Mitch
Sorry. That's ok. It's going pretty good. Sorry Brad? What are you doing? What's going on? My normal little rundown, so yeah, I've got this thing called a Curious Tractor. I don't know if you've seen us. We did some stuff with Smart Recovery for the awards last year.
And so we did a photo project with disposable cameras. And then we had that exhibition, which was rad. And then, um, just been hanging out with April and the crew for a bit and yeah, Nick and I do a little bit of like, I spend a lot of time online building stuff and working out what communities feel like online. So, um.
Yeah they were really keen to just think about what's this next phase of bringing facilitators together in a digital space. And so this idea is to I think they're going to try and use this platform called Learnworlds, which is going to support courses and training, but part of it is like a community section.
Way too many. Maybe they don't have much time. And like some people are really into that stuff, which is like, I want to be in forums and I want to be talking and I want to be like. There's probably like 10 questions that relates to like facilitators and what the platform can do. And I'll show you how this all works.
I use this thing called Notion. So essentially this is like where we do the interviewing. And then as soon as we finish this interview, I give you this link and there's a little bit here where you can like add any other things that you didn't get to in this interview.
And then you can see this is recording the interview here, and so you'll get the full transcription. And then you can literally, like, delete stuff that you didn't want to say, or change things, or like, yeah, just, you can just kind of see everything there, and there'll be a summary.
We're just going to go through these questions. It'll take about 20 minutes depending on how rad your answers are. And then yeah, that's about it. Cool. Easy. So brother, the first thing we do is just literally like, tell us a little bit about your smart experience.
and what you're currently doing at the moment in terms of that facilitation type stuff. Yep, so smart experience so far has been quite a very interesting journey. We've got every Friday actually we've got smart recoveries. I think my first one's at 10 o'clock and that's the 18 to 24 year olds and then I've got another one this afternoon from 2.30 and that's usually the 12 to 17 year olds.
I'm not going to lie about it, we don't get a lot of engagement online for the groups. I've had people pop in from overseas and I've had a few yarns with some people. with some youth like in America and Canada and Europe and things like that, but I don't know. We've got flyers up, we've got things around the schools, we've got...
All of our information out there, so I don't know how else we can kind of get any more marketing done for it, but In the schools, I kind of add the smarts into the school. So we were doing a little smart recovery in schools last year Um, we have had to cut it back a little bit just due to
It's really, really hard for us because life's lived well, like we're all about collecting data and we're all about collecting outcome measures and things like that. And that just gives us an idea of what's getting used. everything like that. So the schools, it's hard to kind of capture all of that data in a smart way. So I still do.
I'm looking at starting up next year in Vinnie with the behavioural group. I think I'm going to actually do smart because I've been doing our group program with them but I actually think that they would benefit from smart and how smarts run. So I just need to have a chat with my manager about it and just get that full approval for it. But that's kind of the route that I wanna go there with that. Awesome.
That's great. What's like... Just specifically on the facilitation stuff. What do you think is working super well at the moment for you in terms of like maybe how you run stuff, but even like some of the tools and stuff, like how often you maybe use those? Goal setting. I use goal setting all the time.
I also use the pros and cons of usage and also I look at the pros and cons of the financials as well. For the younger ones, I try not to go... Too hard with the tools. So I do two lots of groups and stuff like that. So I kind of combine things across.
The board and then our tools that we have for our program are very, very similar to LiveLoop, to very, very similar to Smart Recovery Tools. So, I don't, obviously I don't use all of the tools, but actually, give me two seconds.
I can let you know once I've downloaded the notes.
I use that one because I kind of tie that in with a goal, with a value situation. And I also use my vision worksheet. Cool. And just a really interesting one for me. How did you just look that up? And how did you find your resources? So I've got all of my resources, they're pretty much downloaded onto my desktop. I also, you can just go through Smart Recovery website. Amazing.
Yeah, I think it's like on the third or fourth thing at the top where it's like tools or something like that and then it's all separated between like the youth and all of that. Cool. Have you used any other mechanisms for finding things or mainly the website? No, just the website. I do email because I was having difficulties actually because when I was trying to start up the
The program and stuff like that. I was going through smart to start the zoom and stuff Yeah, so there was a time period there where I wasn't able to log in but turns out I've just got a look in through zoom That was on me, that was on him. Those tools to use them like is that something you do every single time or like does something spark you going to search from those other more tools or other resources and stuff or is it like
Plan my groups in a way of like
We think younger kids, it's really, really hard to kind of have a routine of we're going to do this, we're going to do motivate, and we're going to do all of these things. Because... One week they come in and they're wanting to work on their mental health and then the next week they come in and they might have had something else and now they're like, no it's not about the mental health, I want to work on peer pressure.
So I usually have everything kind of stored up in here, and then once I've kind of sussed out and checked in with the kids, that's when I'll usually decide, okay, I think we're going to do this topic because I was planning all of this stuff and then I pretty much wasn't using it because I needed to kind of address.
Certain things that have happened at the time, if that makes sense for the youth. Totally. So I try not to plan too much now. But like I said, because I've been doing it for a whole minute, like everything's kind of just... Awesome. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. Are there certain things that, like...
If you find yourself going back to the same sort of tools and worksheets and things, are there ones on there that are almost like, or is there parts of this that's painful in terms of like trying to find stuff or like feeling like you have to use certain things or are you kind of, as you're saying,
in this pattern of stuff that you've been doing it so long you kind of know what to use and when. I feel like smart everything is necessary. Don't get me wrong, there are times when...
Language-wise and things like that and how things are presented for the youth have to be very, very different. I feel like it has to be more of a laid-back situation. I try not to take on too much of a clinical aspect with it because I mean groups are therapeutic anyway but sometimes
With smart with it being kind of like a regimented 90 minute situation of you know, we have five to 10 minutes for you check in, and then you know 10 minutes to discuss things so the time thing. can be quite interesting with the kids, with the youth, because they're time management, you know, that's something that they're still learning. So...
Maybe time aspects, I feel like.
It should be up to the person who's running the group on, okay, if we're not having quite a successful day or something like that, maybe we just... One thing I've got to take into consideration is how many services my kids also access. So if they're over-serviced and things like this, then they're adding Smart Recovery into it.
I don't want them to be too overwhelmed. So if we've got a day where they're just like, you're like my third person I've had to visit today, I'm just like, let's wait, let's just chill. Like, and let's just, and I kind of do it through, like an informal.
And now I think we'll flip over to a bit of like, what do you need as a facilitator? So There's this idea of like having a space where facilitators can hang out and share stuff and access things and it's like a community space. So there's just a few things I'd love to test with you and it might be a bit...
A bit boring in terms of like how we go through this, but I would love to ask about like if you had the ability to direct message with other facilitators in like a group. Do you feel like that is something you would use, or is that something that's not an important feature? I think it's important. I think it's an important feature. Personally, would I use it? It really does depend.
Just because lives lived well we're already kind of at our own program and things like that so we're already getting smashed with running like our own programs and things like that. Sometimes for Smart, for me, it does come secondary to my job, obviously, because it's my job. But if there was a moment where I did need to use it, I would use it.
And I think it'd be great for, because I do get a lot of, um, maybe international smart facilitators emailing me in regards to the youth program and things like that. Really? That's cool. And how, you know, I've met with a couple of people to just discuss how they can maybe get th