Qualifications & Experience

Nikki Smith is a qualified social work practitioner who offers inspirational leadership, a strong commitment to community services and assisting children, young people and families to achieve their desired goals.

During a career spanning 19 years, Nikki has worked in positions from a grass roots to senior management level, offering professional and collaborative services across government, non-government agencies, not-for-profit organisations, small, medium, large organisations and social enterprises. Nikki holds memberships with the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), the Australasian Evaluation Society and University of Queensland Alumni.

Nikki’s exceptional personal and professional attributes, highly developed intuition and emotional intelligence has placed her as a high performance practitioner who leads with grace, empathy and a keen willingness to share her experience and knowledge, whilst learning from the lived experience of others. Her passion for inspirational leadership and practice excellence has led Nikki to the leadership space of professional development training, supervision, coaching, program design/development and management.

Nikki’s areas of professional support and expertise include child safety, family services, homelessness, youth justice, domestic and family violence, mental health, drug and alcohol misuse, advocacy for social justice and cultural diversity, mediation and conflict resolution, building healthy relationships, psychosocial development (positive social identity and sense of belonging) and constructive community engagement (education/training/employment).

She has an astute understanding of the need for practitioners and organisations to move forward into a new, socio-political world of contemporary welfare practice. This professional paradigm includes awareness of the need to successfully navigate the interface between government and non-government services.

The contemporary world of community service expects innovative and high quality service provision within funding budget constraints. An ever increasing demand for genuine collaborative partnerships and shared resources between agencies is commonplace within the sector. Social and community service is a complex landscape to navigate, but an essential space to negotiate when supporting individuals, families and communities.

Nikki’s philosophy is that we are all worthy of abundance and triumph in all aspects of our lives. She promotes support for individuals and organisations to create transformational change and achieve success in their chosen endeavours. She champions a vision of dreaming big because anything is possible when we are worthy of triumph over adversity and life abundance!

About Nikki

Nikki through the exuberance of youth, left school early to travel Australia, fruit picking her way up and down the east coast to pay for her adventure. She also taught children at various ‘learn to swim’ classes on her travels and looked after kids because it seemed a fun way to ‘pay the bills’. Then she stumbled across youth work by chance when a close friend suggested she use her experience working with children to ‘try out’ for a youth worker job.

Nikki really just wanted to care for kids and took on her first youth worker role with good intentions and no idea about the complexities of trauma and abuse. Little did she know that trauma and abuse adversely impacts a person’s development to the point of neurobiological impairment. Nikki was stoked to find out the good news is…this can be healed!

This realisation was a life-changing experience for Nikki and gave her a genuine purpose and vocation for life. Nikki has since developed a life-long commitment to supporting vulnerable Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, young people and families to ‘break the cycle’ and feel worthy of safety, health and wellbeing, abundance and triumph.

Importantly, Nikki acknowledges feeling privileged to have experienced some extremely valuable relationships, learning from many wise, courageous and strong children, young people, families and professional mentors. These relationships have been instrumental to her success. Nikki’s life has come full circle; from a colourful life experience in her youth to an experienced specialist after nearly two decades as a practitioner. Nikki still has much to learn because her career is a life long journey of learning. But it’s fair to say she now has skills and knowledge to impart to others because she can no longer identify as the youthful, next generation now that she is 40 something rather than 20 something!!!

Nikki has impressed many and annoyed some with her relentless pursuit of social justice and practice excellence! However, the community service sector benefits greatly from someone with her commitment and loyalty to see clients and colleagues achieve abundance and triumph; a person who uncompromisingly advocates for high level professionalism to ensure clients receive holistic and integrated support to enhance health, wellbeing and achievement.