Raphaela Gerspitzer
1/5
I have been a live-in assistant for many years. It is a hard job that requires a lot of dedication and negation of your own private life. Sure, there are fun times, but also a lot of stressful times to provide this excellent care that everyone is talking about. Self-care for assistants is easily overlooked; sure, you got your own room, but with everyone else at home you hardly can find the space and time to prepare your own food for example.
You have to organize your whole private life around the needs of this workplace, so basically you don't have much private life during your time as a live-in.
You might just wanna relax and be in silence in your room, but sure enough you will still hear the noises and what is going on in the house. I was friends with everybody in my house and my team was great, but still, sometimes you just wanna be by yourself with nobody around and going out, coming back home as you please in your free time, without people asking you where you are going, when you are coming back... (sure it also shows care, but at the same time it is also a bit like being a teenager in your parents house again...)
A very sad statement is that in another house, the team didn't even care for their sick teammember (in the sense of asking if he needed any medication/food/ see a doctor...).
Core members are way more important than assistants, even though we are all supposed to be equal. When aggressive behaviour is only seen as "unusual" without (appropiate) consquences, some assistant might feel very quickly frustrated and demotivated to take further initiative.
A normal day is that you as an assistant are currently running from A to B to keep everyone happy and do all the things needed to keep a nice household running (cooking, cleaning,...). That's why it appears to visitors that this so great, such a great care when we all sit around the dining table but you have no idea of the drama and stress, assistants have undergone by then and will undergo after.
There is a big lack of professionalism especially on the administration level. On assistant level I deem it important to train them more in self-care, dealing with difficult and aggressive behaviour, actually addressing problems rising in the house, especially when it is not the first time and practice appropiate consquences.
I do like that L'Arche is very international and welcoming, but latest when you start your second year, frustrations will augment.
I am a professional social worker and in my house, most of the assistants had a similar background, which helped a lot also to simply understand how people with different disabilites are expressing themselves. But understanding doesn't mean excusing any behaviour. L'Arche needs to connect more to its own core values, like "Openness to Mutual Relationships – We develop life-changing friendships where each of us gives and each of us receives.".
Again, I think the basic idea of L'Arche is great but how it is put in practice needs to be severly reviewed. Also taking into account that all core members are ageing and therefore higher needs (physical as well as mental) are arising. At least LGV has a community nurse, this has been one of the greatest helps to learn more about how to better support the core members. For assistants, care is lacking. An external psychologist or social worker would be helpful for assistants to have regular counselling supervision as in discussing casework and other professional issues in a structured way. This is normal in comparable work settings because the mental load of this work can be very high. (Just having access to a psychologist through the health plan is not sufficent as many would not think they need one nor would he reallly understand the special work/ life context of L'Arche which is essential to understand arising issues better and also possible ways to lead with them when you can't just take a bath whenever you want to relax).
In conclusion: a great team makes everything better, but working at L'Arche means dedicating your life to it- literally.
