Wendy
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Wendy immigrated to Australia from Asia. She has been a support worker in the disability sector here for almost 20 years.
Wendy told the Royal Commission her former employer dismissed her when she made enquiries relating to the death of a client. She believes the death was caused by her employer’s negligence.
Wendy requested a conciliation process.
‘The result of it was: I was not authorised by the participants, I therefore have no right to enquire about what was going on to them; and, I was no longer working in the house … I have no need to know more about what will be happening in the group home. The case was thus closed.’
Wendy had worked mainly with people who have cognitive disability and are non-verbal and she shared some observations with the Royal Commission.
Wendy believes the quality of the support workers is the ‘most decisive element in running a good service’. She also says trusted support workers should be involved in the decision-making surrounding a person’s care.
She says ‘it is important for medical staff to make the right diagnosis and provide the right treatment’, but it is the support worker who works closely with a person and observes them over a long period of time.
Wendy doesn’t know how doctors deal with a non-verbal patient ‘with no adequate and updated information,’ especially if the patient lives alone.
Wendy also believes the criteria for being a support worker needs to be raised. Poorly trained workers ‘will do harm to participants’. She believes the support worker’s job is ‘to identify different issues [and] collect specific or general data [about the person] in order for doctors and specialists to make effective decisions’. ‘At the moment the job is far from being satisfactory,’ she said.
Regular meetings between ‘support staff, medical staff, and management staff to exchange information’ would give ‘real benefit to the participant,’ Wendy said. ‘At the moment, the three groups of staff work separately, they don’t even know each other.’
Wendy would also like to see the supervision and complaints system improved.
She has witnessed support workers provide doctors with incorrect information about a participant so they will prescribe medications to make the participant ‘quiet’.
She also has seen support staff show a ‘different face’ to a client in front of other people, then threaten the client about what they will do ‘when it is only me and you’.
Wendy has made formal complaints about abuse and about the incident resulting in a client’s death. The outcome in both cases, she says, was unsatisfactory.
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.