Making yourself redundant!

As I mentioned in a previous post, last year brought many changes to many households across the world, and ours was no exception. For the last 20 odd years I have been working with children in various capacities and while I absolutely love working with children, I decided that I needed a change in career. So I took the leap into the disability sector as a support worked. And between you and me, I'm loving my new role.

When I first started, the general manager said something to me that I've really taken on board ..... as a support worker, you need to make yourself redundant when working with clients, and it's so true.

My goal as a support worker is to assist individuals, regardless of what their disability is, to become as independent as possible and to do that, I have to make myself redundant to them. I need to assist an individual to learn new skills to the point that they don't need my assistance any more. Then once they've mastered a new skill, we work on another skill or another area until I'm redundant and so on.

This is what all support workers should be doing. Some individuals will need more support than others, but ultimately the support worker needs to make themselves redundant! Assist your client with developing strengths and learning new skills, to the point that the client no longer requires your support.

It's the same with both of my little superheroes, we want them both to become as independent as possible and to do that we need to make ourselves redundant when they are learning new skills. As their parents, Daddy superhero and I will always be in the background for both little superheroes to provide support and unconditional love, but we're constantly building on their strengths and developing new skills so that they're not completely dependant on us later in life. And if for some reason later in life, the little superheroes are still dependant on us, we'll be both be there for them.

Oh and excuse the dodgy pic, I went playground exploring on one of my shifts with a client and just had to have a go on the slide 🤪🤪