Now and Then – Sally Williams, House Supervisor

As we mark Scope’s 75th birthday, we sat down with Sally Williams, House Supervisor, to chat about her extensive career at Scope, and the changes she's witnessed within the organisation and disability sector.

Q: When did you start working at Scope?  

A: In 1984 I began working for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) at Colanda, which was an institution in Colac for people with disability. Colanda began slowly moving residents into Supported Independent Living (SIL) houses. So 12 years ago I began working at a SIL house in Geelong, that eventually transferred to Home@Scope, now being Scope.  

Q: What was your role when you first started working in disability? 

A: I had just turned 18 and was what was known as a Prospective Student Nurse. DHHS would employ you for a year as a Prospective Student Nurse to make sure they wanted to train you. You then worked and trained at Colanda over a three-year period to become an MRN - a Mental Retardation Nurse. That was the appropriate language at the time, but of course not anymore.  We had to know how to take people’s blood pressure, how to draw blood and how to give injections. At the end of the three years you sat two, three-hour exams set by the Victorian Nurses Council. If you passed you were officially an MRN and were registered with the Victorian Nurses Council. 

Q: Can you describe what it was like working at Colanda? 

A: Colanda was an institution that originally cared for adults, school-age children and babies with disabilities. 

When I first started working there, the adults were in a dormitory style room where there were 15 beds in a row, wall-to-wall with identical government-issued linen. It looked a lot like a hospital. You had to do ‘hospital corners’ when you made the beds, and if my manager couldn’t bounce a 50 cent coin off the bed, you had to remake it! 

Because we had a unit of school-aged children, staff on night shift had to iron all their uniforms ready for school the next day – 35 of them! The girls wore pinafores and shirts, and the boys wore pants and shirts. We would walk them to school in the morning and pick them up again in the afternoon. It was a special school on site at Colanda, not a mainstream school. 

The onsite nursery we had for babies was really cute. 

Eventually, Colanda only began accepting residents over the age of 18, and ‘normalisation’ had begun. This meant instead of everything taking place onsite at Colanda, like dentist and doctor appointments, we would take residents out into the community. It was the beginning of the end of the institution model.  

Q: What are some of the changes you've seen during your career in the disability sector? 

A: I could write a novel about all the changes I’ve seen!  Some things that have improved in leaps and bounds are equipment and aids. 

In the early days at Colanda, we had what we called ‘bean bag boxes’. A carpenter would make a wooden box, put some wheels and a handle on it, and then put a bean bag in the box. We would use these instead of wheelchairs for residents who couldn’t sit upright in a chair by themselves. We thought they were great at the time, until eventually they started making appropriate wheelchairs. I work with a client, who is now about 62, who I remember being in these bean bag boxes. 

There were also no continence aids. We used cloth nappies with nappy pins, and the staffing ratio was 5 staff to 35 residents – so you can imagine how difficult that was. When I had my own babies, I actually had trouble changing their cloth nappies, because I kept making them too big, as I was so used to doing it for adults. When disposable continence aids became available, we thought they were the best thing since sliced bread! 

PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy) feeding wasn’t around at the time. We would take hours feeding residents with a teaspoon or they would be fed with a bottle. 

When I started there was also no assistive hoisting technology. We did what was called ‘top and tail’, where one staff member would lift the top half of a resident, and another would lift the bottom half. It didn’t matter what size the resident was, you had no choice but to just lift them.

It was a much more physically demanding job at the time. 

I've also noticed a big change in uniforms. When I started we wore dresses as uniforms, and the color represented your role. Prospective Student Nurses wore dark blue dresses and students in training wore light blue. In my photo you can see I’m wearing that lovely little brown number – that meant I was a qualified MRN. The dresses definitely weren’t practical or comfortable to wear. They had zips right down the front, so if they broke you were in all sorts of trouble! We made sure we wore shorts underneath them. The dress code was very strict. The dresses were measured so the hem would sit on your knee – no skimpy dresses were allowed! Towards the end of my time at Colanda everyone, no matter their role, was given a uniform of really nice blue pants and shirts. So the uniforms definitely progressed over time! 

Q: What was it like transitioning from an institution setting to Supported Independent Living? 

12 years ago, I moved from the institution setting to Supported Independent Living. Not only was I moving from this institution model, but so were seven of the residents that I worked with at Colanda. It was a big move for all with a lot of changes. It was quite scary for everyone. 

Some residents had lived in an institution their whole lives. One resident was put into institution care at 11 days old. Suddenly they were living in a house, with their own bedroom and a kitchen. They were used to individual plates of food coming out of the Colanda kitchen, much like a hospital. Now they were learning things like how to cook an egg, how to take out a wheelie bin and how to check the mailbox, because they’d never had to before. The residents were also taking taxis for the first time, as at Colanda we had our own bus that drove them everywhere. Initially there was some trepidation, but it’s got to the point where one resident can now take taxis independently.  

I had the pleasure of being in a short video with a resident, that lives in Geelong and his sister, to show the move from Colanda to a SIL service in Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA). It can still be viewed on Youtube. It’s my claim to being famous, if only for a few short minutes!  

The move from Colanda was also an adjustment for me as I felt much more isolated in a house. There weren’t as many people around, and I couldn’t just run next door to get help. There was still good support, but it was not what I was used to. 

Q: What do you see changing in the future, either at Scope or in the disability sector? 

With the NDIS model in place, I can see that residents' support will be really tailored to what each individual needs, and to support them to live independently.

Q: What are you excited to see in the future, either at Scope or in the disability sector? 

A: I am excited to see the level of support maintained or improved in the ageing population of disability. Knowing that the individual can be supported no matter the age they are. I’m also excited to see new and young staff being eager to learn and grow under the Scope Values. 

Q: What do you love about working at Scope? 

A: The joy I’ve experienced from the people I have worked with and the people and families I have supported, is immeasurable. I love that Scope is a very culturally diverse organisation. When I started out there wasn’t as much diversity amongst both the staff and clients.

DHHS and Scope have also been a constant in my life for 39 years. My family has grown up around the industry and I think it has made my children more accepting, and well-rounded adults because of it.

Q: Which Scope value resonates with you the most and why?  

A: Acting bravely is the Scope value that resonates with me the most because being able to step, think, and act outside the box for the benefit of our residents and staff is not always an easy task.

However, by doing so I think it improves the quality of service for all and is very self-satisfying.

I like to ask hard questions, because I want to know the answer, and if I’m asking there’s probably a lot of other people that are wondering the same thing. You've just got to be brave enough to ask.  

Q: If you had any advice for new support workers / people joining the disability sector for work, what would it be? 

A: My advice would be to listen, learn and ask questions. No question is a silly one! And to not be afraid to offer your ideas and solutions to problems. You might have a solution that no one else has thought of. 

I would also say that no matter how long you work in disability, there is always something new to learn.

 Something that I also try to do, is walk in the door to work with a mindset that I’m going to give 100%.  

Q: 75 years from now, what do you hope life for people with a disability will look like? 

A: My hope for the future would be that people with a disability live a life with the supports that they require and have as much choice and control in their lives as possible. To be individuals!