Diffrence between good and bad support

 This seems to be a topic I constantly come back to as it is the backbone of the NDIS, and I am updating the blog as I learn more about support and I am not learning about it from a book or other “academic” sources. I am living it. So I am judging it by my own lived experience and this seems to be a good thing due to the fact that there is a definite difference between good and bad support and to go even further good and bad support workers.

To put it in perspective basically those who understand the assignment at a deep level and for those who it is just a job, I see that some people have a unique combination of both of these, being that they understand the job is more than taking people out for coffees and are able to bog in and get the hard yards done so getting the house work done, getting a person into a good routine, keeping them in touch with family, friends and helping them to navigate these relationships with others and in a respectful ways.

We also see that the general population need to be able to understand what direct support is and that it’s  hard work and to understand the difference in what types of support are needed vs when a person becomes a direct care giver as there is a subtle but distinct difference due to the validity of duties and what one is able to do vs what a person can’t do and this is where a support worker needs to have great problem solving skills, as well as professional boundaries but being able to navigate life with a person and find that balance between being professional and friendly and not becoming friends with the clients as this can set them back and if you move on to a better paying job or a job that suits you better we see that this could be a massive issue if a person doesn’t have a great support network due to the fact that people need to have friendships and be able to work with them and the persons “informal” support network needs to be able to accept that the person has a couple of thing’s:

·        They have a disability as this might not be easily apparent to everyone who meets them, and it might come as a shock to them as they might not want to disclose their disability to people.

·       They have a NDIS or care package as it does transition to aged care when you hit 65 and this does scare me as a disability doesn’t go away when you age in fact it’s going to get worse.

·       That they have a support team and this I know can take a long time to accept my parents took about a year to accept them and their role in my life due to several factor’s.

o    They didn’t like strangers  post covid era in Australia coming into the house.

o   Several support workers had very strange ideas about what constituted

§  Being on time so would be super early or supper late.

§  Would not even speak to them and wouldn’t take the time to have a relationship  with them despite me rebuilding my life in the family home.

§  They would take advantage of my mental state and  would get upset when I didn’t do what they wanted and they to a financial hit.

§  They didn’t get the family values.

This was a tricky thing to navigate until we found my current Supported independent living situation and even that has been difficult to navigate due to.

·       Support worker’s not understanding my needs

·       Support staff being told I  don’t need help and saw me struggle because they didn’t know how to support me.

·       Having support staff that where lazy and favouring one client over the other

·       Having my house mate cause conflict in the house to try to get me thrown out of the house due to jealously issues.

·       Having a house mate that doesn’t want to share a support worker and thinks people are going to leave her.

·       Having a management team until recently I felt that I couldn’t go to because of the power imbalance.

·       Having a support worker that didn’t know how to cook or realize that she was responsible for coordination of cleaning and having the realtor complain about how the house was being kept.

·       Having management try to pull me away from family support and would serve support with a side of moral judgment.

·       Having a house that doesn’t allow other agencies in the house to even go to the toilet.

·       Having support workers that thought it was ok to bring untrained pets into the house.

They then wondered why I was getting upset and frustrated when I was taking about it to family and friends as they had been promised that I  would have support and guidance, but what I got was scraps and an anxiety disorder from the assumptions about me.  Don’t get me wrong  I now have a brilliant team but for a while both last year and this year we had some really bad support, they weren’t bad people they where bad at there jobs so this is where understanding the job really comes into it so understanding that people with disabilities in home are going to need help with

·       House work

·       Meal planning/ cooking

·       Laundry

·       Keeping healthy relationships  

·       Understanding relationships

·       Budgeting

·       Budgeting of energy

·       Helping with personal care

This is where the difference between a direct care giver and a support worker comes in to it so a person who uses a mobility device might need help with.

·       Transferring from a bed to a wheelchair,

·       Help with personal care so you could be showering them

·       Helping with toileting

As well as the basics of support and this isn’t an easy job because you are then also helping them to navigate life so that might be helping them to understand appropriate behaviours around relationships, food choose, starting study, work or getting and keeping a job, for my support team it could be editing and proofreading my work so I don’t offend people or put my support package at risk but we see that people do need to speak up because an undertrained support worker will learn and being willing to learn the skills needed to do the job and often if a person is in house and a client needs down time they will have time on there hands to study but study isn’t a requirement of the job, and I am a big believer that it should be and lived experience should be considered but are you able to be a support worker if you have neurodivergence or have a disability yourself I do honestly question that as wouldn’t it be better to be working a peer support worker, basically a person who is able to help a person with the same neurodivergence as yourself to be able to get a job or to study and challenge there own assumptions about what you can do. I am not saying that people can’t be a support worker if they are neurodivergent but it would take an extra emotional toll on the person.

We also see that people need to be aware that there is a difference between bad support and a bad support worker, what is bad support for one person is going to be what another person needs and this is where we have talked about active and passive support and active support the person does it with the client and passive support the client does it for themselves or  the support worker does it for them, both are needed and sometimes there is a very tricky balance of both due to a persons needs as NDIS doesn’t work on a persons disability but the functional impact of there disability, more so.

This is why a person with Adhd caused by a brain injury who isn’t able to  live independently might get a package vs a person who just has ADHD and it’s the only neurodivergence they have might not get a package as the person with brain damage is going to need extra help but the person with ADHD with peer support, life coaching, or medication or a combination of both is able to live independently.

I know one of my current team has ADHD and is my team manager so it works really well for her having the novelty of support work as she has a routine but within the shifts she doesn’t know what she will be needing to do and this is where knowing a persons needs becomes critical.

So lets move onto what is a bad support worker as there is a difference between a badly trained support worker that is willing to learn and a bad support worker who isn’t suited for the job and I need to be very clear hear that I  am not talking about one worker her as I  have had several that I would consider bad workers. But all of them,

·       Didn’t dress for the role, so would turn up in very inappropriate attire or hair colours for the job

·       Thought they could dictate to my family what was good for me

·       Would abuse me when they thought I was wrong

·       Would turn up to a shift in loud shoes and not get a hint when I bought them slippers.

·       Would encourage me to invade my house mates space.

·       Would encourage me to do study I wasn’t able to do because they would be able to sit with me and gain extra money

·       Saw me having to move back home as a bad thing and were more worried about there back pocket vs my health

·       Would cook the same thing 5 nights a week and wonder why I wasn’t eating dinner

·       Had to be reminded to help me with house work.

·       Would get upset if I asked for help and asked her to do it my way

This is what I consider a bad support worker and it’s more prevalent than one would expect as well and this is to me very sad due to the fact that people with disabilities are more at risk of abuse and neglect due to the nature of there disabilities but they shouldn’t have to feel scared in there own home and this has happened but we are starting to see a change and this is why I am a big believer in trust but verify as some people with disabilities do like to attention seek but we need to remember that attention seeking is a  behaviour and all behaviours are a form of communication so what is a person trying to communicate with them when they are trying to create drama or be in the centre of the drama.

So, a good support worker would shut this down and warn other staff a bad support worker would get involved and make the drama worse.

But dear reader what is your thoughts on what is a good and a bad support worker.