Hello, my name is Raaj. I'm a Children & Family Worker at a Domestic Abuse Refuge, and I've been with Hestia for 18 months. Every hour, every day is different. There's a set job description, but it doesn't come close to what I do every day.
Women come to the refuge with all different kinds of trauma, and sometimes they don't actually realize all the different elements of their abuse until they talk to us. In the time they're here, my role is to support the mothers and the children to become independent and able to cope with the trauma - not forget, because they're not going to forget - but cope, and have a positive more outlook on life.
The best part of the job is seeing how my support helps people. For example, one of the mothers came and said to me "My son has always stayed with me, he's such a good boy, but after coming here, he's not listening to me, he's going off and playing with other children, he's happy to leave me and go in the garden and play.
This was after 3 months, and I said to her that that means your son is beginning to be a child, and the Mother sat there and cried. Her son had only ever known his Fathers abuse, and now he was seeing how life could actually be, and he was happy. Even now talking about this, it gives me goose bumps, because I know I've made a positive change.
