Vital People - A Career in Caregiving at DDA
Description
Ratnam Mathur is one of our valued group home managers who, like many staff at DDA, found a calling that pulled them off a defined path and into a career that meant so much more than money and fancy titles.
TRANSCRIPT
Vital People – A Career in Caregiving at DDA
Welcome back to DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I am your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Today we're talking about caregiving as a profession. To me, it's a profession that we as a society often take advantage of. We don't look at it as one of those jobs that you shoot for necessarily. It doesn't have the cache of doctor, lawyer, CEO, or what have you. But these jobs are vital, not just to the people DDA supports. They don't always come with the highest wage or even respect, which is wrong in my mind.
caregivers are vital to everyone in the literal world. At some point in our lives, if not now, at some point we will all need care, whether it's at a home because of illness or injury or a seniors home or a group home like the ones DDA operates, we are all going to be touched by this need and this profession. So I wanted to shine a light on one of the dedicated employees here at DDA and talk about who they are and what they do and why.
Joining me today is Ratnam Madhur. She is a long time employee of DDA and manages our Curzon Group Home that five people with developmental disabilities call home. Many of the clients we support in our 19 homes in Vancouver and Richmond have been with us for decades. I mean, they literally become family. So Ratnam, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Evan. Thank you for inviting me. So just right off the top here, what got you started in this line of work?
Prior to coming to Vancouver, I taught in a school in Germany that had many kids from refugee families. They were from Albania, Romania, Turkey, and other European countries. Some kids were separated from their parents and were waiting for their arrival. A social worker was assisting the kids in their different needs. These kids were going...
through struggles to adjust a new culture in their relationship to other students. In their learning and doing homework, it was obvious to me that their families too were going through difficulties at home. Trying to cope with their status as a refugee, I spent time with kids and listened to their stories. I did not speak German, nor they spoke English, but working with some very simple words.
in English and German, and with the help of a social worker, we made enough connection to understand what was going on in their lives. These kids needed a lot of help to cope with pressures of studies and at school, as well as in dealing with their trauma and mental health challenges. It was challenging for me to win their trust and to create a helpful environment.
so that I could help them in their studies and sometimes their families at home as well. This first-hand experience for about three years gave me a unique perspective on empathy and value of community service. So when we moved to Vancouver in 2003,
I wanted to continue in this field at schools as special needs teacher, but my work permit did not allow me. So how come the work permit wouldn't allow you to be a special needs teacher? Because I was on NAFTA, I have a US passport, and they don't allow to work, the spouse was not allowed to work with kids and schools. So much so that I could not even take the courses. Really? Yeah. So take me, so you're in Germany at this point.
And you're helping kids with, no they were developmentally disabled? No, no, actually they called those schools as international schools and mostly that international is refugee kids from all.
over neighborhood countries. What sort of challenges did you face there with, like, I mean, obviously there was some language difficulty. Absolutely. They are also learning German, and you cannot survive there without learning Deutsch. So that was it. And you know, kids are really good at picking up the language. That was not an issue. The issue was the all struggle, they have come through that. Because from family, when people are arriving,
It's not the whole family coming together. It's one at a time. So that is a challenge. Sometimes kids come and the parents come later. So the social worker plays a really very very important role. So that must be some emotional challenges to deal with as well. Absolutely. Emotional, mental, like you know, to adjust with the culture and with the kids and you know, to be just normal.
And did you find that it was a very successful system over there in Germany? How was it similar to here? I think I don't know the system here for the refugees so much, but I was surprised. They have a very good system there.
a lot of resources in the school, especially for the kids. I don't know all over how they'd go, but working with this social worker, I came to know that they have a lot of resources. They help with kids like, you know, throughout their journey till high school, till they...
complete that. Where did these kids mostly come from? Romania, Kosovo, Albania, all neighborhood countries. Must be sort of interesting seeing the political upheaval in all these countries. Absolutely, absolutely. I feel sometimes in Canada we're quite isolated and protected. Yes, we are protected, that's true.
I feel safe to be here. Absolutely it is. Sometimes we take that for granted. You came from Germany to...
the United States and then to Canada? No, actually I got, I'm from India. I got married there. My husband was in Yale at, in US, Connecticut. Oh, he went to Yale? Yeah. Oh, wow. So my, so I stayed over there. And then I'd say about five years we moved to Boston and there I started working in multicultural school, in the bank.
moved to Germany. It's all because of my husband's job.
Okay, and how long did you live in Boston? That's interesting. Oh almost nine years really cuz I my my family spent a year in Boston This is an aside on this podcast now He's any of my dad today a second master's degree at Harvard when he was with the government Saskatchewan other so yeah, my husband was working for Harvard too. What does he do? Oh, he does research Okay, he was doing research that time nine years in Boston. What do what part of Boston did you live in? Oh, we were suburb Norwood
Almost 45 minutes from the main town. We were in Belmont, Massachusetts, near Cambridge. Those are very expensive, couldn't afford that. It was good. My memory was quite young, grade 4, grade 5, so my memory of Boston is quite good. Anyway, back on point. So you got to Canada and you wanted to keep working in this field.
What is your education and what is your actual expertise? I have done my masters in commerce and I have done my double graduate in English literature and B.Com English literature. Yeah Right that right then all my education is done in India
And yes, when I, you know, that is what I tell my kids too, that you never know what you want to be. Like, you know, after graduation, after this, there was some hollow in it. Like, you know, I worked in Boston, I worked in the bank. And, but still I need to know what.
So when I got this opportunity in Germany, working with a social worker, that time I felt that, yes, this was it. More of a synergy. Yeah. And so, I mean, you did your commerce degree and English literature, I mean, wow, you've got some education behind you there. And you worked in the bank in Germany, that was the only time you sort of used that particular degree? I...
I used that in Boston too, my degree, because over there I was actually looking forward to complete my CA. My credentials were all approved, so I was about to go into that direction. Oh, I see. But I think you raised such a good point, because about, you know...
what it is we educate ourselves with, what we think we should be chasing versus what we end up wanting to do. And so what...
I mean, you helped the refugees in Germany. And so what made you keep wanting to do this here in Canada? Yeah, when I moved in Vancouver, I was looking into the same field. But because of some restriction on my work permit, I could not. Then I started exploring the nonprofit organization. Like, you know, and, but with that, I want, because my kids were in school,
to get a full-time job. So during that time, I got employed by Indian Consulate. I was working there. That's here in Vancouver? That's here in Vancouver in downtown. And then I saw this posting, DDA posting. And I applied for it and that's what I got. What was that posting? Oh, it was Grandview CSW.
in a Granview Day program. That time it used to be called. So CSW was a community support worker, and that's where it started. Was that a full-time job when you started? It was, yes, it was a full-time. And was it what you were expecting? I mean, had you worked with people with developmental disabilities before? Not directly, but during this I had learned a lot about it. And when I started...
working. I even picked a few courses online and, you know, update, upgrade myself. Did DDA support you through that? Absolutely, it did. I think that very
United States
