Type 1 did NOT affect my career choice, but it DID affect things within that career choice.

To progress in my chosen career I felt ‘duty bound’ to carry out further training. On applying for permission to attend those courses my diabetes was always ‘thrown against me’. In fact, actually getting the job I’d applied for, which was working with people suffering with different types of dementia (organic brain failure), but when I wrote a letter (this was before the days of emails, lol) to question what I did, or said wrong at my interview, as I felt that the interview had gone fairly well, until I ‘slammed the ignorance’ of the interviewers for their inept beliefs of diabetes and its control. I was sent a response from the Director of Social Services informing me to attend at a specific location, reporting to a specific individual (who wasn’t actually there when I got there) to start my employment. Yippeee!

Although I did attend Care Assistant job training, after a while I felt that ‘there’s got to be more to it than this’. I was doing the same at work as I was at home … wiping bums and wiping noses. I applied, therefore, to do Social Work Training. The arguments against me doing this training astounded me. Initially, the argument was that I didn’t need to do any further training due to the experience that I’d gained working as a Care Assistant. Then, once I’d argued my point about doing the same at work as I was doing at home, I got through to the ‘second round’ of interviews, where they deliberately ‘threw’ my diabetes at me, informing me that as well as attending the course I’d still be expected to carry out my working duties, and that the demands on my health, both physical and mental, would be detrimental to me. That’s when I, again, ‘let rip’ at the sheer ignorance of people that are supposed to be in a caring profession and basing their decisions on ignorance of facts.

Happily, I got my way and carried out my Social Work Training.

Clients with dementia are often not able to ‘work things out’ and OCCASIONALLY need to be ‘Sectioned’ under the Mental Health Act. (I’m in the UK, by the way, so the laws in the United States of America will be different.) Not any Social Worker, in the UK, is allowed to put forward a case for someone to be ‘Sectioned’, it has to be an Approved Social Worker. That’s one that does further training after they’ve qualified as a Social Worker, under the Mental Health Act.

To say that I was surprised at the number of Social Workers who approached me to get one of their clients ‘Sectioned’ is an understatement. To me, SOME of those Social Workers were simply attempting to move ‘unwanted cases’ from their case load(s) onto someone else. The good thing was, as I’d managed to carry out my original Social Work Training, with nothing untoward occurring, getting on the further training required to become an Approved Social Worker, didn’t involve me jumping through rings. lol.

Over the years, however, once things started going wrong with my health, such as the development of diabetes-related complications ‘they’ wanted me ‘out of the door’, so they forceably retired me on grounds of ill-health. (I’ll tell you now that I was extremely bitter about the way it all came about, but I haven’t worked since 1990 and I’ve slowly lost some of that bitterness. )

Friends and colleagues that I used to work alongside have repeatedly informed me that I’m ‘better off out of it’, but to be frank … if you don’t mind me changing my name for a second … that really doesn’t help me. I’d have quite willingly worked until the day I dropped down dead. I absolutely adored ‘my’ client group and used to spend many unpaid hours just to be with them, knowing that what I was doing was important, and a way of offering clients something that I KNOW Care Assistants didn’t have the time to carry out.