Disablity and manipulation a difficult conversations we need to have.
This is going to be a difficult post to write, and I know it
will generate a lot of discussion about manipulation, but we need to be honest
it happens to everyone and you know that you are being manipulated. However the question we need to ask here is
what happens if you have a disability and it’s the only way to get what you
want and have care workers that don’t realise you are able to do it.
So the first thing we need to get out of the way is that
some people with a disability have been raised in healthier environments than
others and this means that they know healthy ways to get there needs to be met, in
others it’s a massive issue as they have lived in environments that are not so
healthy and are trauma-inducing. But
what happens when this manipulation turns into a coping mechanism the results
aren’t pretty as it takes a team of people to turn it around and this is where
in the NDIS a very controversial thing comes into play – restrictive practices
and we see that people need to be aware that they do exist for a reason and
that if they can be used in a positive way we see that people can grow
with it to the point that they change and the restrictive practices aren’t
needed any more.
But we need to be aware that someone who has a mental
disability can generally tell the difference between right and wrong but it’s
at what level as example we see that say a child if parented correctly knows to
wait their turn and to ask for what they need and this would result in a yes or
no answer or being able to talk about why. But we see that they still have the
ability to “pester power” their way into getting what they want and this is
what I am talking about, in people with disabilities because if
they are used to using manipulation as a tool we see that they are going to try
to keep using it, and this then becomes an art form so you don’t know if the
person is turning on the tears or if they genuinely are in emotional pain so
this is where it’s important to know the person’s history and their basic care
needs and if they have gone through several agencies because they
know that due to privacy you can’t ask a person there previous history with a
care agency and I will admit that there are agencies that are better than
others and this becomes an issue at times but at times a person will go through
several agencies without their being anything fundamentally wrong with the
agency and we see that this makes people very aware when a person changes
agencies.
However we need to be aware of some situations that can
cause someone to manipulate a caregiver and these are all situations where the
person is aware of it and aware that they are master of it and that they have
turned it into situations that can cause danger to others very quickly such as not passing on messages if they are in
a group home situation or not passing on information that they have been
trusted to in the past, lying about others or even not respecting others
belongings and making it look like others have done it or they have just got
used to being a person who gets one on one support and they aren’t told about a
person coming into the house and they start “acting out” because they then realize that not all the attention is going to be on them all the
time and that they have to share.
I am being very general in this situation due to the fact
that these are all real stories that have been given to me as responses to my
content and one being that this has become so normalised it is becoming harder
for support workers to stop and let me be clear that it’s not something that a
person isn’t aware that they are doing it’s when a person is aware that they
are doing it and making it very difficult for the people who are around them to
receive proper support and feel safe in what is their home environment and we
see that this can create issues if not addressed why the person feels that they
can manipulate the person to their own advantage and that they need to get an
outside advocate in to be able to help deal with the fall out so, the people
who can help turn this behaviours around are, positive behaviour support specialists,
trauma specialists, and specialist support workers, as well as Occupational therapists,
and family and friends that have been taught how to deal with the person when
they are trying to manipulate the situation.
It’s something that I have just scratched the iceberg on but it’s something
that we need to be aware of that happens in the disability community and that
it happens far too often too good support workers and this burns them out.
I need to make the distinction between a person manipulating
the situation so things like lying about doing things getting support workers
to do things that the person can do, and doing destructive things to get
attention, these are all very different from a person using reasonable choose
and control to change a provider or to escalate a home environment and this is
why we need to talk about the manipulation that supports workers face and the
gaslighting that happens in the industry due to the lack of training that
supports workers get in bigger agencies.
However, I know that more support agencies are putting one or
two people in a care team to prevent this type of behavior and prevent support
workers or clients from playing off each other and not treating each other with
respect as support is a female-dominated industry and we do need more male
support workers that are willing to work with female clients in a group setting
to be able to call people out about what they are doing as this is the only way
to prevent this type of behavior to call it out and to redirect the person
when they get positive attention or want attention to do something that can gain positive attention and to not have so little in their lives we see that
people can have more than just a support worker to focus on.
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