Support work a clients perspective

 

So, I am hard on care workers and people who don’t know me may say a little two hard, but this comes from a place where I have had the good the bad, the ugly and criminal in support. I didn’t always have support or even identify as disabled and that is due to my amazing family and parents.

I knew I was different but to me disabled was the kids in the wheelchairs that you only saw at the show or at the events put on for them, now I am attending them, they aren’t just for high support needs but for everyone with a disability and so much about what we know about disability has changed, and we now have much more education around disability and what it means to be disabled and that is a good thing.

We also have the NDIS that meant care went from being highly specialized needing high level skills to just needing a ceritifcate 3 in support, basically if you could cook, clean, drive a car and learn you could do the job and that is amazing as there are many highly skilled young support workers, but it also means that when you need a job due to demand it’s one of the easiest ones to get and many people see support workers out with a client and only see the drives and the walks they don’t see managing budgets, meltdowns and jealousy.

The eating safe foods and managing care resistance, but I think, that we can learn a lot form good care workers and I have seen both sides as I used to work in community pharmacy as a pharmacy assistant, and I have also worked in peer support.

But what do I see as a good care worker and what would I recommend the skills they need, as I say hold onto them as well.

Well there is the basics like good communication skills, being able to emotionally regulate,  able to drive and then there is disability specific ones like showering, hoisting, feeding and more discrete ones being how to redirect a client, running craft and day groups, understanding different perspectives.

 

So where do we get these skills, well some are life skills that are basic ones but some can’t be taught like emotional regulation as dealing with big unregulated emotions and difficult and challenging behaviours, not a skill that can be taught but regulation and that means being focused and professional’s.