An addicted son who smashes the house to pieces, two elderly people who stand on their socks on the street or a raised man who threatens Prime Minister Rutte. These are serious matters about which Sietske Martens is called every day. She works for the Crisis Intervention Team in Tilburg and a documentary about the work of her and her colleagues has been made.
“It’s just my job”, is the first thing Sietske says about her special job. “People sometimes ask: how do you do it? But I don’t think it’s hard work. I enjoy it every day and I never experience it as very heavy.”
How do you do that, enjoy such intense work? “Look, the phone rings and I like it when someone says after our contact: ‘Okay thanks. Thank you for listening, you helped me.’
Hetty Nietsch’s documentary ‘Help me’ is a series of issues that Sietske and her colleagues have to deal with. For example, she gets on the line with a confused man who calls out one threat after another to the mayor and aldermen of Tilburg and Prime Minister Rutte.
Sietske cuts the man off. In a calm tone she says: “I’m going to cut off contact with you now and I’m going to ask the police to check with you. Bye.” Sietske looks back: “Ultimately, this gentleman is responsible for what he says and does. Because you are not allowed to threaten, not even to Rutte. I don’t solve his problems with a phone call. But I could do something by calling the police.”
“I realize I’m talking to someone who is heavily intoxicated.”
But the fact that the man also threatened her did something to Sietske: “The moment I’m talking to that gentleman, I think: oh my god, what’s going on here? And I’m thinking about who to turn to. But I also realize that I am talking to someone who is heavily intoxicated.”
Sometimes things get under Sietske’s skin. Like the elderly couple who are standing on the street in socks and no longer know how to get into their house. Sietske is going to take stock.
In the documentary you can see how she was touched by this when she returns to the office: “I was there in the house and saw that these people just can’t do it anymore. They don’t understand the world anymore, the world moves way too fast. I thought: we have to do something about this, right? We can’t leave those people like that, can we?”
“Is there perhaps a neighbor who can help this child?”
In the film you often see the inability of Sietske and her colleagues. When they have to peddle with a young person who urgently needs shelter, but has nowhere to go. It is sometimes extremely frustrating, she admits readily: “But at that moment I am mainly concerned with: what is possible? Is there perhaps a neighbor or a grandfather who can offer the peace that this child needs for now?”
Perhaps the film will open the eyes of policy makers. Yet that was not the reason for Sietske to cooperate: “I thought it was especially important to show what we all do as care providers. Because nowadays you mainly hear what we all don’t do. And I also really enjoy being able to show this to my family. Because otherwise I won’t be able to explain what my colleagues and I do on a daily basis.”
The documentary ‘Help me’ can be seen on Thursday 11 August at 10.10 pm at BNNVARA on NPO 2.