Robyn says she partially trained as an Occupational Therapist when she left school, but life got in the way.

“I was going to go back and finish, but then I got married and had children and it just went by the wayside. And then I looked at going back to doing Occupational Therapy again – because the kids were a lot older then – but it just wasn’t going to be worth it, and I looked at nursing and decided that nursing was not what I was actually interested in.”

She says the rehabilitation side of Occupational Therapy was what she really found interesting, so when the opportunity to take on a caregiving role came up, she jumped right in. She says that the aspect of regaining or maintaining as much of her clients’ independence as possible is what makes her job worth it.

“It’s when somebody finds that they can do something, or they find an alternative way of doing something; it doesn’t matter how big or how small, if it makes a difference for them, it matters. Everyday… you just don’t know what you’re going to find. Just little things that people realise, or things you can help them with. It might look easy to us or other people, but to them it makes a big difference.”

While she finds the human aspect of connecting with her clients and helping them live their lives to the best of their ability immensely rewarding, Robyn admits that this very same investment in her job can sometimes be a challenge.

“I think I just take every day as it comes, I’m pretty flexible, but I think the hardest part is fitting everything in with family. I’ve got pretty regular hours and they can’t change much because the schedule’s pretty full at the moment! … My husband sometimes finds it hard because I’m up at 6 o’clock in the morning and I don’t get home until 8 at night… and then I go and work the weekend as well!"

"It's probably most difficult because I think my clients need me. Actually, I don’t think that they do, I know that they do. We’ve been short on carers and it’s probably the same everywhere, but that’s made it more difficult as well. When you know that the other carer who’s going to do your weekend off is going to be sick, who else are they going to ring? They ring me and say they can’t get hold of anybody else, and it’s like, “Well, there is nobody else!” But if you don’t pick up that phone, and you know that you’re the only carer left, then you know that client’s not going to get out of their pyjamas today. Because there’s no way of getting out of them, and that’s not what they want to do!”

Robyn’s commitment to what she does shone through in our conversation with her, and it was awesome to get to chat with someone who is not only experienced at what they do, but who also remains so invested. We wanted to get her advice to anyone who might be starting out in their caregiving journey, and this is what she had to say:

“I think it’s a good job, but I don’t think it’s a job for everybody. Just be yourself. Don’t be somebody that you’re not. Just go in there and be yourself, because people relate to you better if you’re yourself. And think of the other person, think of their needs; not necessarily what you think they need. You’ve got to find out from them what are the most important things that they need doing, because everybody sees things differently.

"Treat everybody as individuals; everybody’s different. It doesn’t matter what the injury is, doesn’t matter that this person has the same injury as somebody else, it’s still different, because their own reaction, how they feel about it is different. You’ve got to see everybody as an individual.”