Care Taker Interview

Caretaker Interview

Stacie Ferguson

BSHS 445

John Beazoglou

August 15, 2016

Interview with Kathye Wilson

For long ten years, Kathye who age 48 has been serving as a case worker. At present, she is at Bradenton area to perform her job. Even if she gets exhausted with her work, she still loves to do it. As a matter of fact, she brought with her at home the tasks she did not finish during office hours. Kathye stated that she hates bringing on work because it takes away from her family time and also is not getting paid for what she does at home. She does this so that the paper work does not fall behind. As part of her job, she attends different appointments such as doctor appointments and psychological appointments with her clients. Sometimes, she only does her regular schedules like doing a visitation to her clients. There are times also that she is becomes very stressed because of emergencies like when clients endanger themselves or have lost hope. When these happen, I emotionally feel bad because after all the efforts, they just show unfavorable behavior (Wilson, 2016). Kathye is on call when she is not in the office. Per se a client tries to kill themselves and calls 911. Kathye has to meet the client at the hospital and assess the situation. Kathye then becomes an advocate for the client to ensure the client gets the best care possible. Kathye also shares burnout experiences as a counselor and it is when she has exerted too much effort but her clients do not have more the courage to continue the counseling sessions. She gives her all but sees nothing from the client in return. She has been frustrated already however, she becomes emotionally stronger. When something went wrong to the clients like giving up counseling, she reviews the approaches she has made if she lacks enough competence. To do this it makes sure that Kathye is doing her job properly and did not make any mistakes in the process. To avoid such situation, Kathye shared to me effective means she employs to perform better in work. Firstly, she always gives time for family bonding together with her boyfriend, children, children’s significant others and grand children. Then, as she said, she does not share to the family the issues she is facing with her job. This not only breaches HIPAA but also she does not want her family to be worrying about her at work or her clients. Kathye does not spend her weekends for work but for relaxation after working from the regular working days. Thus, she makes sure that she has done her tasks before weekend. If they are not done before the weekend she will pick up where she left of come Monday morning. Kathye stated that she invest in sticky notes that she can make herself notes so that she is not lost on Monday if she happens to forget anything over the weekend. She looks at them as refreshers from the previous week. Kathye spends time for joining support groups and even participates in trainings. Some of the support groups that she helps with is Alcohol Addicting that is held at the local Manatee Memorial hospital and Domestic Violence Abuse for Battered Wives at Salvation Army. Kathye assists with outreach programs that try to help the clients better themselves by getting out of the situation that they are currently in. Just recently Kathye started making frequent stops to HOPE which is a local non-profit organization that provides services for domestic violence survivors. When stopping she does free counseling for the women that need it the most to help cope and overcome the situation they have previously been in and the situation that they are in now.