaviouralScience and funded by the
Victoria State Government'sDepartment of Families, fairness
and Housing.
(02:43):
Irma365 CEO, carenza Louis-Smith, has a thought-provoking
conversation with clinicalforensic psychologist, dr Lisa
Warren, who is a clinicaldirector of Code Black
Psychology, and they're talkingabout the stable basis model
that the organisation developedto support young people involved
in serious youth-to-youthviolence to guide their
(03:06):
developmental journey and fosterlong-term positive outcomes.
This model came from anintensive review and much
stakeholder engagement on thedrivers of violence between
groups of diverse youth in theWest Metro region of Melbourne.
There is much more in thisdiscussion that applies a
nuanced lens to the issue ofyouth violence and offending.
(03:27):
Lisa is a recognised expert inthreat management, in particular
her research on the risksassociated with threats to kill.
Lisa's clinical expertise is inthe fields of complex patients,
perpetrators and victims,survivors of family violence and
coercive control, and those whocause repeated harms like
(03:48):
stalkers and persistent,unreasonable complainants.
We will definitely need to havelisa on the podcast to talk
about more of her work, but fornow, over to karenza and lisa
I'm here with lisa warren, whois the Director of Code Black.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Hello, Lisa, Hi Carenza, Welcome to Get Real.
Thank you.
Yeah, we're going to have somegreat conversations today.
Now you're one of thepresenters at the 2025 Complex
Needs Conference.
Now your conferencepresentation is creating stable
bases for young people who haveperpetrated serious
youth-to-youth violence.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yes, stable bases is a model that came out of a
project back in 2021 when wepartnered with DJCS to try and
disrupt the kind of thenarrative that was being put
forward about young people beingsomething to be feared, people
(04:42):
who were carrying knives andother weapons around with them
and a group in our communitythat were almost a bit beyond
hope, and when I partnered withYouth Justice, neither of our
organisations believed that atall.
However, we did understand thatbeing able to genuinely see and
value a young person when theyare carrying a knife, when they
(05:08):
are espousing ideas that tellthem that violence is kind of
something that's reasonable andneeds to happen to keep you safe
and is just part of being, youknow, one of the group we
realise that we need to bethinking about this differently.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
It's a really interesting and probably quite a
hot topic actually at themoment in Victoria, isn't it
Youth crime?
I mean, I think people arefrightened.
I think you know genuinely.
You listen to the radio, youread the print media.
There's a lot of rhetoric inhere, isn't there?
About crime, gangs, kidsrunning wild knives.
We're going to ban the sale ofmachetes and knives under a
certain size.
I guess my question is is thatactually real, is that happening
(05:43):
, or is that kind of whipped upa bit as well?
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The media is, I think , distracted by how serious some
of these events actually are,and even one event feels like a
lot when you have one youngperson killing another young
person.
It feels like a lot.
So that want to be able tounderstand why would young
people do this Like, why wouldthey hurt each other like this?
(06:09):
That, I think, is a kind of thereasonable question that the
media are exploring.
Unfortunately, the media, in myexperience, can get distracted
by the loudest voices, andsometimes those loudest voices
are the ones that are promotingthe most downstream
interventions that we areputting forward, like tougher
(06:32):
bail laws.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
Yeah, because that's a big hot one right now, isn't
it?
You know we're going to havethe toughest bail laws in
Victoria now in the country.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Having seen Professor Tonya Nicholls present this
morning some extraordinarystatistics, it really worries me
that, with downstreaminterventions that are actually
counter-indicated, that whatwe're going to do is be
distracted by these loud voicesand invest in methods that are
simply not.
Are they not going to work?
(06:59):
They're probably going to makethe problem worse.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
So let's touch on that a minute.
So I think one of the thingsthat I've always thought a lot
about and hypothesised is, whenyou send a young person to
prison, we're actually sendingthem on an apprenticeship, right
?
You know, here's yourapprenticeship.
You're going to learn to becomea career criminal because
you've got a whole bunch of youknow new role models and mentors
.
You're probably not going toget a job at the end of this
experience.
So what does the kind of futurelook like for you?
(07:22):
And isn't it?
One of the single biggestindicators of how long somebody
might spend in the criminaljustice system is the age of
their earliest offence.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Absolutely and the way that we try and understand
what are the kind of the levelsof responsibility and
culpability for someone who hasa brain that isn't anywhere near
developed yet.
We've debated in Victoria whatthe age of criminal
responsibility should be justrecently and we've moved from 10
to 12, rather than what otherstates are doing, which is
(07:53):
moving it from 10 to 14.
We decided not to do that.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
So if I'm, you know, a member of the public and I'm
listening to this conversation,I would be saying well, what are
the alternatives then?
Because we've got youth crime,we've got these things happening
, like you say.
We've got kids in schools andshopping centres harming other
kids.
That's a horrific thing.
What can we do differently?
If we're not going to havetougher bail laws or not going
to send these kids to youngoffender institutions, slash
(08:19):
jail, what do we do differently?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We invest in upstreaming.
I think that's perhaps thesimplest answer is where do we
identify vulnerable young peopleat those earliest opportunities
where they are not investing intheir own selves?
Part of the work that we'vebeen doing with djcs has really
got me rethinking about.
(08:45):
What does it mean to be aprivileged young person?
Back in the day, I thoughtprivilege meant money.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
Yeah, I probably would have thought the same too.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Man have I got that wrong what do you think it is
today?
A privileged young person is ayoung person who has adults who
see them, hear them, value themand allow them to maintain
really strong and secureattachments while they go out
there in the world and be theirauthentic selves, including
(09:16):
those moments where they get itwrong, those moments where they
get it right, the moments whereyou can turn up to a school
assembly and the moments whereyou've got to pick them up from
their mate's house becausethey've just broken the window.
Speaker 5 (09:27):
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
And so what do you think thedifference is?
Do you think that these arekids that don't have that
privilege?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
What it means to have to survive a day rather than be
able to be held in your day andvalued in your day enough that
you can focus on your owndevelopment is a big part of the
issue.
So if you see a young personwho's wandering the streets at
(09:55):
two o'clock in the morning andthey're 10 and 11, what are we
not doing to really hold andsupport that family so they are
able to show up?
And it's really easy to blameparents and blame families, but
that and certainly the researchbears this out as well is also a
mistake.
How do we show up as acommunity?
(10:17):
And I was again fascinated tohear the presentation about
colonialism and how we've reallygot to take some responsibility
around some of the damagethat's done.
And I recently had theprivilege of seeing Gabo Mate
when he was here and it reallystruck me as a physician.
He said, in fact, that weshould actually be going back to
(10:38):
the Indigenous ways if we'rereally going to make a
difference.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
That's interesting, isn't it?
Because that kind of comes backto I remember as a kid growing
up like you know, if you didsomething naughty, like if you
were out of order, my word yourmum and dad knew probably before
you got home.
And you know I don't know ifthis is necessarily this was the
right thing, but you get a cliparound the ear and you probably
wouldn't do it again becausethe community, like this kind of
extended family and this wholeyou know thing around the
(11:03):
community caring, was verystrong.
It's different today, isn't it?
I think the world's changed,you know, I look at my kids.
I think it's quite different.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
It's a more disconnected world, in part
because our cities are biggerand they're busier and there's
more happening.
You can connect without leavingyour room.
You know using social media,the responses to COVID and you
know Melbourne was one of themost locked down cities in the
world, so we learned how to bedisconnected.
(11:33):
I have two children that didYear 12 from their bedrooms and
it kind of qualitatively changedtheir ability to know what it
means to really connect in withanother person.
I've been watching at thisconference with 700 delegates,
the number of people that say ohwow, you're an actual human.
I've never actually met youbefore, I've just seen your head
(11:56):
.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
I've seen your head and shoulders.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And we've been working together for three years
.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, it's incredible , isn't it?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So a big part of the work that we put forward is back
in 2021, we did a worldwideliterature review around
youth-to-youth crime so-calledgang crime, knife crime and we
did some focus groups with about60 stakeholders in West Metro
Melbourne and mapped thatliterature to what was happening
in that area West MetroMelbourne and mapped that
(12:25):
literature to what was happeningin that area.
And what we found is and it'sreally striking and clear that
privileged young people areyoung people who have got the
space and the safety to focus ontheir own personal development
and they need adults who valuethem.
They need to experience thingslike trust and not just having
someone to trust, but someonetrusting them.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Yeah, I can understand that, I can see that,
and so I suppose the challengethen because this conference is
all about what works, you know,when we take that learning, that
research, that evidence base,how do we change that?
What does change look like andwhere does it begin?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Part of what I think would make an enormous
difference is the way that thesector shows up to collaborate.
The first admission that we allneed to make when we really look
at ourselves in terms of how dowe show up as a sector, is to
really recognise there is no onesolution, there is no one
service, there is no one sectorthat's going to be able to get
it right or be able to solve theproblems of what it means to be
(13:30):
ostracised in your community,to have to manage things like
systemic racism, to deal withdisability, when your disability
makes you vulnerable to peoplewho want to use you for things
like the mewling type offences.
These are not, you know, peoplewho are, we talk about criminal
masterminds.
In fact, when you look at thevulnerabilities, all of a sudden
(13:51):
the logic of what somebody didstarts to become so much more
apparent.
So what we've been reallylooking at is, if we were to
create a stable base around ayoung person, what would it mean
for them to be able to reallyfocus on their own personal
development?
And the analogy that we usedwas walking a tightrope that to
(14:16):
move from being a child to beingan adult.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
Which is hard.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
For everybody, Even the really really privileged
kids that have got lots and lotsof adults who are really tuned
into them.
Yeah, it's still tough, it'sembarrassing and it's awkward
and you get it wrong and youknow, as somebody who has six
children themselves, I've seenit play out a number of
different times.
But in walking the tightrope,the one of the reasons that we
use that analogy is that nobodycan do it for you.
Speaker 5 (14:42):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
But what we can do, though, is really stabilise that
journey and make that journeymore rewarding and easier, and
we found that there is six ways.
There's six really key,evidence-based methods to
stabilise the immediateenvironments of young people,
and the work that we're doing atthe moment is creating a tool
(15:08):
and a protocol to help servicesaudit are you actually doing
those things that work?
Is a mental health servicereally supporting things like
the development of self-identity?
How do I become kind of my bestunique self?
Is, for example, acommunity-based service or a
(15:30):
sporting team or the kind oflocal police youth officer
really creating opportunitiesfor self-growth?
So we've got these six baseswhere we all work together and
say how well are we actuallystabilising the world around the
young person?
We can do what young peoplereally need from adults, which
(15:50):
is to be seen, to be heard andto be valued.
So what are your six?
Speaker 5 (15:55):
bases.
What are they?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
So base number one is trust.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And that's not just experiencing trust and kindness,
but it's actually being able tohave someone value that from
you.
And when you look sort ofdevelopmentally at, say, a five
and six-year-old child and yousee them doing a simple chore
around the house and a parentsays, wow, you did that really
(16:23):
well, thank you so much, thatwas really effective or that was
really helpful, you watch thembe really proud of themselves.
Speaker 5 (16:30):
Yeah, they're just puff out, don't they?
Speaker 3 (16:31):
They're just smile 100%.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Yeah, it's an important thing, isn't it?
It's that kind of recognition.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
What am I good at and what would this person trust me
with?
So that's one.
Another is being valued, sogenuinely being heard and being
validated.
Another is self-identity, whichis the big task of adolescence
(16:57):
is what kind of adult do I wantto become and how do I bring
some sort of consistency to that?
And we see in our deeply,deeply traumatised people that
stability, kind of a permanencein their identity, is something
that's very disrupted.
There's another base aroundself-growth and I suppose the
(17:22):
most practical of all of thebases is security.
There's a very good reason whyyoung people walk around with
knives is they are genuinelytrying to keep themselves safe
and to borrow from our legalcolleagues when they talk about
defensive carrying as think ofthe knife as the shield, not the
sword.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
That's a powerful statement, because I don't think
people see it in that way.
I think you know people arefearful and then you have a
knife you're here to harm.
I think that's probably what'sseen.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
When we did the work with the focus groups.
It was a comment by one of theschool principals that really
struck me.
They had a young person sent totheir office who had a knife on
them at school.
The principal confiscated theknife and said what are you
doing bringing that to school?
Why have you got that on you?
And his answer was well, miss,someone's going to get me.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
So that's the title of our stable basis report is
well miss, someone's going toget me.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
That's scary.
It would be frightening to bethat kid.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Absolutely so.
In addressing that base, wevery much take a trauma-informed
approach that young people needto be safe, not only feel safe,
and when you look at some ofthe neighbourhoods and some of
the local issues that areoccurring, it makes sense that a
young person feels unsafe.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
And I think when you touch on schools, that's a
really important place, isn't it?
I mean, that's you know.
Hopefully, most young peopleare going to school.
You know that's where some ofthese things happen and play out
.
And yet you know schools aren'tnecessarily funded or resourced
or have the staff or thecapability to manage some of
these complexities, and so theeasier option is to say, well,
sorry, it's going to expel youand exclude you from school
(19:02):
because it's too hard.
We've got, you know, a thousandother students and the five of
you.
You can just go because, yeah,it's which.
What do we do?
Do we support the 995 or thefive?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
that's a beautiful segue to the last base.
Oh there you go, which isbelonging.
Yeah, okay, that feelingincluded and connected is an
evidence-based way to have ayoung person really connected to
the institutions that they'reinvolved in.
(19:36):
And expelling them from schoolis systemic ostracism and it's
done under the guise of keepingpeople safe, and it's done under
the guise of keeping peoplesafe, but it is such a last
resort approach where there areother ways to ensure that there
is safety and that there'sopportunity for a young person
who's really struggling togenuinely belong at school.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
So if a school's listening to this podcast, their
school teacher and schoolprincipal that's easy to say,
but far that is bloody hard todo.
How can schools kind of changethat then?
Because I imagine that'sdifficult.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Absolutely, and my first statement to them is that
they're right.
It is hard.
If it was easy we'd have solvedit by now, but we can't also
have compassion fatigue.
There's always going to be thenext cohort of young people and
the problems that they're facingare going to be as complex, if
not more complex, than thecohort that preceded them.
(20:34):
And that safety is one amongsix considerations.
And I think when I've beeninvolved in care teams with
complex young people, when we'vegot teachers and principals
showing up to our care team, wecreate these far better
solutions.
My organisation, code Black,we're partnering with a school
(20:55):
at the moment who is reallystruggling with a young person
who behaves in a way that putsthemselves and others at risk
quite frequently, and weabsolutely acknowledge that
being at school is distressingfor this young person.
Not being at school is even moredistressing for this young
person.
So how do we gather around theschool as professionals to say
(21:19):
you've got child safetyobligations and you can't have
all your resources channelledinto one student, but excluding
the difficult ones is also notan option.
So we've got an entire planaround this young person where
we can connect together thefamily, the school, the clinical
(21:40):
team and really understand whatis the function of this young
person's distress?
What does it mean when they'retrying to escape or avoid
something that just feels toobig or too overwhelming?
What does it mean when we allstart to worry that avoiding is
becoming a coping method ofchoice?
And how do you challenge in aproductive and safe way, that
(22:06):
young person to be able to sayyou know what.
I can actually trust that I cancope with a bit of distress
here.
I know I'm supported in this.
I've got my identity that'sdeveloping here is that I don't
have to walk away fromeverything.
That's tough.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
That's powerful.
I'd like to talk a bit aboutCode Black as well and your work
, because I think peoplelistening are going.
I want to talk to her.
I want to talk to Lisa.
I want to hear more.
So you established and set upCode Black I did in 2009.
Why, what was the driving forceor the reason why you decided
to go out on your own and dosomething like this?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I liked the agility of the private sector, and the
longer I've worked in thecomplex space, the more I've
realised that it is actually thejoining together of the public
sector who has to take the bulkof the work.
I mean, the government isresponsible for a whole lot of
(23:05):
making sure that standardpractice is embedded in
everything that we do, but mywork has always been around.
But what happens when standardpractice doesn't work?
And one of the psychologicalvariables I've always had an
interest in is this concept ofpersistence, and why would
someone continue to do somethingthat, on the surface of it,
(23:26):
makes no sense?
And as somebody who's aclinical forensic psychologist,
and I work with an incredibleteam of psychologists, behaviour
support practitioners and we'vegot a whole team of
coordinators.
They're actually like the casemanager of the care team and we
love the work that they do,because their job all day, every
day, is to just bring everybodytogether and not only create a
(23:48):
shared understanding but createsustainable models of care for
these exceptional cases.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
And you often get called in, don't you into into
situations where, like this, isa really wicked difficult kind
of problem to solve?
Perhaps you could tell ourlisteners a little bit about
some of that work as well.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
So one of the, I suppose, services that we've
really worked to createsomething different is in our
workplace consultancies, andthat's about supporting the
organisations who are reallystruggling because standard
practice doesn't work.
As an example, we have a casewhere we have a man who has a
psychosis, who has been treatedwith a range of medications, and
(24:34):
when you talk to the doctorsabout their selection of which
medicines and which doses, atwhat time of day and in what
combination gosh, there's a lotof thought being put into how do
I give this person as muchrelief as we possibly can from
their symptoms, and there's thissadness that you see in the
doctors that none of it's worked.
(24:54):
This poor person is stilltortured by their symptoms, no
matter what has happened.
We, then, have worked with theallied health services and
psychologists and looked at allof the ways that the system has
tried to stabilise the world.
For this person to say, eventhough those symptoms are not
abating as much as we would likethem to, we can still create
(25:16):
immediate environments for youthat are tuned into you, and the
environment can do thetherapeutic work and give you a
place that is safe enough thatyou can relax and think about
something other than yoursymptoms.
So that's, I think, been areally helpful part of my work.
(25:36):
I will just share, if it's allright, a little story of a
collaboration that we had.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
We've been partnering with an architect for the last
couple of years, as in anarchitect, like someone that
designs buildings, uh-huh.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Okay, and he has been discovered by the University of
Columbia in America, and theirschool of architecture has just
sent 12 architecture students toMelbourne to visit a number of
places, including Code Black,where there's an emerging
speciality for creating designbuilt spaces for people with
(26:11):
complex disabilities.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
Yeah, okay, so cool, very, I can imagine, because
that's built environments are ahuge game changer, right?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
if you have the right kind of bricks and mortar
setting and it works, that's agood thing absolutely, and I
think my favorite question thatI posed to them was how do you
create a built space thatendures over time?
Because that's been one of thechallenges of architecture that
you can create a therapeuticspace for the right here right
(26:43):
now.
But people change.
Their disabilities can changein terms of their capacity,
their own sense of self, how aperson would like to approach
their day-to-day life.
So how do you have a space toreflect that and evolve with
people as we develop?
(27:03):
What do they say?
We really dug down into thatconcept of a flexible space.
So what does it mean to be ableto move things in an
environment including walls?
So having things likeconcertina doors, Wow.
Yeah, it's really interesting, Iknow, and as a psychologist it
kind of blew my mind becauseit's so far out of scope and
(27:24):
that's an interestingcollaboration because I'd be
interested.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I don't know if anyone in this kind of
conference over the next twodays is going to talk about
partnerships with architects.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I hope they do, but I bet they don't.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
So there are going to be people listening to the
podcast.
They're going to be fascinatedin the tool that you're talking
about and the six I'm going tosay domains, but I think that's
the wrong word.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Bases Bases Thank you Six bases.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
How do people get in touch with Code Black, and you
know they want to hear moreabout your work.
What's the best way?
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I suppose, like lots of people, we have a website.
I'm slightly addicted toLinkedIn, so please feel free to
reach out to me there.
I think there's just suchbrilliant thought exchanges
going on in that environment.
We've got a little form on ourwebsite, so there's that.
There's certainly that there'sinfo at codeblackpsychologyau.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
That's our kind of general email that you can get
in touch with us and the finalquestion that we're asking
people, too, is you know, emilylikes this if you had a magic
wand, you know, and there wasone thing that you could wave
this magic wand and change, andit would really change how we
approach and work withcomplexity.
And whether it's about you know, young people, or it's about
(28:28):
something else, what would yourmagic wand be?
You know, if you could do that,your fairy godmother's sitting
on your shoulder.
Here you go.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I think that's alarmingly easy to answer.
Okay, it's about the person.
What does it mean to really seeand hear and support someone to
be authentic, and what does itauthentically mean?
And a number of thepresentations they talked about
really specific goals.
(28:55):
So this person I loved thestory of Rebecca that she wanted
to earn money and buy herselfTommy Hilfinger shoes.
I mean perfect.
Every human being on thisplanet has has just such
beautiful value if you care tolook yeah, I agree.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
Thank you so much for your time today.
Are there any last um pearls ofwisdom that you want to impart
to our listeners before we wrapup?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
I suppose just a reminder to say that the
complexity is sometimes not inthe person, it's around the
person yeah, I think that's very, very wise counsel.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Thank you so much, lisa Warren, director at Code
Black, for your time here todayat the Complex Needs Conference.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Thanks, Corenza.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You've been listening to Get Real talking mental
health and disability, broughtto you by the team at Irma 365.
Get Real is produced andpresented by Emily Webb, with
Corenza Louis-Smith and specialguests.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you next time.
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