Sophie Weeks

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide emotional and psychological support to PICU staff, enhancing resilience and coping strategies in high-stress environments.
• Develop and facilitate wellbeing programs, including workshops and training sessions, to promote mental health awareness and self-care among healthcare professionals.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to identify staff needs and implement effective support initiatives.
• Conduct regular check-ins and assessments to gauge staff wellbeing and address concerns proactively.
• Foster a positive workplace culture by organizing team-building activities and mindfulness sessions.
• Serve as a liaison for external mental health resources, ensuring staff have access to additional support when needed.
• Successfully implemented a peer support program, resulting in an increase in staff engagement and satisfaction.
• Developed resource materials that provided staff with practical tools for managing stress and burnout.

Key Responsibilities:

• Independently apply advanced level clinical expertise, specialised techniques, and professional judgement to a complex caseload within the acute/surgical stream, with specific emphasis on the provision of services within critical care areas including Paediatric Intensive Care, Cardiac, Burns, Emergency and Trauma Services.
• Provide clinical management and oversight of workflow demands, including assessment of risk and formulation of appropriate strategies to optimise patient care.
• Lead evidence-based practice to support complex clinical decision making, high standards of care and optimal clinical outcomes for patients.
• Provide professional leadership in the facilitation of research and reliable evidence to support quality clinical practice and service development and review.
• Advocate for operational processes, initiatives, and delivery standards for paediatric social work services.
• Actively support and take a lead role in relevant competency training and skill development programs targeted developing staff.
• Work in partnership with the Director of Social Work to plan, develop, operationalise, and coordinate Social Work Services, taking responsibility for day-to-day management of a diverse team including clinical practice supervision, performance appraisal and performance management.
• Support and lead service evaluation and quality improvement changes through the collection and analysis of data and records and the implementation and review of enhancements to services and existing practices.
• Contribute to strategic planning and direction primarily through active representation at service management meetings and the monitoring and reporting on operational, professional, or organisational issues and clinical outcomes within the work unit.
• Contribute to CHQ paediatric social work leadership through participation in relevant projects, committees, and clinical networks.

Key Responsibilities:

• Liaison between Students on Placement, Supervisors and School of Social Work and Human Services, Field Liaison Department.
• Provision of effective Clinical Supervision to Students on Placement.
• Development of Learning Plans, Learning Agreements, Learning Curriculum, Process Records and required University Assessments.
• Working at high level, as sole Practitioner, representing the University of Queensland in numerous workplaces.
• Excellent communication, conflict resolution and advocacy skills.
• Enhancing inter-agency collaboration through provision of relevant information and education relating to Mentoring/Student Supervision.
• Development of peer Supervision Models for Students and Professionals.
• Lecture to all new Students commencing their Placements regarding expectations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Deliver highly competent practice as sole Social Worker for PPCS and contribute to an advanced level to the effective functioning of the multi-disciplinary team.

• Undertake comprehensive psychosocial assessments and by utilising this information provide targeted and responsive interventions, within a practice framework of grief and bereavement and the impact of disability upon an individual and their family.
• Assistance with supporting timely discharge and coordination of care within the family’s local community.
• High level understanding and knowledge of NDIS and impact on patients/families known to PPCS. Representative of the Clinical Advisory at QCH.
• Provision of Services including education, liaison, and advocacy to families known to the PPCS and to the BSP.
• Developed, implemented, and assessed delivery of Services to families known to PPCS who are grieving the loss of a child. This includes individual, family and group counselling.
• Ongoing benchmarking with Australian and International Bereavement Services to ensure support to families is consistent with evidenced based practice.
• Provision of Education Programs such as Good Grief this Hurts and Antenatal/Perinatal Paediatric Palliative Care.
• Ongoing provision of leadership, education and Professional Clinical Supervision.
• Debriefing for QCH Staff.
• Community capacity building at events such as Dying 2 Know Day, Good Life Good Death Community Expo and Palliative Care Week.
• Support for Teams, locally and throughout the State regarding PPCS pateints and BSP.
• Development of Resources for patients, families, Health Professionals, Teachers and Communities who may be caring for a child with a life limiting condition or supporting a Bereaved family.
• Development and provision of a quarterly Newsletter for Bereaved families and Community Partners.
• Instrumental in development and coordination of the State-wide Annual Remembrance Ceremony offered to families who have lost a child and are known to QCH.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provision of evidenced based Social Work interventions for the Adults, Children’s and Mother’s Hospitals, specifically in the areas of sudden death, trauma, child protection, domestic violence, adoption, bereavement, homelessness, grief and loss.

• Working as a sole practitioner across three Hospitals, which requires an ability to prioritise cases and workload demands.

• Advanced skills in risk management, psychosocial assessments, counselling, and crisis intervention.

• Establishment of the After-Hours Resource to provide patients with referral to relevant services and to ensure high level of care and consistency to all patients.

• Liaison with multidisciplinary teams and Community Agencies.

• Understanding of Child Protection Policy.

• Demonstrated ability to implement Social Work Theory such as Attachment Theory, Eco-Systems and Strengths perspective.

• Completion of Quality Assurance Activities to meet requirements for Accreditation.

• Completion of Data collection.