Care Work

Is not easy. Its not just playing or cleaning. People can have multiple problems everything from major physical disability to profound learning difficulties and sometimes combinations of both. 

There has recently been a trial in Castlebar concerning care assistants who were charged with abusing some of the people in their charge. I don't want to talk about them or the trial, which by the way is finished, but I do want to explain a little about care work.

I worked in a care home for about five years and I loved it. I loved the residents they were wonderful people and yes I had favourites we all did, but in those five years I never saw a resident ill treated or one resident treated more favourably than another. Its really not that kind of work. 

You get to know the residents and much of the work is housework which has to be done around and in between times with each client.

A lot of the work is fun and very emotionally rewarding its a great pleasure to know you are helping someone you have grown to like and if some are incontinent that is not as difficult as maybe in years gone by it used to be, everything is disposable and we all wear gloves and protective clothing. Not overalls and not all the time its not that kind of environment.

It is very hard work, there's some quite heavy lifting or maneuvering and a lot of bending, Its very tiring, long days, although, except for training I almost always did night work, and it has to be said there are times when regardless of which shift you are on things happen that would try the patience of a saint.

Under no circumstances are staff allowed to get physical or aggressive and yet its sometimes very difficult to maintain the same calm, friendly attitude when a client is behaving very badly. 

My worst experience was with client A a man of about forty with quite severe learning difficulties but no physical disabilities. A could be quite temperamental and bad tempered. He had reasonable speech but he couldn't add or subtract and didn't know the difference between one penny and one pound. 

One evening at about 9 pm A worked himself into a temper I'm not sure why he was angry there doesn't have to be a reason or maybe there is and its a sense of frustration. A dimly understood knowledge that he had little or no choice in his life.

This particular evening A stomped into the dining room and stood, and stood. Apart from putting the other five clients to bed as they each grew tired I virtually stopped all real work and pretended to be busy in the kitchen which was right next door to the dining room, every now and then I would call to A to come and get a cup of tea. He didn't.

Until 3 am when he marched out of the dining room hugged me and went to bed. 

I was on my own with five other severely disabled people who by then had been in bed for about three hours.

All the work had to be done it couldn't be left for the day staff they would be busy and who knew what crisis they might have to deal with.

I didn't get angry but I did get worried. The difference between night and day shift is the number of staff on duty. There was one other carer in another 'house' and that was it had I been attacked I would have been hurt, but I couldn't call for help for a situation that lasted six hours and no one should have forced A to go to bed he was an adult if he wanted to watch tv or stand in the dining room all night that was and should be up to him.

Care workers are all ordinary people and sometimes people do get angry including clients. Its very easy to take a situation personally and to think in terms of like and dislike. As I've said we all had our favourites but that didn't interfere with the work or show in our treatment of clients.

Its hard work and long hours, a twelve hour shift is or was about the average. In those hours moods and frustrations happen, you just have to hang on or call for someone else to help or take over. Maybe sometimes some of us lose control for a second. Most often its not deliberate and surely if someone has been pushed too far a split second reaction with no harm done is understandable.

If however the action is violent and premeditated whoever is responsible for such an act should be instantly dismissed, banned from care work for life and depending on the offence possibly face criminal charges

Don't ever think care work is all cleaning that's kind of the least important bit of it. Care work is about caring for people at the most basic human level whilst maintaining and encouraging clients to learn to behave, to do everyday things and to feel at home in a place that should be but never can be their home. 

Update! 
I should have said that all staff have the means to get help if it should be necessary. While A was going off on one in the dining room I was in the kitchen which true enough is next door to the dining room and also where the emergency phone just happens to be...And I had my own mobile phone in my pocket just in case.

Never lose sight of your own vulnerability but don't turn a home into a prison either.