Maternal and Child Health Professional: 

I come to work at 8:30 in the morning and try and leave by 5 o’clock, hopefully. I try and have a good lunch break everyday, I think that’s important. I come to work and there’s usually someone that I’m working with which is nice. In my previous Maternal and Child Health Centre I worked alone several days a week and I really see the value now of having someone else to chat to during the day. It’s not so isolating and it’s always good to get a bit of feedback.

So usually I see clients back-to-back for most of the morning and then often in the afternoons. Every so often I will do a group; we share the group amongst the three of us that are at this centre. And also we often have a half day of home visits. It’s nice to go to visit the new parents at home. You get a good feel of their supports I suppose, their environment of course, where the baby is sleeping is always important, how they manage as a couple because they’re in their own environment so they’re going to be much more natural then what they are at the centre. You often meet some grandparents and things like that, so you get a bit of an insight into the whole family and their environment that they live in. It’s nice. I think it’s like the full package then when you see them the next week, you’ve already established something and can sort of picture them in that environment.

One of reasons I delayed going into Maternal and Child Health was the that fact I could see them when I went with my own children, that they were working in isolation and I just sort of thought it wouldn’t be for me at all. So the fact that now Maternal and Child Health is going more towards having people working together I think it makes it much more pleasant to work and much more encouraging of people moving out of the hospital, where they’re surrounded by people all the time, to not to be alone. 

Best part about my day…I love being with the families, I love seeing them all grow as a family. It’s lovely to see my colleagues as well. I suppose it is just the families, I just like watching them grow and watching them adjusting to their parenting. Hopefully adjusting positively to their parenting. I like to see the positives. And feel like I guess if I’ve talked about settling the time before that they’ve actually gone and maybe done it and they come back and say yes it worked and that’s really nice if I think they are listening to me and getting something back from what I’m saying. I’m much more reflective now than I used to be I think.