office culture in disablity support organization's and how it impacts on...

  This is a continuation of a series of posts I have done and I see that it’s something that needs to be talked about and that is the culture in disability service organizations and in particular in the office as we see that I had a comment saying that a person with a disability should never be seen as just a cash cow and if you are treated this way to speak up.

Also, I have realized that the office culture regardless of the industry goes across all industries and it’s not just related to health and disability care as they are co-adjacent industries. We see that people are unwilling to admit in the disability sector that they are the problem and if they admit that the office culture is the problem this then means that they need to change, and change means disruptions and it’s not a disruption to the client as a lot of clients are trained to not complain or speak up due to fear of being labeled a complainer when this is what needs to happen we need people to speak up. Both Clients and support workers and we see that the support workers need support from the office to back them up to achieve the best outcomes for the client, and often this is difficult for some larger organizations because they have a revolving door of support workers and don’t listen to the clients because they believe they know what is best for the client and this is challenging because this is the outdated medical model of care and this means that a person isn’t able to be supported in the manner they need and are put at risk due to not having a constant level of care from the same support workers.

When an office doesn’t listen they put a client and their support team at risk and when they are making decisions for them instead of with them it makes the client feel like they can’t ask for what they need and they just stay with it because they can even get a little bit of support.   But if they had a lot more they would be able to achieve a lot more.

I am starting to see some support agencies have communication officers but every time they seem to not want to listen to the client they seem to be more interested in protecting the companies name, but what they don’t seem to realize is that if they listened to the client they would be able to protect the company by having happy clients and support workers.  

In saying that the support workers need back up from the office I am talking about having good updated policies in place, understanding the clines needs and working to have their care team all on the same page, and addressing bad behaviors from both the client and the support workers before it escalates, as a broad one fits all policy isn’t going to work for some clients, and as I said in another blog post it could be considered an unapproved restrictive practice if there is the not the need for it, in the situation but it makes the support workers life easier.

We see that some people will work better in smaller agencies where there isn’t the middle management that have quotas to fill and go on power trips that undermine the agency as often it is the company CEO that has a deep understanding of disability but the middle management doesn’t have a lot of understanding of disability and the harm that they can create when they are constantly changing support workers and not actively working with there family to have a constant and stable care team. 

I have also been in stations where there has been a new Australian support worker working with me who wouldn’t drive over 40km an hour this isn’t safe driving it is dangerous to drive under the speed limit and we see that this is something that my agency wouldn’t address.  

I also see that there is training for the support workers but there is not a lot of training for the office staff and the communications staff, the training seems to be a surface-level understanding of disability and then,  whatever business qualification they need to have to do the role and we see that this is an issue because people want to be in this sector because it is a growing sector, however, if the office culture is toxic we see that it seeps out into the general culture as well in the organization, so if notes are kept and they implicate a support worker they might get changed, to suit the organization’s narrative that they are doing the right thing by the client, if there is a nature of cover-ups then a support worker will believe that its ok to cover up someone doing the wrong thing and we see that a constant phrase in disability support is this is the way we have always done it.

If someone is saying this and we see that a person isn’t open to a new way of doing things we see that people get frustrated and do one of two things they try to stay with the organization and get clients out and work towards their own business where they aren’t stifled by paperwork and legal arguments and policies that protect the company but put the client at risk due to them being across the board of the organization and we see that people, if they arunablele to do this, will leave the company or the industry completely and we see that this is where we are facing a shortage of well-trained support workers that understand disability at a complex level and are willing to change and understand that this is a dynamic and changing industry and that to keep up to industry standards they need to do constant training.

We also see that some offices have very little regard for client's privacy and despite a client being assured that their information will be kept private we see that often it won’t be and they don’t respect this and there have been situations where two support workers have been discussing a client without using their name but the CEO of the company that they were supported by knew who they were talking about and asked them to stop because they wweretalking in a small town about a client, and they feel that this was ok.

So there needs to be greater respect for a client's privacy as we see that there is great emphasis put on support worker's need for privacy but it minimizes the client's need for privacy as they say that information sharing needs to happen, I do agree with this but it needs to be done in a respectful way that doesn’t harm the client further as we see that there is a lot of trauma happening due to a lack of training in the NDIS and being a service provider for people with disabilities and we see that this is at the core of the culture as the culture in the originations comes from the head down and if they don’t have an understanding of disability then it can make life very difficult for the person who needs support as they aren’t treating the complexities of the culture well, and they don’t seem to get the needs of the clients to need to come first.

 

This is the way that it should be and the clients and their families shouldn’t have to fight for it and we see that this is the case because it has so much paperwork and the NDIS itself has become so top-heavy that people stop applying for it and it has made it harder to apply so much so that this will be my next post about how to apply for the NDIS as you do need to work with a professional agency to get anywhere.