The six types of support worker

If you have a learning disability or other support needs, your support worker is vital in enabling you to lead a good life. They should be the person who is not only helping you with day-to-day parts of your life but also supporting you to connect in to your community, develop and maintain friendships and relationships, helping you find work, pursue your hobbies and anything else that is important to you.

I’ve worked in social care for over 25 years and in all my interactions with support workers I reckon there’s largely only 6 different types that support workers can be boiled down in to.

This article isn’t to knock support workers either, it’s to celebrate those brilliant ones who fall into the category that I believe all support workers need to be.

What kind of support worker are you?

Let us know what you think…

1) The ‘I just do what I’m told’ support worker

This kind of support worker might turn up and enter into the spirit of things but when it comes to watching the clock they’re sticklers and will ‘encourage’ the people they are supporting to go home when it gets to 9pm (even going to the lengths of taking people off the dance floor mid tune).

They don’t seem aware (or won’t challenge) that making people leave before they want to is wrong. They’re probably a very nice person but just don’t get it. A product of poor training and poor leadership.

2) The frustrated support worker

These are the people who got into their work for the right reasons but find the system they work in constrains them. They know it’s not right to leave before people are ready to but they become part of that system by not challenging things. Or maybe they once knew that it was wrong to not give people choice about the way they spent their evening but the culture where they work has knocked any ideals that they out of them.

We know there are loads of great support workers out there working in settings where there just isn’t flexibility around shift patterns and know that they also find this incredibly frustrating.

They’re also probably the product of a team culture where the manager isn’t providing enough leadership or is being constrained by senior management. Work-life for these people is really difficult, they know one thing and have to do another.

3) The ‘square peg in a round hole’ support worker

These are the kind of person who knows the culture they are working in isn’t right and they stick to their guns and challenge their colleagues to do the right thing at every team meeting. They’ll soon become quite unpopular and labelled as a maverick. For their own good, they ought to try and find a more positive setting to work in as they probably won’t last very long and their very presence on the team may become unbearable.

Of course, they may be just the sort of leadership the team is looking for and be that person who can support a manager to introduce a positive culture and enable great things to happen. That’s if their manager and colleagues are open-minded to changing things.

4) The support worker who’d rather be elsewhere

We can also caricature another kind of support worker that can be spotted at disability club nights, community groups, cafes etc and it doesn’t take a lot to find them. They are generally sitting at the side immersed in their mobile phone and watching the clock for when it’s time to go home.

These are people who perhaps need to be asking themselves why they are in the work at all, and probably come from a team where there is again poor leadership from management. Or maybe they just don’t get any support or training from their manager and have therefore totally lost sight of what their work is about. They certainly can’t find their work a fulfilling thing.

This kind of support worker is incredibly powerful though, they deny people choices and also suck the life out of any event with their infectious lack of enthusiasm.

This kind of support worker shouldn’t be confused with the respectful and brilliant kind of worker who asks someone how they would like to be supported: would they like them to dance with them or give them some space while they dance with their mates? They instinctively know the empowering way to work in this kind of situation. They’re not too hard to spot though, they won’t be on their phone, they’ll be chatting to somebody else. They are exactly like the ‘Party Starter’ in their attitude to their work.

And that brings me to the ‘party starter’, what I see as the best kind of support worker and one who is being supported in their work to support people to lead a great life in a great culture…

5) The party starter support worker

These are the best kind of support workers, the kind that adds hugely to any event. They’re there in the moment to do whatever it takes to make sure the person they are supporting is going to have a great time. They don’t look at their mobile phones, they’re there in the moment dedicated to the sole purpose of ensuring that the person they’re supporting has a great time and they also take time to find out how someone wants to spend their evening.

These are the support workers who are full of energy and love their work, they support people to get up dancing and are there until it’s time to go and offer that choice to the person they’re supporting. If they’re supporting someone to attend a group, they’re there supporting that person to get to know other people, maybe helping the to arrange to meet for a cup of tea and the general sort of natural stuff that makes friendships and communities tick. They see making connections as a vitally important part of their job.

Typically, they’re also supported by a great manager who leads by example and creates a positive culture in the team, and consequently, staff are happy to go the extra mile in their work and totally get what the point of their job is.

6) The unknown support worker

I can’t write much about these as they’re never there. We know they must exist but their existence also remains something of a mystery. They’re the ones supporting the people who are never at events or don’t get involved in their local communities. They never tell us why they won’t support people to stay up late but they too hold an awful lot of power, just through not doing anything.

What do they do? What and how do they think? We’d love to know.

Supporting real choice and a good life

Our charity Stay Up Late is not about staying up late at all! It’s about enabling choice and deciding what time you want to go to bed. If you don’t get to make those sorts of choices in your life then you’re probably not being supported well in other areas. Things like your friendships, finding love, finding a job and being supported to live a good life. That’s what it’s all about being able to live a good life.

To be able to do that well you need a great support worker who totally understands the importance of their role.