Waste Not Want Not
“I don’t believe we have a problem feeding the world’s people, but we do have a problem with wasting food. “ Patrice Newell Who’s Minding the Farm
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a compulsive reader, at any one time I can be reading 5-7 books and that I mark and make notes and scribble thoughts all through the books; which explains why people never loan me a book or can borrow any of the books that I have.
Anyone who knows me also knows that when I read words that speak to me in such a manner that I need to sit with the words and allow the images to shape and take texture within and for the injured worker community.
Hence the reason I opened up with this short sentence it is because I agree that the world’s economy is based in waste not in use or outcome.
Every Thursday at Craig’s Table we get a delivery of food that would otherwise go to waste, it comes from supermarkets and bakeries. The food is shared out to the injured worker community and to a few of the elderly neighbours we have around Craig’s Table and what is left goes to feed the 20 hens we now have at Craig’s Table, the eggs in turn go out into the injured worker community and to the wider community. We know our community and our community knows us.
Each week Craig’s Table does the unimaginable, each week Craig’s Table proves beyond question that what is considered “normal practice” within the workers compensation industry is in truth not a challenge of returning the injured worker community to the open workplace, but a challenge to open the minds of the workers compensation process to see just where the waste actually is. The waste is within the human potential to do more, to be more, to create more and to dream bigger more elaborate vibrant dreams.
Today a new person arrived at Craig’s Table, though to be honest she fitted in in such a manner it felt more like she had just been away for a while. The sad part is this very vibrant lady has a serious back injury and for the last 7 years has been left on her one with little to no support, what she has had to do to keep body and soul together is heart wrenching and at times beyond tolerance. Today though that chapter ended. Today she had a place to call her own and a group of others who instinctively took her in and provided her with a seat at Craig’s Table. There were tears, a lot of tears, not sad tear, happy tears from laughter and joy and belonging.
Today at Craig’s Table there was a logistic manager (long distance transport driver with multi-nation experience); there was a restaurant manager with multiple other workplace experience everything from banking through to locksmithing; there was a club area manager again with many other skills; there was a qualified carpet layer and a coal mine truck driver who is also what we call here in Australia a “bush mechanic” (in other words he knows how to get and keep a motor running till safety can be reached) and we had a small sporting club assistant who also has retail experience. Each of them was working side by side, the tasks that needed to be done were done, the amount of laughter was at times at a low roar. Each of these amazingly talented people have been discarded by workers compensation as too expensive to do anything with, too few medical capacity hours, too old to be retrained, to this to that to the other.
Yet at Craig’s Table, they just get on with taking are of the hens, sorting out the Op Shop tending to the garden, chatting to the elderly neighbours who pop in to see what is happening or share a pizza at lunch time. There is no shirking of what needs to be done or even forgetting to make me a cup of tea when they stop to gather around for a break.
Today when our new “family member” left, she was sent home with a box of groceries and more hugs than she was ever expecting to gain.
So back to the opening question/concern of waste within the workers compensation process. I truly believe that for everyone who started work they have the right to return to an open workplace and retire when and only when they are wanting to retire. There is so much human ability/human capitol wasted because the framework of the workers compensation process has become brittle with the rigidness that drives it. When black ink on a white page directs what can be done, and how much can be spent and how long a person can receive the help that is required it is simply an equation that ends in waste.
Right now in front of me I have access to the most amazing most talented most diverse group of people that could ever be put into one community. Each and every one of them knows how to do a number of differing and challenging tasks. They know and they are willing and wanting to share what they know. Yet at the very same time SafeWork Australia tells me that the workers compensation industry is over burdened with cost that have a negative impost on the injured worker community.
It is time to rethink the entire process, it is time to look at what if everything we know was pushed off the table and a blank slate was put in place. The on flow from fixing workers compensation and the positive impact that would have can be measured in the billions, it would end the waste and it would require outside strategies to become commonplace.
I have a mudmap of a concept that makes so much sense to everyone I share it with, it just needs to get past the gate keepers to find the way into a pilot: in essence it would fill a need with a resource and can be housed in a vacant space. The outcomes would shift so many negatives and have in my opinion the start of an intergenerational opportunity to simply be part of the everyday workplace.
For now though it is late and I have an early morning start so best I tidy my desk and head to bed.
Yours in service
Rosemary
Rosemary
P.S. In loving memory of my friend mentor and colleague, David D. Not a day goes past without thoughts of David, I see a small plane and I remember flying with him as he pointed out various sections of the California landscapes; I see a person on a bike and I remember David riding home after the Comp Laude after all it was just 80 mile or so. But most of all I remember the way David teased me for my fascinating with hummingbirds. So many happy memories that I treasure of a man who reached out and changed my life. RIP David.
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