Written by Tammy Milne – PDA TAS Director
Support workers are NOT you friends. However, treating them as such is a trap that many people with disabilities find themselves in.
Often people with disabilities spend more time with their support workers than they do with family and friends. Support workers are there on the days that you just need to talk. They see us at our worst. They see everything. They are privileged to the most personal information about us. They are there when we make phone calls. They are in our homes all the time.
So how do we draw the line in the sand? How do we separate the worker from the friendship?
Is it our responsibility as participants to make sure we are ‘absolutely professional’ in our undertakings with support workers or is it the responsibility of the support workers themselves? Or does responsibility to set the standard lie with the companies for whom they work?
When is the line crossed?
You have a support worker’s phone number so you can message them. They go to Coles, and you have forgotten to ask them to get something. Sounds very reasonable to be able to contact them in this case.
What about Facebook or other social media platforms? You go to a show, a play or the movies together, so should you have the ability to tag the support worker? Probably not. They are paid to accompany you on an outing. They are NOT your friends.
The real danger here is, as described by support companies as ‘grooming’, that some of us participants are more vulnerable than others and the risk of grooming is real. I once heard about a participant being taken to a support worker’s house to buy a gaming console. That really set off alarm bells for me.
But then again, if a support worker had something for sale that I wanted to buy, isn’t it reasonable that I can buy it? After all it’s on the open market. It gets messy when we look at a participant’s capacity. Are they able to make resonable decisions or are they able to be coerced?
But does a one size fit all approach work when it comes to rules and professionalism guidelines? Should we always err on the side of the most stringent rules around the separation of work and friendships? This is where the potential for power imbalance needs to be really taken into consideration. Who in the relationship has the most power?
We can not label all people with disabilities as incapable of maintaining a healthy boundary with support workers, but loneliness and isolation can make the most astute of us vulnerable.
It’s food for thought! These people are the most important people in our lives, so of course we are going to bond with some of them more than others. If they were all standoffish and resolutely ‘professional’, would our lives then be that little bit less.
This also speaks to the isolation of people with disabilities, how we are excluded from friendships and why we rely on friendships with our support workers. Our needs for access make it more difficult to build relationships with those that do not have disabilities. Our differences can make others feel unsure of us, sometimes even fearful of us, making them uncertain or uncomfortable about how to simply be with us. Our society has made us different, we can be viewed with mistrust and from this our isolation and loneliness is compounded.
I have had some of the most wonderful, supportive support workers come and go in my life. Some I have developed a strong bond with. They are more like family than support workers. It is my hope that they have valued the trust and faith I have put into their care and friendship.
Life is forever moving forward and changing, and it is inevitable that some of those relationships had to end. Distance and other opportunities has seen my most loved support workers leave my life. And there in lays the issue “most loved”! I am able to separate our relationship as transient, however when we are together they are the most importantly people in my life. Sharing my highs and lows.
My capacity to separate them as workers means I have not been emotionally harmed by the loss. It is sad, but we all move forward to the next big thing. It also speaks to the quality of the support worker and their understanding that even though they are well loved, we all move on, and it has always been with happiness for the future that our relationships have ended.
I would like to thank the amazing support workers that have come and gone in my life and made it worth living. Yes, your friendships have been immeasurable to get me the hard times. Thank you Wendy, Michelle, Trenton and a host of supporting cast support workers that have made my life better. I won’t name my current support staff who also mean so much to me (the company they may work for might get antsy).
Not all support workers are created equally though, and some are just meant to be more than support workers and for a time they are best friends.
