Meet Hasan, a Sylvanvale Support Worker who is part of Sylvanvale’s Individual Apartment Living (IAL) team at The Wave in Rockdale.
What is your background?
I’m a trained accountant and also a qualified chef. I’ve worked as a chef in some really good hotel restaurants in Darling Harbour. I’ve also done security work.
What made you want to become a support worker?
When I was working in the city, I was looking for a change. I wanted to do something where I could contribute to the community – and disability came to mind.
My younger brother started working at Sylvanvale before me and had lots of positive things to say about it. Working in disability at Sylvanvale seemed like the natural choice.
When did you join Sylvanvale?
I started at Sylvanvale in May 2016 and worked at community hubs and Supported Independent Living (SIL) sites, before joining Sylvanvale’s IAL team at The Wave in early 2022.
How is working at The Wave different to other support worker jobs you’ve had?
The Wave is a completely different setting to SIL homes and community hub environments I’ve experienced. The people we support at The Wave are more independent.
Each and every one of them has an amazing story. At a certain time in their life, they had some kind of lifechanging incident. They had been going about their everyday life without disability and then something happened that changed it all.
What types of things do you do in your job at The Wave
The people at The Wave live independently in their apartments, which is their home. We support them in the way they want, according to their plans. They live their lives as they wish and we all respect their privacy. They let us know what support they need.
They each have different kinds of needs. Some need help with personal care, meals or medication. Sometimes we assist people with doctor’s appointments, and we support people who have funding for other services outside the building.
What do you like about your job?
I like my job as I’m the type of person who likes to help people when they need it most. I also enjoy the variety of the job, as it enables me to do lots of different things. I never get bored.
What do you enjoy about working at Sylvanvale?
Sylvanvale is a really good organisation. All the managers are very supportive and we get lots of training. The technology is also very advanced – its new system for rostering and shift notes is amazing. I also like its strong focus on quality and compliance. It’s made a huge difference when working with positive COVID-19 cases.
About Individual Apartment Living
Sylvanvale Individual Apartment Living (IAL) is on-call support delivered in an apartment complex where residents live independently in their own Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) units.
The IAL model gives participants greater freedom of choice over their supports at home, in such a way that they aren’t constrained by traditional support models. Onsite support is shared by tenants and provides up to 2 hours of unplanned support each day. Support is available 24/7, 365 days per year.
In addition, residents can choose to access Collective Support, which provides daily planned support within their home and can be arranged at a shared ratio with other tenants. 1:1 support can also be provided by Sylvanvale as Flexible Support.
Sylvanvale operates the service at ‘The Wave’ apartments in Rockdale and ‘Regent’ in Kogarah. Woolooware Bay will open in early 2024. The service was formerly known as Sylvanvale Community Cooperative Living (CCL).
