Olabanji, Mental health nurse

As a mental health nurse here, my role is managing the psychiatric clinics. We have about six clinics that we offer to the women. What I am ensuring is that I am providing adequate mental health services, ensure that the meds are processed on time, I am in charge of making sure somebody is not unwell, I am in charge of making sure that people are taking their meds as prescribed.

There are days you come into work and your day won’t go as planned. There is somebody who is unwell, there is somebody who is self-harming, there is somebody who has been beaten or been bullied in the house, there is a medication that needs to be re-ordered. The chaos, I like it sometimes, I do, I enjoy it because at the end of the day you feel fulfilled. Most days you go home and you know you were able to help this lady.

I really do enjoy the relationship that I get to build with the offenders. I think most of my proud moments are when I see somebody come in, who, they haven’t figured it out yet, their stressed, they have a lot of things on their mind, their scared. And I think it gives me joy to be able to sit down with them, to be able to kind of help them in solving their problems. So we look at strategies, we look at, ok let’s look at a bigger picture. Let’s look at the things that we can help you with while you are in here.

Everybody here, the ultimate goal is to ensure they are well. Making sure that the women go out and they have a very high chance of success in staying out in the community and being good women, and following the rules and not ending up coming back here in corrections.