Eliza Stubbs

Creating a Safe Space: My ePortfolio

Reflections

Below I have two reflective pieces based on different personal and professional experiences, and how they relate to meeting and improving my practice in relation to my values and professional standards.

My Values

Professionals Standards

As an RMT I have professional standards I must abide by and continue to strive for in my work. The button below will take you to a pdf with them laid out in more detail, but I have listed the four overarching standards below:

AMTA Professional Standards
  1. Music Practice… we are practitioners of music
  2. Therapy Practice… we are practitioners of therapy
  3. Reflective Practice… our music practice and therapy practice are nested in reflective practice
  4. Professional Practice… our music practice and therapy practice and reflective practice are underpinned by professional practice

Reflection 1 – Building CQ Music Therapy

I founded and developed CQ Music Therapy as Central Queensland’s only registered music therapy provider, which allowed me to develop a wide-range of multi-disciplinary skills in allied health service delivery and management, and commercial decision-making.

I have experience expanding a business to include a larger office, marketing and advocacy, contractors, managing and supervising multiple roles, writing policies and procedures, and understanding the value of creating a reliable and validating space.

Skills I developed (as stated in my resume):

  • Widespread service delivery to over one hundred clients across Gladstone, Banana, and Rockhampton regions. Including education and advocacy for the benefits of Music therapy and allied health in the community by engaging clients, planners, other professionals, supports, and funding bodies.
  • Continuous improvement of my business through rigour reviews of client outcomes, business spend and revenue, with emphasis on being an efficient, effective, and safe manager and leader.
  • Supervision and consultation of professionals within the allied health, medical, education, corporate, and industrial environments to ensure my supervisees were confident in their capacity, function, and development of their skills relevant to their roles.
  • Front facing client engagement including the delivery of Music therapy programs to a high standard. My clients ranged across the lifespan and multiple areas of need, in both physical and mental health. I prioritised working with clients and supports to understand their environment and promote safe, strength-based, and person-centered participation.
  • I worked with children as young as two years old with complex disabilities including global developmental delay, neurodivergence, anxiety, selective mutism, Down Syndrome, and intellectual disability.
  • Many clients required me to utilise my experiences of working in a hospital setting to develop plans that corresponded with their experience and knowledge.
  • Collaboration with peer allied health professionals and other stakeholders to deliver multi-disciplinary programs for targeted interventions. My work promoted diversity and inclusion by engaging with a large range of diverse communities, both on a stakeholder level and with the clients.
  • Developing programs with Work Cover and Community Services such as Endeavour to improve mental health and develop skills required to (re)enter the workforce.
  • Employee and Contractor management for best business outcomes, including strengthening workplace culture through open and patient approaches to communication.
  • Day to day and strategic budgeting and expense tracking and management including workforce expansion and facilities management.
  • Designing and managing my own Social Media platforms for business outreach and advocacy (cqmusictherapy.com.au).

The opportunity to build my practice as I did came about because of a gap in the market. It was a terrifying experience to put myself out there as a sole trader. Learning to market myself, my business, music therapy; advocate for my abilities; build my business-related knowledge base; network; and figure out what kind of practitioner I would become was daunting, exhausting, and absolutely life-changing. My professional standards have been consistently increasing since I first opened, with the expansion of my own office front a huge win in my life.

The business has also been one of the areas of my life where it is has been easiest to be reflective of my practice, because if something isn’t working, I lose clients. Internal struggles with my health, or external struggles with the NDIS, or even finding gaps in my business knowledge that I need time to fill; these are all areas that have required me to stop and contemplate whether my therapeutic practice is up to standard and if I am prioitising what I need to. It is a constant learning experience and I am so very grateful that I took the chance when I did, and kept at it.

Because of this I have been able to develop a strong range of skills and knowledge in starting a business and empathy for those who are commencing it for the first time. I have some ideas of future business development that would greater serve my interest in this area, so head on over to Aspirations to find out what I plan to do with it!

Reflection 2 – The Neurodivergent Lived Experience

Parenting is often considered as something that many of us will ‘just’ do in our lifetime, but it is one of the most difficult jobs you will ever take on. Especially if you are neurodivergent. And extra especially when you didn’t know you were neurodivergent when you started.

As a typical high-achieving, high-masking, undiagnosed neurodivergent woman, the first inclination that my brain activated and learned in a different way to what I had thought, was after I had my first child, and things I used to be able to shake off or figure out started becoming very difficult. Moreso than other new parents I talked to. Then, within the space of a few months, all my coping skills stopped working and I couldn’t process information. It was like my brain had decided it could only prioritise one human’s wellbeing, and it had chosen my baby.

The journey from then to recognising who I was, getting diagnosed, and living as a person with ADHD was a tricky time. I had to come to terms with the way I had practiced previously, how I now related to my clients in a way I hadn’t before (it felt like pushing myself right back to the second stage of competency; completely wrong analysis!), and take a look at how my life was organised and the impact it was having on me.

Ultimately, there has been nothing but positive improvements from this endeavour. My therapeutic relationship with my clients and their supports became stronger; I hyperfixated on learning about neurodivergence and neurology, with it becoming my special interest and now I have a large knowledge base I can use; my social relationships are more grounded and supportive; and I am able to build a life for myself that works with my brain, allowing me to be a better parent, worker, and person than I was before.

As a therapist we bring so much of ourselves into our space, and as a regional therapist, my relatability and friendly nature are important to help people feel comfortable coming to see me. Life experiences and changes are such an essential piece of the puzzle that makes us practitioners, and it is important to celebrate and reflect where you can.

When I consider this ongoing journey of discovering my identity and how it relates to my professional standards, I can see a bit of everything in there. My new knowledge definitely improved my therapeutic practice, as I was more aware of how many of my client’s brains processed information, and it was (and still is!) ultimately a very reflective time. Interestingly, it also had a great impact on how I see myself as a professional, as I have become increasingly more confident in my own skin and identity, that it has also made me a more confident practitioner. I am able to create a space that works for me, which helps me be more flexible and responsive to my clients, and am creating a career that caters to my unique ADHD way of seeing and responding to things. Plus, music is great for motivation!