Meet Gellibrand support worker Daniel Teba, originally from Lebanon, who left his professional photography career behind when he discovered how much he loved supporting people with a disability.
The first day that Daniel Teba was on the job as a Gellibrand support worker there was an argument between two clients and they were heightened. He’d done his training so he and his fellow team member soon calmed the situation. But he told his teammate afterwards that he wasn’t sure this was the right job for him.
“Just be patient,” Daniel remembers the team member saying. “A couple of weeks and you’ll be fine.”
Fifteen years on, Daniel is still a Gellibrand support worker and wouldn’t think of doing anything else.
“At the beginning, I wanted to give up, but when I held onto the job, I found that I really loved it,” he said.
Daniel moved to Australia from Lebanon in 2007. When he arrived, he hoped to continue the successful photography business he’d started in his home country in 1984.
“But the market wasn’t easy for me here,” Daniel said. “I started looking for jobs, any jobs.”
He sent out hundreds of job applications and one of those was to Gellibrand Support Services, though he had no experience in the disability sector or of disability at all.
“In my country, there was a stigma about disability. Parents of disabled kids would hide them from the community. It’s not as bad there now with all the work happening around the world, but it’s still not the same as here. Australia has very good services for people with disabilities.”
Daniel got an interview in 2010 for the role of a Gellibrand support worker, though he had no idea what the job entailed. He must have impressed with his empathetic nature because he was soon in training and being told how to respond if a client was aggressive.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, where am I coming to?’” he smiled, remembering his concerns and the fact that the client used in the training example was a man called Colin. “He passed away a few years ago and I spent a couple of years working with him – Colin was the best person I have met in my life!”
When Colin went into a nursing home, he still asked for Daniel to come and support him with elements of his personal care, such was the rapport they’d developed.
“You meet people, you don’t meet disability,” Daniel said. “You find out what they like, what they don’t like – you meet a person and you make a good relationship together. I love talking to clients, doing work around the house together, cooking together or going for a walk and having a chat. It’s beautiful and enriching.”
Daniel said that as he settled into his support worker role, he realised he’d made a career change.
“I’d been a photographer all my life; I hadn’t done anything more than photography. After a few months in the job with Gellibrand, I said to myself, ‘This is my mission now. I don’t care about photography anymore.’ So, I gave up.”
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