In this episode of Social Workers Matter, I’m joined by Cornelius Browne and Dr Christina Browne, a husband-and-wife team who offer trauma-informed art and therapy to people in their community living with mental ill health.

I first encountered Cornelius’s Work at his White City exhibition and more recently at his Peckham exhibition, Trauma in Black Bodies: Art and Therapeutic Space. I left with two of his publications, ‘Dealing with recurring events’ & ‘The weight we carry ’, and a head full of questions, and this conversation was my chance to ask them.

In this episode, we explore:

• The thinking behind the exhibition, and why art can reach what words sometimes cannot.
• How trauma is held in the body, and what it means to centre Black bodies and Black experience.
• The ideas and influences that shape Cornelius and Christina’s practice, in their own words.
• What their trauma-informed art and therapy look like in practice, and who they're for.

For anyone working in Social Work, mental health, or community settings, this conversation reminds us that healing doesn’t only happen in clinical rooms. It can also happen in galleries, studios and shared community spaces.

Whether you are a social worker, therapist, artist, student, or simply curious about trauma and healing, this episode offers a thoughtful, grounded look at art as a therapeutic space.

To find out more: To learn about Cornelius and Christina’s Work and the support they offer, visit www.adumaadan.uk

#SocialWorkersMatter #TraumaInformedPractice #ArtTherapy #SocialWork #MentalHealth

About the host: Social Workers Matter is hosted by Dr Sylvia B. Smith, DSW, FHEA, MBASW, founder and director of Incline Training Consultants Ltd. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and share.

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Healing in the Circle of Life: Taking Black Psychology Home to Dominica (Episode 1 of 3)

What happens when a mental health conference stops talking at a community and starts learning from one?

In this episode, I sit down with Clancy Williams, President of UK ABPsi and project lead, and LaReo Riviere, a proud Dominican, Mental Health Professional and conference subcommittee member, headed by Dr Michelle Perry-Springer, to introduce Healing in the Circle of Life. It's a four-day gathering on African Black Psychology, Indigenous healing and decolonising mental health, taking place in Dominica from 13 to 16 April 2027.

In this episode:

• How a conversation between three women sparked the idea of showcasing Indigenous African and Caribbean healing practices
• Why the medical model can't hold the whole story of distress, and what social context adds
• The conference themes: ancestral beginnings, healing in community, and intergenerational trauma
• What genuine co-production with the Kalinago people and local practitioners looks like
• Giving back to the island, from sustainable travel to working with Discover Dominica
• Keynote speaker Dr Wade Nobles, a founding voice of African Black Psychology

Who's it for?
Psychologists, social workers, therapists, allied health and care professionals, academics, students, community practitioners and traditional healers. If you Work with people and their wellbeing, this conference is for you.

Get involved:

• 📅 Abstract deadline extended to 30th November 2026. Papers, workshops and panel discussions are all welcome.
• 🌿 Sponsors and partners: get in touch through the website.
• 🌍 Conference website: https://www.ukabpsi.co.uk/event-details-1/healing-in-the-circle-of-life
• 👌🏾 Call for papers: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSuNuZvflzhKEgV3tp1rwVpmCvctW8HRdusD_KU98HkodEiw/viewform
• 🎙️ Coming up: two more episodes with updates, and the full steering group joins us for the finale.

Healing in the Circle of Life is presented by UK ABPsi and partners.

Listen, share, and come and stand in the circle with us.

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Social Workers Matter - Episode Notes

Content Warning
This episode contains honest, detailed discussion of childhood emotional neglect and physical abuse, and touches on pregnancy loss by choice. Karen's story is raw and, at times, harrowing. This is not easy listening. Please take care while listening, and consider whether now is the right time for you - it's absolutely fine to pause or come back to it when you're ready.

Episode Summary
In this deeply personal conversation, Karen shares what it was like growing up in Belize as the twin sister who was treated as invisible while her brother was treated as the centre of the family's world. She speaks candidly about the emotional neglect and physical abuse she endured, and how those wounds followed her into her own experience of motherhood - including a decision she made about a pregnancy early in her marriage, shaped by the same cultural and generational pressures she was trying to understand.

What makes this conversation so powerful is not just the pain Karen describes, but where she has arrived. Across the years since, she has done the work of holding two things at once - understanding her mother as a woman shaped by her own hardship, while still naming the harm without minimising it. Karen shares that forgiveness has come to her gradually, a little more with each passing year, and that it has never required her to excuse what happened or pretend it didn't.

This is ultimately a story about interruption - about a daughter who became a mother and chose, deliberately, what would end with her and what she would carry forward instead.

A Note on Karen
Karen has shown real courage in sharing this material. These are not easy memories to put into words, let alone offer to listeners. We're grateful for her openness and for her generosity in letting others learn from a journey that has clearly asked a great deal of her.

Key Themes

• Growing up in Belize within a Central American and Caribbean cultural context
• Being treated differently from a twin brother
• The emotional stakes of unequal expectations for sons and daughters
• Emotional neglect and childhood physical abuse
• The long-term impact of abuse on identity, relationships, and motherhood
• Generational trauma and inherited survival strategies
• Loving one's culture while challenging harmful traditions
• Becoming a mother and confronting one's own childhood
• Seeing a mother as a complex woman without absolving her
• Forgiveness as a gradual, ongoing process rather than a single decision
• Transforming inherited wounds into intentional strength
• Choosing what to pass on to the next generation

Questions to Sit With

• What does it mean to forgive someone a little more each year, rather than all at once?
• How do you hold a parent accountable while also understanding the forces that shaped them?
• What patterns have you noticed being passed down in your own family - and which ones are you choosing not to carry forward?
• What would it take for you to offer yourself the same compassion Karen is learning to offer her mother?

If This Episode Raises Something for You
If anything in this conversation brings up difficult feelings or memories of your own, please be gentle with yourself. Reaching out to a trusted friend, a counsellor, or a support service is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Thank You

Thank you to Karen for trusting us with her story, and thank you for listening. Conversations like this one are part of how we break cycles - together. We look forward to the publication of her new book about her experiences.

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This episode opens differently. Before anything else, I pause to pay tribute to Professor Jason Arday, the youngest Black professor in Cambridge's history, who died after years of sustained public scrutiny. It's a moment to name a name, honour a life, and reflect on the particular weight carried by those who rise while being watched for a mistake.

From there, the episode moves into a solo adaptation of the presentation I delivered for SCAPA, "Why Policies Fail Without Reflective Practice." Drawing on my doctoral work on Bion and Isabel Menzies Lyth, I unpack why even the best-written safeguarding policy collapses without the relational infrastructure of reflective supervision behind it, and what inspectors, leaders, and practitioners alike miss when they mistake procedure for practice.

In This Episode

A Tribute to Professor Jason Arday: I pause the usual format to honour Professor Jason Arday, who died in London following years of sustained media scrutiny after becoming Cambridge's youngest Black professor. Rather than relitigating the allegations made against him, this segment names the pattern beneath the story, using Menzies Lyth's thinking on institutions and anxiety to explore how public and organisational discomfort gets displaced onto individuals, particularly Black people who rise. A moment of stillness for anyone doing work that puts them in rooms they had to fight to enter.

Why Policies Fail Without Reflective Practice (main segment). Adapted from my SCAPA conference session, this segment explores:

• Why organisations can write increasingly sophisticated policy while practice on the ground quietly worsens
• Menzies Lyth's Work on social defences against anxiety, and how bureaucracy can become a substitute for thinking rather than a support for it
• What reflective supervision actually does when it's done well, and why it can't be replaced by a checklist
• The difference between compliance and containment, and why "caring is not the same as thinking"
• A grounding scenario (originally a live breakout exercise) inviting listeners to hold a case of their own, where the procedure was followed correctly, but the relational opportunity was missed
• A closing three-level reflection: what this means for me, for my team, and for my organisation

Key Themes

#Reflective practice #Safeguarding culture #Menzies Lyth Bion & containment #Anti-racist practice #Institutional anxiety #Reflective Supervision #Leadership

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In this episode, I sit down with Veronica Xavier-Leigh — author of The Mountain Beneath the Carpet: Healing the Little Child Hidden Within Us — for one of the most profound conversations we've had on the podcast.

Together we explore:

• Emotional Suppression and Childhood Trauma
• Childhood Trauma and Adult Behaviour
• Listening to the Inner Child
• Pattern of Controlling Relationships
• Personal Healing Journey
• Faith Journey Transition
• Self-Healing for Helping Professionals
• Upcoming Book

Veronica is open and generous about the hard lessons drawn from her lived experience, including her difficult marriages. Whether you're a practitioner, a leader, or someone simply navigating your own healing, her wisdom and insight will land.

Find Veronica at https://veronicaxavierleigh.com/

YouTube Channel: @Veronica Xavier Leigh - SoulRise Sounds for uplifting Lyrics, with every track being created to inspire, heal, and remind you of your strength.

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I've been away from this space longer than planned.

Life and loss asked something of me that I needed to honour first.

I'm back. And the episode I'm returning with feels right.

This is a solo episode. Personal. Reflective. And I hope, useful.

I talk about a period in my career when I became the kind of manager I wouldn't have wanted for myself, not because I didn't care, but because nobody had given me the tools to lead differently.

I talk about what use of self actually means in practice, not as theory, but as lived experience.

I talk about why this concept is not neutral. For Black practitioners and leaders, bringing yourself has always carried a different weight.

And I talk about what organisations must create, not as a luxury, but as a condition for people to do this Work sustainably.

The Work is relational. Leadership is relational. And it begins with you.

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Head of Service for Occupational Therapy, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust & Chair, Royal College of Occupational Therapists

What does it look like to lead with purpose, replenish yourself honestly, and commit to leaving a profession better than you found it? In this episode of Social Workers Matter, Sylvia sits down with the remarkable Odeth Richardson, a trailblazing occupational therapist, published poet, and senior leader, for a conversation that is as warm and wise as it is professionally rich.

From her childhood in Jamaica, where staying occupied with chores and daily activities was simply a way of life, to becoming the first Black Chair of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, Odeth's journey is one of accidental leadership, intentional mentorship, and hard-won self-knowledge.

IN THIS EPISODE

What occupational therapy actually is, and why it's one of the most powerful tools for reducing inequality.

The mentor who changed everything, and how Odeth now pays that forward.

Stepping down to step up, the courageous decision to prioritise self-care over duty.

Leading 36,000 occupational therapists across four nations, and doing it as a proud introvert.

Poetry, baking, dancing — how Odeth truly replenishes herself

The book, celebrating 'Caribbean perspectives in occupational therapy', has been three years in the making

A live reading of Odeth's poem Like a Phoenix, inspired by Maya Angelou

One of the most moving moments in this episode comes when Odeth reflects on stepping down as Chair of the Race Equality Staff Network after a decade of service. It wasn't failure, it was wisdom. She recognised that an empty cup cannot nourish others, and that the self-compassion she championed for colleagues had to begin with herself. It's a lesson that will resonate deeply with anyone working in the caring professions.

Odeth also speaks candidly about the uneven distribution of stretch opportunities in the NHS, and why equity in development matters as much as equity in hiring. Her commitment to mentoring, whether through the Elizabeth Casson Trust, the Caribbean Writers Network, or her role as trustee at the Great North Children's Hospital Foundation, speaks to a leader who understands that legacy is built in people, not positions.

GUEST

Odeth Richardson

Head of Service for OT, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Hospitals · Chair, Royal College of Occupational Therapists, Poet, Author of 'Reflections of an Island Girl'.

If this episode moved you, share it with a colleague. And if you're a social worker, OT, or anyone working in health and care who sometimes forgets to fill their own cup, this one's for you.

Reflections of an Island Girl by Odeth Richardson is available at Amazon here

https://amzn.eu/d/07Fv7TGV

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Caribbean Perspectives in Occupational Therapy in the UK is a pioneering resource that brings cultural specificity into occupational therapy practice, centring the experiences and needs of Caribbean communities living in the UK. It is notably authored by occupational therapists of Caribbean heritage themselves, lending the work an authenticity and lived-experience grounding that sets it apart.

The publication draws on biographical narratives and case studies to explore how cultural identity, heritage, and lived experience shape health outcomes and occupational engagement for Caribbean people in the UK. By weaving personal stories alongside practical applications, it bridges theory and real-world practice in an accessible way.

A core theme running through the work is health inequalities — acknowledging the systemic and structural barriers that Caribbean communities face in healthcare settings and equipping occupational therapists with tools to address them more effectively. Alongside this, it champions cultural humility as a professional stance, encouraging practitioners to reflect critically on their own assumptions and to engage with clients in a respectful, curiosity-driven way rather than through a one-size-fits-all approach.

The resource also emphasises social inclusion, recognising that meaningful participation in everyday life — the heart of occupational therapy — cannot be understood without attending to cultural context. At the same time, it celebrates the richness and vibrancy of Caribbean culture, framing it not merely as a backdrop to disadvantage but as a source of strength, identity, and resilience.

For practitioners, the text offers concrete, actionable insights for continuing professional development, making it a valuable tool for both individual therapists and organisations working toward more culturally responsive and equitable care.

In this SWM episode, we're joined by some of the great minds and committed colleagues, Dr Blaine Robin, Odeth Richardson, Jennie Alexander and Melisa Henry. As the book's launch date draws closer, we will meet other contributors to this much-needed text.

Caribbean Perspectives on Occupational Therapy in the United Kingdom: An Essential Practice Guide and Study Manual
https://amzn.eu/d/04b1tnTr

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