Trust

Because of how life has gone in recent years I have a visit each day from a support worker. The visit normally consists of an hour of chatting and hopefully this contact keeps me going in the right direction.

But for this support to work I have to trust the support providers and if that trust is broken then everything kind of comes to a halt.

In recent months there has been another resident in my block of flats who has been a “bit of a problem”. All times of day and night she has been shouting and ranting extremely loudly and using very offensive language which I just don’t want to hear when I’m sat in my living room at any time of the day or night having my a coffee, watching TV or just enjoying the peace and quiet of the day.

I’ve mentioned this situation on many occasions to the support workers when they have visited and asked if they recognise the persons voice or if they know anything about this situation and the have always said the don’t know anything. Even when I played them a very clear recording of the woman’s voice they sat there and blatantly lied to me saying they didn’t know who it was.

Over the weeks and months I have used my skills as a radio operator and sat listening to the ranting and slowly I have built up a complete picture of the situation and worked out exactly who the person is, where their flat is located in relation to my flat and as I suspected all along this person is also supported by the same support company and support workers as myself.

Once I had all that information and was clear on everything I confronted the support workers and they have now admitted that they do know who it is and yes, there have been lots of complaints from other residents in the flats and something is being done to resolve it.

So I have to ask the question why did the support workers think it was OK to lie to me all this time by saying they didn’t know anything.

• Did they think I was such a idiot that I would not work it out for myself what exactly was happening and who it was so therefore they could just lie to me without consequence?

• Or did they just think if they kept fobbing me off with lies I would forget about it and just shut up and go away?

• Of is it simply that they consider me so worthless that they just don’t need to tell me the truth?

I know they are limited on how much personal information they can provide about the woman causing the problems and I neve was looking for names, full medical history and full life story of the woman, who I am sure is doing what she is doing because she has some sort of mental health problem herself.

But I do expect that my support provider should have at least admitted that they knew who was causing the problem and that measures were being taken to resolve it.

That’s all I needed to know and I would have been happy to work with them knowing that and waiting to things to resolve naturally with time.

Now I have been left feeling that my support workers have broken any and all trust that existed between us and treated me in quite a disgraceful way, and what’s more I really don’t know if I now want them to continue providing that support from now on given that they have betrayed me so completely.