Government House in Melbourne

He thought I might like to go with him instead of taking a support worker and I said yes – my big chance for afternoon tea at Government House! We were all dressed up ready to go and the manager from the organisation arrived. I opened the door to her. She was dressed up too, but did not make eye contact with me at all. As she came in she ignored me and walked past me into the kitchen and started talking to my partner. I thought she was a bit rude but that was all. Suddenly she said to me in quite a bossy way, ‘I want a cup of tea before we go’. I said ‘yes’. There was a brief eyebrows raised moment between my partner and I that she did not see – and we were communicating that we knew she was assuming that I was a support worker. Not only that, but that she had a right to boss me, his support worker around as if I were a menial servant.

Somehow we communicated to each other that we had decided to play along for a while. I got the cup of tea and put his jacket and scarf on him, got his wallet, medication etc and went out to the driveway with him to assist him into our accessible van. She was still ignoring me and talking to him as if I didn’t exist. Just before I pushed his wheelchair up the ramp of the van I decided to kiss and hug him – which I often do at this point. I thought ‘why should I censor my behaviour because of this woman?’ What I hadn’t realised was how shocked she would be – she just stared at me in stunned disbelief. John just smiled at her and said ‘Julia is my partner!’. We really enjoyed that moment, and still laugh about it.

There were so many assumptions here and I discover in talking to support workers they quite often get the ‘butler’ treatment! I wonder how service users experience others deciding what their support worker will do? Here are some of the assumptions:

• It is ok to order someone else’s support worker around without checking with the service user first.
• Support workers are not worthy of polite treatment and need to be ordered to do things.
• The support worker is available to do work for people other than the person they work for.
• The service user does not have a role in deciding how others interact with their support workers.

Whose Support Worker Are You? is a post from: Not Just Work

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