During the Covid-19 restrictions, the Community Development team have been staying in contact with clients via telephone on a regular basis to check on their wellbeing. This has enabled us to continue to develop the strong relationship we already hold with the community as an organisation.
On one particular afternoon, we made a wellbeing call to one of our clients that we have come to know very well. Our client has shared some lovely stories in the past, but on this particular day we needed to ask her for her date of birth as we needed it for our records. Our client said it was OK. When she told us the date, we realised it was actually her birthday that day so we wished her a very big happy birthday!
We asked our client if she was celebrating her birthday but she said, "No. My family don’t know it is today". Our Support Worker suggested she could celebrate her birthday with language support from one of our Bi-Cultural workers. The team discovered her favourite cake was a vanilla sponge with mango filling and told her they would love to help her celebrate her birthday safely and following the current restrictions so, they organised delivery of a cake to her house. Her gratitude was so genuine and meaningful, it made the entire team's day!
After we said goodbye and got off the phone, our Bi-Cultural worker was quick to volunteer to get the cake straight away and insisted he pay for it himself. This is a great example of the wonderful team at Centacare and a reminder that gratitude is sometimes the greatest gift in life and we, as community service workers, choose to be in this industry because we love working with and supporting people and that gratitude is prized more than a pay check.
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