Vital People - A Career in Caregiving at DDA

Ratnam Mathur is one of our valued group home managers who, like many staff at DDA, found a calling that pulled them off a defined path and into a career that meant so much more than money and fancy titles.  

 

TRANSCRIPT

Vital People – A Career in Caregiving at DDA

 

00:10

Welcome back to DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I am your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Today we're talking about caregiving as a profession. To me, it's a profession that we as a society often take advantage of. We don't look at it as one of those jobs that you shoot for necessarily. It doesn't have the cache of doctor, lawyer, CEO, or what have you. But these jobs are vital, not just to the people DDA supports. They don't always come with the highest wage or even respect, which is wrong in my mind.

 

00:39

caregivers are vital to everyone in the literal world. At some point in our lives, if not now, at some point we will all need care, whether it's at a home because of illness or injury or a seniors home or a group home like the ones DDA operates, we are all going to be touched by this need and this profession. So I wanted to shine a light on one of the dedicated employees here at DDA and talk about who they are and what they do and why.

 

01:04

Joining me today is Ratnam Madhur. She is a long time employee of DDA and manages our Curzon Group Home that five people with developmental disabilities call home. Many of the clients we support in our 19 homes in Vancouver and Richmond have been with us for decades. I mean, they literally become family. So Ratnam, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Evan. Thank you for inviting me. So just right off the top here, what got you started in this line of work?

 

01:32

Prior to coming to Vancouver, I taught in a school in Germany that had many kids from refugee families. They were from Albania, Romania, Turkey, and other European countries. Some kids were separated from their parents and were waiting for their arrival. A social worker was assisting the kids in their different needs. These kids were going...

 

01:59

through struggles to adjust a new culture in their relationship to other students. In their learning and doing homework, it was obvious to me that their families too were going through difficulties at home. Trying to cope with their status as a refugee, I spent time with kids and listened to their stories. I did not speak German, nor they spoke English, but working with some very simple words.

 

02:27

in English and German, and with the help of a social worker, we made enough connection to understand what was going on in their lives. These kids needed a lot of help to cope with pressures of studies and at school, as well as in dealing with their trauma and mental health challenges. It was challenging for me to win their trust and to create a helpful environment.

 

02:55

so that I could help them in their studies and sometimes their families at home as well. This first-hand experience for about three years gave me a unique perspective on empathy and value of community service. So when we moved to Vancouver in 2003,

 

03:18

I wanted to continue in this field at schools as special needs teacher, but my work permit did not allow me. So how come the work permit wouldn't allow you to be a special needs teacher? Because I was on NAFTA, I have a US passport, and they don't allow to work, the spouse was not allowed to work with kids and schools. So much so that I could not even take the courses. Really? Yeah. So take me, so you're in Germany at this point.

 

03:47

And you're helping kids with, no they were developmentally disabled? No, no, actually they called those schools as international schools and mostly that international is refugee kids from all.

 

04:04

over neighborhood countries. What sort of challenges did you face there with, like, I mean, obviously there was some language difficulty. Absolutely. They are also learning German, and you cannot survive there without learning Deutsch. So that was it. And you know, kids are really good at picking up the language. That was not an issue. The issue was the all struggle, they have come through that. Because from family, when people are arriving,

 

04:34

It's not the whole family coming together. It's one at a time. So that is a challenge. Sometimes kids come and the parents come later. So the social worker plays a really very very important role. So that must be some emotional challenges to deal with as well. Absolutely. Emotional, mental, like you know, to adjust with the culture and with the kids and you know, to be just normal.

 

05:00

And did you find that it was a very successful system over there in Germany? How