“You are smart and capable. You are going to be able to do it, but in a different way.” This is a message HEU member Kyra Sekhon expresses every day working with youth in a Victoria respite home.
As a community support worker, Kyra focuses on teaching and modelling acceptance, compromise, self-regulation and self-acceptance to youth with a wide spectrum of differing abilities.
These young people will “age out” into the adult system at 19, she explains, and need life skills to successfully move forward into group homes, subsidized housing or supported employment.
Kyra tries to engage her clients in planning and preparing for their adult lives. “Nobody asks them what they want, what they need, or how we can help them,” she says.
“And these are kids who really need to be asked.”
Her dedication to empowering others is inspired by her sister with special needs. Kyra grew up watching her family navigate the health care system, and learned how important it is to have an advocate.
“It makes all the difference,” she says. “I watched my mom and the doctors advocate for my sister, and watched my sister learn to become such a strong advocate for herself.”
Kyra is also an OH&S shop steward in her workplace, and is concerned about the rates of mental health and psychosocial injuries among health care workers. She believes that mental health issues are minimized and overlooked both in workers on the job and among her young clients.
“I see how people suffer because mental health issues are not taken seriously, and kids especially are not taken seriously,” she says.
Her own workplace mental health claim, following an incident with a client, brought home to Kyra how difficult it can be to make your voice heard in the system. She could have left her job at that time, she says, but decided to stay and put her experience to purpose.
When trauma happens, she says, “you can either hide from it, or you can use it to help other people and make yourself better at what you do.”
Kyra understands the barriers the youth face, both in the world and within, and always strives to give them the skills to take care of themselves and engage with the community.
“I have a unique opportunity to help someone live the best life that they can live,” she says.