HASI support, on the front line

Being a HASI (Housing and Accommodation Support Initiative) worker with Mission Australia is sometimes challenging, usually fulfilling, and often rewarding. Besides all the regular duties of driving people to appointments, taking them shopping, assisting with budgeting, and linking them into social, vocational or educational activities, working with people with mental health problems calls for us to use all our skills as community services workers.

An essential part of our job is building a rapport, while maintaining professional boundaries, with our clients so they welcome our inclusion in their lives and are open to rehabilitation options and suggestions we can offer to improve their quality of life.

I have a client who does not manage her personal hygiene very well and rarely showers or washes her hair to the point that the back of her hair was one huge tangled dreadlock. She complained that she could no longer tie her hair in a pony tail so I gently asked if she would like me to wash it for her and try to get the knot out. Surprisingly she said yes so I found some conditioner amongst the cobwebs in her shower and went to work. At first I thought her locks were beyond salvation and the whole lot would just have to be cut off - this would have left a huge bald spot over half her head - but I persevered and 40 minutes later had completely teased out the tangle.

We were both pleased with the result. However for me the most rewarding aspect of this exercise was that as I was working I asked her how long it had been since someone washed her hair for her, thinking she would cite her childhood. Very sadly she said “never”. She then went on to tell me of her tragic past of being removed from an abusive household as a baby, which was followed by a life of foster homes and institutions, where she suffered monumental neglect, assaults and abuse of every kind. She first tried to commit suicide when she was just eight years old, and spent many years in a straight jacket.

I was moved that she would confide this to me and realised the simple act showing care had allowed her to share these intimacies.