Situational awareness in support and care

 Hey all so I put this on my stub stack but it's to important to forget about given that it's something that we really do need education and training on in support and a  refresher around how important it is to have boundaries and situational awareness to prevent harm in both sides as harm prevention is so much better that harm minimization and how do you do that is by having situational awareness and boundaries and its not hard to do respectfully when you have confidence in yourself and what you're doing but this is where people seem to go wrong around support and the role of a support worker in what they are able to do and there is so much of a grey area as well that one of the most dangerous phrases in support is to say, That's not my job or I will leave that for the others. This just leads to resentment in the care team and the person not getting the care the need, and that is why it's the most dangerous phrase in support. 

I have posted over on Tic toc about support workers who have no situational awareness, so this is why I am so passionate about what seems to be a first-world issue.

The first one is basic respect, that this is my home and that I need to exist in a world where even as I am writing is loud and painful, some is my fault due to my diet and level of Caffeine intake, but some is just me and I didn’t have the words for it until a couple of year’s ago.

But why is situational awareness in support so critical, well there is a couple of reasons, respect is Boundaries, this is a job you can be friends with a client but at the end of the day it’s a job and all jobs have boundaries and responsibilities that need to be done to ensure health, sanitation and wellbeing. On both sides and no bones about it.  At the end of the day, it come back to basic respect, if you can’t respect other workers time, and energy, and simple requests from clients and do the basics of your Job I would question if this is the right job for you.  My home is not a drop in centre where you have the right to drop in and talk to an worker taking away support time, from me a higher functioning person when I have a daily fight to get basic support, and understanding what your job really is, seems to be difficult for some people when working in Sil houses, I get that I am living with other people and need to share but at sometimes I do need a bit of support to get stuff done or do need that space to get stuff done and that is the tight rope that you walk in support.

The other thing is if a person is in the family home by necessity you are going to have to have a relationship with the family and I have had support workers stand in the middle of my family home when I was living there and being incredibly rude to my parents and making me not trust them as they saw me as the cash cow and thought as I was a vulnerable adult that they could get away with it, thankfully I saw the light and it has taken a lot of time and effort to heal from this,  and this is the warning signs of a badly trained support worker or a person who needs to do  an ethics Couse as it all comes back to training and this is why I am pro registration for support staff not all NDIS workers but those who directly deliver support,

 I also want to talk about an incident on  Tic toc where a support worker was describing what happens in a group home and I jumped into the comments section and the response was considered and I have struck up a friendship with this worker but frequently they forget they are the experts in care the experts in disability are those who have gone through the clinical process to get diagnosed, I don’t support self-diagnosis, I understand and have people in my personal life that can’t access diagnosis but don’t say they have it in public.

So again, they have the situational awareness to respect the disability community in not saying that they have the condition when they haven’t gone through the diagnostic testing to see if they have it.  I have had support workers try to pull me into the politics of their work place and others who in a morning shift are incredibly loud and use there own medical conditions as out right excuses, to not do their job, this person has been “ inspired” by my study to enrol in a nursing course despite having a bad back and thinks she can go strait to community nursing, and get RPL out of the course but they have stopped that in all courses due to people not understanding the theory of why there is a process, and the nursing in the community is very different to support, some nurses do support but generally community nursing is a lot more intense then support.

They also smoke despite it being outside they leave buts in thickening tins and I was talking to a support worker around this and she was saying one day it started smoking and as an ex-smoker it made her feel sick, also disability accommodation comes under a health facility so should they be smoking on the grounds anyway.

But the big thing people don’t realise about support is that it’s not about you and it’s emotionally draining, but respect is a huge part of it, and people don’t seem to know the difference between respect and entitlement in this day and age, I even struggle with this as well, but respect is seeing things from others point of view, if you need to do a hand over keeping the conversation to a hand over and not all the things that are in your life preventing others from engaging with housemates and others due to not wanting to go upstairs’ and entitlement is horse trading shifts and not understanding or even getting support from the office to change, or even and I have had this happen gossiping while doing personal care that is a two on one, this is so wrong as then it leads to the question of if they are gossiping about others in my house what are they saying about me, and privacy on both sides is so important as well, but chose and control is something that is getting taken away from us and we need to see that it is the bed rock of support, and the NDIS, and again situational awareness is important to this as well,

The other thing is how you dress and I don’t want to see your bits hanging out or even a pride flag I to be honest don’t care about who you love but if your going to shove it down my throat well I am out, and will engage only when needed, yes you do you but it’s a job not a pride march and showing your support is great but not shoving it down my  throat  is important.

Then I really don’t want to know what is going on in your personal life, unless I ask so why do I have to listen to all of your drama when I didn’t ask to and this again goes to a lack of awareness around boundaries,

If  your company or if your independent you need to follow a clients wishes and it might be awkward if you’re wearing a crop top and short shorts on a Sunday when your asked to take a client to church and support them and this is a perfectly acceptable community engagement and this is where dressing to a professional standard of Jeans a plan or character T shirt that isn’t offensive and a hoddie is ok or the uniform given to you by your agency. But spare me the drama of the uniform debate when we are still  having our rights taken away and the NDIS is being striped to the core and support workers roles are being taken away making it hard to navigate a complex system but the question is if we get the navigators who are part of the NDIS when planners and LAC can’t even read the reports that can cost hundreds to get well who  are they going to be value for money or is it a tactic to just make us give up and accept what we get and not get upset, when all the interactions I have had with LAC have been ineffective to say the least.

So again situational awareness and boundaries are critical to support and yes in home support its difficult and another thing I want to address is  group chats I learnt that a previous agency had a group chat around where it was ok to go to the loo or to accept a drink not because of boundaries or ethics but because of hygiene and this is not ok as one of the key roles of support workers is help with house hold tasks and so it would be your responsibility to  get the client to a point where it’s safe to have the drink or use the toilet, but the privacy issue blows my mind if you’re not using end to end encryption services but even them with a person with the right skills can get the messages up, but again situational awareness.

The other thing that people seem to have known awareness over is saying that isn’t my job when in fact if its reasonable and necessary then it in fact t is your job to do the cleaning, the cooking and personal care, if there are things for legal or insurance reasons they you need to support the person to access the services they need such as podiatry or getting medications packed, or a cleaning service.

Look I get that support isn’t easy but it’s a job dealing with the most vulnerable people, and some have been abused by the very people they thought they could trust. So, with that in mind let’s start the debate around boundaries, in support and I have had workers say you learn very quickly who you can share your personal life with and who will use it against you.