Christine and Mae’s relationship is built on a foundation of music, a shared passion for good food, having a laugh and knowing the reality of what it takes to have a good working relationship.
“That does happen. You can't have a perfect world with your support worker,” Christine chimes in.
According to Christine and Mae, their support worker relationship is like any other, with family or friends. It's not smooth, it takes work, communication, and effort.
The pair connected when Christine and her sister attended Mae’s gigs. “Mae is a performer. I used to go to her gigs to watch her sing.” The band is high energy. Blood, sweat, and tears.
When Christine’s sister passed away, Mae was there for her. “Mae helped me on an emotional level. I asked her to join Hireup, and since then she's become a support worker. We had a good connection back then, but it's just become more solid.”
“Now, Mae keeps me up to speed and keeps me on my toes.”
The love of music runs deep for both Christine and Mae. “We have similar tastes in music,” says Mae. I've introduced Christine to a lot of other different types of music. She lets me play DJ with my Bluetooth now, which is great."
Last year they had planned to attend a Flamenco music concert but it was cancelled due to the pandemic, so instead they had a Spanish night at home. “We did a Spanish cook up, got dressed in Flamenco clothes, and played Spanish music all night,” says Christine.
“Mae spends every Friday with me. I look forward to it because we’ll go to a restaurant for dinner or we’ll cook together, something I wouldn't do on my own.”
Sometimes support worker relationships are temporary, and both Christine and Mae say being reminded of this is tough.
“It could be one day Mae says, ‘Oh, I can't help you anymore.’ Or I say to Mae, ‘You can't help me anymore.’ That'd be a very distressing time, I'm sure for both of us.”
“You do build relationships with your support workers. It just happens naturally I think.”