Below is an article I came across on the website: INsite It is a warm and heartfelt look at the work that went on in the days and weeks immediatley after the Black Saturday bushfires. Thanks to Darragh O Keefe from INsite for permission to publish the article.
Jane Furey won’t ever forget her first day working for the Victorian Bushfire Case Management Service. “The first day I drove to Whittlesea, at the foot of the King Lake ranges, I met with a colleague from Benetas who had volunteered a week earlier. I had been given clients’ names and addresses, but very few people had phones. I said I’d be fine, but he insisted on driving me through the fire affected area. It’s not like it is on TV or in the papers, he said. Once we started to drive up the hill, it was like a bomb had gone off. It was horrendous; totally black. There were blackened, burnt out cars on the side of the road, and we knew people had died in them. There were rows of melted houses, with some randomly intact here and there. There were no street signs left, anywhere. The streets and roads were obliterated. On the main road, there were police markings, indicating where people had died. As we drove through, I just sat and cried. Then I thought to myself, pull yourself together Jane and get to work.”
Furey, and seven fellow community care managers from Benetas, had volunteered to be seconded to the service after it was established following the Victorian Black Saturday disaster.
In announcing the service, Victorian Premier John Brumby and Minister for Community Services Jenny Macklin said: “Each affected family will be given the name and phone number of a person they can call who can give them the help they need to get their lives back on track”.
Despite having case managed in the community for 15 years, Furey said the new challenges she faced were immense.
“I had no idea where anything was. There was a lot of confusion. I had clients who had lost family members, and children. They had lost houses, pets. I had a number of fire fighters; big mountain men with beards. They didn’t want counselling; instead they would self medicate – with drink or drugs. They had all lost their houses. The fact they couldn’t protect their friends and family had a profound impact on them. For two of them, it had been their first fire,” says Furey.
Unlike community care, where you can make a profound difference in a client’s life very quickly, Furey had to adjust to the slow and difficult nature of her new role; working with clients of different ages, all traumatised and many not reacting in the usual manner.
“Often, they could not remember information or simply couldn’t comprehend. I could not make even basic assumptions that they could cope on any level.”
Like the other case managers, Furey was responsible for a range of tasks including identifying and prioritising the needs of individuals and their families, informing them about their eligibility to financial grants and support services, determining other individual need and providing personal support and understanding. She was the point of contact for everything – from food and blankets to counselling and support.
Unsurprisingly, many case managers experienced emotional fatigue, described by Furey as the cost of bearing witness to such devastation compounded by the inability to change the situation. It led to burnout for many, especially the younger case managers.
Therefore, having effective strategies for supporting the case managers was crucial.
Helen Brightman, Benetas manager of community care southern region, took on a supervisory role, overseeing the eight Benetas case managers and ensuring they had access to the necessary training and support.
“My role was mainly supporting our case managers and liasing between them and the other agencies involved. I attended monthly Department of Human Services (DHS) management meetings and the VBCMS evaluation reference group, and met regularly with the case managers to pass on information,” she says.
“Part of my role was also ensuring they were ok, that they were copying with their workload and their clients. Given the nature of the work, we would often just chat about how they were going, did they feel they needed counselling or additional support. Keeping them in the loop was important, so I would keep them up to date on what was happening in Benetas, how their team was going.”
DHS also assigned each case manager a team quality manager, who met with them and their supervisors on a fortnightly basis and allocated cases, ensured policies and protocols were followed and monitored case outcomes. Complimenting this, each case manager attended monthly forums within each DHS region and participated in numerous training sessions.
Furey says the training was a highlight. Many sessions with clinical psychologist Rob Gordon were held, covering resilience training, mental health and suicide, drugs and alcohol, grief and loss and financial management.
“The training helped to make us resilient. I noticed how resilient my clients were, and how resilient I was going to have to be. Working in continual crisis takes an emotional and physical toll. You can’t help but be affected by it, unless you are a robot. You do what you can to protect yourself, but it’s very difficult,” Furey says.
“The education and training was reactive, but in a good way,” says Brightman. “As issues arose for the case workers we would arrange training. It was done on a regular basis, often once a month. All the case managers said the training was invaluable and very worthwhile.”
For those involved, it has been a rewarding experience.
Furey says she learned to do things she never thought she would have to, like how to sink a bore and getting land cleared and ready for houses.
Dealing with a challenging client group, in such profoundly difficult circumstances, means she has, of course, gained valuable new professional skill and experience.
But the experience has been deeper than that, she says.
“I learned I’m more resilient than I thought I was. I can work in continual crisis for a long period, 18 months, and that’s no mean feat. The experience has changed me. It’s made me more compassionate. Not that I wasn’t compassionate before, I guess just more so, on a different level. It also hardened me in some ways.
“I’ve worked with a client group that’s not my normal demographic – warm, welcoming and wonderful people who’d been to hell and back. And I’m incredibly grateful for that.”
