Supporting youth: Joshua Heap and John Matimba are child protection practitioners in Shepparton. Photo: Megan Fisher
Photo by
Megan Fisher
The Victorian Government is searching for 280 new child protection practitioners to join the state’s workforce, as two Shepparton-based workers encourage graduates and people looking for a career change to follow in their footsteps.
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Joshua Heap and John Matimba were travelling different life paths before a fork in the road saw them choose child protection.
For Mr Matimba, formerly a journalist, it was a switch driven by necessity and cemented by passion.
“Mine is a long story,” Mr Matimba said, now an advanced child protection practitioner in Community Services Operations at DHHS Shepparton with a Masters of International Social Work and Development.
When he emigrated from Zimbabwe to the United Kingdom in 1999, Mr Matimba couldn’t find work as a news reporter, instead gaining employment in a children’s home where he worked alongside social workers.
Mr Matimba felt there was opportunity and reward in this line of work, and trained to be a social worker himself.
Dedicated: John Matimba and Joshua Heap are passionate about their careers in child protection and say every day is different in their line of work.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Today, Mr Matimba has 15 years of experience from across the globe in child protection, and four of those years have been spent working in Shepparton.
Although he sometimes looks back at his past career in journalism with nostalgia, he wouldn’t change the path he chose.
“Work can sometimes be high pressure, but then you look at your cases ... you see a child developing from a very stressed child — a child that may not have a future — to knowing you’ve placed a child in a stable home,” he said.
Mr Matimba also finds motivation helping parents and families grasp the difficulties they face and go on to achieve their goals.
His colleague Mr Heap feels the same, having started out supervising visitations between parents and children, before moving up to a child protection practitioner role.
In particular, Mr Heap wants to reduce the stigma surrounding child protection work and debunk the notion its aim is “just to remove kids” from their homes.
“It’s about supporting children and giving kids a voice when they don’t have one,” he said.
“The big highlight for me is seeing returned children, and seeing what progress parents have made ... feeling the fulfilment in themselves that they've done what they needed to do to support not only themselves but their children for their future.”
Colleagues: Joshua Heap, pictured with John Matimba, says child protection is about giving kids a voice when they don’t have one.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Mr Heap hails from Swan Hill and, like his colleague Mr Matimba, he didn’t grow up imagining himself working in child protection — initially he wanted to work in information technology.
But he had a change of heart while volunteering at a holiday camp for vulnerable children, and became inspired to study social work.
“I could see how much a week would change a child's entire perspective,” Mr Heap said.
Just as his role is about supporting others to make positive changes, Mr Heap said child protection was an ever-evolving field.
“We're constantly re-evaluating, relearning, evolving child protection; what it was years ago is not the same as what it is today,’’ he said.
The Victorian Government has invested an unprecedented $2.2 billion in the children and families system during the past two budgets. This includes $171 million to boost the number of child protection staff on the front line in the 2021-22 Victorian Budget, bringing the total number of new positions in the field since 2014 to 1180.
