As mentioned in my previous post, this summer I will be participating in an international internship in Dublin, Ireland. I will be working at St. John of God ID Services, which is a community-based mental disability and health service that supports roughly 750 children and adults with intellectual disabilities across South-East County Dublin. They prioritize providing high-quality mental and dementia care, along with advanced wellbeing and education programs. Although some of the individuals they support may have additional physical or sensory support needs. St. John of God prioritizes a rights-based, person-centered approach to ensure all individuals are cared for and advocated for. This quality of service and care is accomplished through enabling their staff, volunteers, and services to be innovative and compassionate, inspiring hope and empowerment in the surrounding community.

St. John of God ID services lies in the industry of healthcare and social assistance, in which companies focus on the care and well-being of their patients and users. In contrast to the US, Ireland runs under a government-run medical system where most healthcare is free for all its citizens. This goes for mental health and ID support as well; thus, St. John of God is mainly supported through donations and direct funding from the government. At this internship, the goal is to provide users with intellectual disabilities with the best care possible, which comes with its own unique skill set. One of the biggest skills or virtues needed for this position is patience. Although it might sound light-hearted at first, dealing with people, especially people with ID, requires extreme patience. Every person with ID has their own unique tics, stims, and triggers, and getting to learn and understand these things just takes time and patience. It takes sitting next to them through the entire day, paying close attention to the things they are drawn to, and that about those things makes them click, which brings me to the next skill: focus. When working with ID, attention to detail is extremely important because any one thing out of place or in the wrong setting can cause a major reaction, so detailed attention is always required. Often, when working in ID, you can have long, boring days, and yet you still must be on the lookout for anything and everything that could go wrong to ensure not only the safety of the users but also to support them through their learning and growth. These two skills can be applied to any job in the healthcare and social assistance industry; they are the foundations for making people, ID or not, feel cared for. Without those skills, no hospital or support group would be able to build a foundation of trust or care that people long for when going through hard times.

Caring for people with intellectual disabilities is a relatively universal calling in life. There isn’t much of a difference when if come to the type of care people need when looking at Ireland compared to the United States. But one thing that makes a huge difference in the way the system runs is where the findings come from. Unlike the United States, as previously mentioned, Ireland’s medical system is mostly free for all of the citizens in the country, and this goes for mental health and ID support as well. So, when families of the users come in, they are giving their loved one to St. John of God without the worry and scarcity of large payments. Often in the United States, families will dread putting their children through ID support just because of the bills. This will cause the users to need to be neglected or not cared for properly, leading to worsening illnesses in the future, overall making it harder for the impacted families. In Ireland, on the other hand, the care is free. Families can focus on what really matters, helping the ones they love. But this does change one thing for the providers themselves: pay. A lot of times, the people providing ID support in Ireland are not paid as well as they are in the States due to the companies running on less funding. For this industry, it is important to understand that money is not the reason to be motivated; it’s the love for helping those in need. Whether it’s working a longer day for the same pay or going the extra mile for a user even off the clock, it all makes a direct difference in their lives.