I was doing well mentally and strong for the first time that I could remember and was eager to jump back into my work life and we had a new Social Work Manager at work and things were going so well. I threw myself into my career and was for the first time at work embracing the changes and given opportunities that I had never been given before and it was amazing and I thrived and was looking at good things ahead. Unfortunately, however this was only short lived and the Organisation is fraught with Management who have huge amounts of Ego and their own personal desire to build their own Empire no matter what it takes and our new Social Work Manager didn’t disappoint in that area.
I had moved into an area of the hospital where I worked shift work and weekend rosters and the Team was constantly understaffed and not replaced, our work rosters were never in line with Industrial Guidelines and the workload and expectations were beyond anything reasonable. I was in that area for over 8 months and I had asked on so many occasions for the right processes with Human Resources and Employee Agreements be followed but had not eventuated. This had only led me to be targeted and subject to horrific verbal abuse, threatening behaviour and being performance reviewed because I would not stop involving Unions and Human Resources to have it sorted. All I and others wanted was for our basic workplace rights and working and pay conditions to be fair and in line with policy and legislation to be respected and followed. Because I and others stood up for ourselves we were directly targeted by our Social Work manager and leadership team as again not being team players.
The biggest disgrace in my career and profession as a Social Worker to see a Department once again fail every part of the Code of Ethics professionally that we stood for and I knew that it was time to move on, I was done and absolutely disgusted in them and never looked back.
So many others in Management Executive and Human Resources and Unions were all aware of the situation and the risk of harm to myself and others and yet they all stood by and did nothing and accepted the lies one after the other and never stepped in once again to clean up the mess and to support those of us who had to go to work every day and fight the battle to survive our management whilst trying to provide best patient care. As I have learnt like everything all the Karmic lessons come and they already have and the manager has been moved after I left but the damage is done and again for me it was too late and I had been the one to be the advocate and fight for what was right to the detriment of myself but the benefit of those who are still there.
