Dealing with the exigencies of support work under current restraints

In the following, I refer to some of my respondents' more detailed accounts of how social care in front-line support work is affected by the ongoing precarisation in neocommunitarian neoliberalism. These are accounts of subjective experiences of the changed reality for direct support work in highly specialised projects organising support for women affected by domestic violence. I address and reflect upon the ambivalent positioning workers find themselves struggling with, from which they try to keep their own work ethos and ambitions for women's projects and services alive, thus in their sense 'productive'. All three respondents were working for medium-sized front-line organisations in the role of project managers.

6.2.1 'Work has become cerebral': disempowerment and harm

Alisha is an experienced front-line worker in the field of domestic violence. She has worked as a counsellor and direct support worker in various women's organisations.

When I met her in May 2008 she was employed on a two-year contract that was to expire in three months' time. The organisation she works for is a generic medium-sized women's organisation with long experience in the field of DV refuge accommodation.

Alisha described with vehemence the worsening of working conditions under Supporting People, the funding programme for housing-related social care services under which refuge projects have been more closely bound to centrally guided regulations and more competitive commissioning practices (cf. subsection 5.1.1). There is more workload imposed on organisations like hers across the board, without adequate remuneration for new tasks and burdens. Insufficient funding results in understaffing with the consequence that all workers in her organisation have “dual roles”: the role that is laid out in your contract is different from the one you are expected to perform.

While Alisha is officially employed under SP as a Senior Project Worker and paid only a bit more than a front-line support worker, she is doing the job of a Project Manager, supervising and coordinating all the support workers and the administrative tasks related to SP. This is on top of doing front-line support work when needed, which is often the case, as the caseload in the organisation is very high. She is responsible for funding reports; she answers to requests for information from local authorities; and she attends external training related to changes in government funding and organises internal training, without any formalised agreements about this workload.

This is a very classical description of work intensification and a recurrent feature when redundancies are made due to downsizing in public services under efficiency pressures, after which the remaining jobs get redesigned (Burchell 2002). Organisations shift tasks among their workers and add new ones, others are lost on the official request list but need to be done to keep projects running (Hudson 2002). However, what is remarkable here is that changes have been informally organised without any written agreement.

Alisha pointed out that formal employment in the sector has always been short term and therefore insecure but that her experience of insecurity and job-related pressures “got worse” with the introduction of Supporting People. Funding is related to the following of external rules and the organisation's overall performance in yearly held quality assessments along external standards, which are both, however, under continuous transformation. Under conditions of constant change and unclear definitions of requirements, workers feel more pressure than before to conform to all additional requests by their organisations: requests for efficiency and the reference to external standards could and have been used by the organisation to “push” her.

Here the particular mode of how work intensification in social care is currently imposed on workers is displayed. Insecure employment and continuously transformed, externally-set requirements and regulations for the future funding of projects on which the organisations depend make precarious workers vulnerable in the present, in terms of the experienced pressure to adapt themselves to additional requests and the internally arranged changes in the division of labour and working routines. The organisation as direct employer can defer to a distant authority/instance, which is, however, difficult to grasp due to the ongoing changes and the mix of government priorities, legislation and regulations. This creates a situation of increased uncertainty and nebulous complexity which pressurizes workers in social care to become ever more productive without financial recognition:

“It puts you under pressure in the organisation that you are working for, because it is almost like you are having the finger pointed at you. They can keep increasing my workload, and keep on saying: 'well, you need, you have to, they said, you have to, they said', and nobody can actually prove what anybody said. So you've got pressure from the organisation, to keep on and producing and producing and producing, and going with the constant changes and legislation. Yet, your money stays the same, your hours stay the same, but the organisation can get the hands behind your back and push you, saying: 'well you won't get your contract renewed'. So they've kind of got that on their side, to say: 'well, if we don't see X, Y and Z results, we can have a meeting when that time comes with the

management committee, and decide whether we were really happy with it or not'. It is not to say that this is happening, but that is where I am vulnerable, cause – I don't know!”.

Vulnerability for Alisha as an employee is resulting from these unclear and multiply defined working conditions and the continuous threat of losing her job. Not knowing exactly what the funders have asked for and might be asking for in the future is making her vulnerable in the face of additional requests from her organisation. Workers become multiply dependent without any fixed reference as to which requests would be in any form legitimate.

The very content of the already established regulations for direct support work that SP introduced for evaluation and monitoring purposes is strongly criticised. These are experienced as very negative, as they not only increase the administrative workload for women's refuges but also result in an overall imposition of a different way of working in front-line services for women affected by DV, even in areas where SP is not providing (sufficient) funding. It was emphasised that this impression reflected the experience of many of Alisha's colleagues and was not something specific to her organisation alone.

Alisha described in great detail the outcomes of the current form of bureaucratisation and inadequate regularisation of the organisation of social care in women's refuges. Under SP you must show evidence that you support your service users along preset categories. You must also conform to standardised procedures in a preset timeframe. There is thus less flexibility in organising and providing direct support. This is creating a work environment which is experienced as highly inadequate for accommodating women who have experienced domestic violence. Far from creating 'only' additional administrative tasks, SP reporting requirements and regulations are thus damaging the workers' flexibility to organise their work according to the needs of the individual women: flexibility that in the past enabled them to provide the necessary emotional support:

“You were used to women coming in and if they needed to cry for two hours, you could sit with them for two hours and let them cry. Whereas now it's: 'Here is the housing benefit – you have to sign it; where are the house rules? – I have to read you the 52 house rules'. Because it is all about – in the mind it's like flashes that are going: SP SP SP! Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring! All the time, all the time! It's relentless!”

Alisha depicts the spontaneous taking time for affective support as an important side of a professional way of working in the field of DV. The newly imposed work routine under SP neither addresses the needs of the women you are supposed to provide with support, nor does it address the needs of the workers by enabling them to deal in an

emphatic way with women who have experienced atrocities and harm. Front-line support work becomes predetermined, redefined by preset time frames and procedures to follow.

Having flexibility in timing support activities is, however, quintessential to the process of caring. Social care work involves an emphatetic responding to subjective needs and thus interaction, which both require resources and take time. It does not only involve active intervention but also the creation of a nurturing atmosphere; a presence, providing sensitive openness like a listening ear. The necessities of care in terms of the required space and flexibility in timing support work for dealing with the flow of affectivity in very particular situations are not acknowledged. Many support workers have left employment in the area of DV refuge services, as work “just became so mechanical and harsh”:

“So you are not showing real feeling, or humanitarian sort of feelings towards the women, because – that is also part of the profession! It is not counselling, but it is:

alright (pausing) you know. You cannot even say: 'Can I go through this tomorrow?' or 'Can I get you a cup of tea?'. It's like: 'Sorry, but this is what I have to do even that you've just arrived.' And they [the women]

are just really bewildered, and the kids are going mad, and they might not have any shoes, and they have left glass in their feet, all kinds. But you are still going: 'But I have to fill in this form'. And that is why a lot of people were driven out of this field. And you have different kind of people working in this field (…) And the poor women. You are trying to say: 'I'm really sorry, I can't listen to you about this, because it says on my key-work session I have to ask you about house, housing benefits, schools (…)' but she might wanna tell you a heap of other stuff, which has to do with DV!”

SP regulations are depicted here as impacting heavily on the setting of priorities at work in women's refuges. Current conditions are taking away opportunities for workers'

“own initiative” in giving support to women and reduces them to administrators of a regulated and highly restricted form of service. The pressure to conform to external standards also affects the collaboration amongst employees. Alisha depicts these developments very interestingly as work becoming cerebral, as a rationalised form of imposition on their way of working:

“And people have become quite bitter, even the most caring, because you can't do anything on your own initiative, whatsoever, at all. And even the staff team would say: 'So why have you been so long in her room when she was like that? You should have done this, you should have done that!' Because it has become so… so cerebral, you know, it is all in the head. So you've got that, combined with your constant worry – are you gonna get paid, are you gonna be re-funded?”

Work becomes structured along the preset targets and processes for direct support work which are externally imposed and need to be administered and documented and thus internalised by direct support workers for application in daily work routines. These

preset processes are taking away leeway to react to service users in spontaneous ways;

workers are constantly reminded about their administratively defined duties. Cerebral stands here for non-intuitive interaction, and the pressure put on the individual worker to deal with the loss of flexibility and time for setting priorities and responding to subjective needs at work.

Organisations are asked to provide evidence of the support being given and to follow certain procedures in order to receive further funding. The degree to which evidence for support is requested is experienced as unnecessary. There is resentment that the very assessment frameworks and regulations show neither trust nor acknowledgement of the necessities of support work being provided in women-only refuges, pushing them to evidence and 'improve' their work along preset scales and constant new reformulations of 'quality'. Administrative tasks are taking over staff members' time:

“Quality Assessment Framework is a SP yearly review, so you only do it once a year, but it is 33 pages long, and the print is tiny, there is millions of questions over 33 pages, and you have to evidence every single one of them. So what happens is, once that this is done now I have to start again and I have to keep every move I make, and every staff member, 'can I have a copy of that?', 'can I have of that for the QAF?', 'let me know that'. And I constantly have to pile it so that throughout the year coming up to when it is due I can evidence. – Because you are going from a great D, C, B, A, so you are constantly working up that scale. It sounds good on paper – but the pressure! That's just one of their forms! It's just endless, because no matter how much you do what they ask, they come and give you a whole load of other tasks. So that is how I spend my time: evidencing things [laughing], you know, it's like proving that you can breathe or something! Like you are going to really steal their money and run! I don't know, it's really tough.”

This builds up a pressure that trickles down to every employee and infiltrates the relations, be it amongst colleagues or with clients. The survival of the project and everyone's post in the organisation is linked to the adjustment to SP regulations that are widely experienced as inadequate, leaving insufficient time to do the support work in a caring and thus flexible and interactive way, which is so strongly needed by the women they deal with. This is reported upon to be turning into a form of peer-to-peer and self-control against better knowledge and intuition, which is experienced as intrusive and potentially very harmful for both the workers and service users. Women work increasingly isolated from each other, overwhelmed by the administrative tasks on top of their increased caseload.

Alisha pointed out the fact that under these adverse conditions there is no structural support for employees provided in her organisation, e.g. via professional

supervision. While SP improved some formal employment standards for refuge workers that have to be met by SP service providers like statutory annual and maternity leave, not even the most basic forms of support for front-line workers to help them beare the affective burdens in the field of DV have been addressed by SP regulations whatsoever.

For her it is shocking to see that it is still not a funding requirement that organisations provide support and advice for their front-line workers who deal with potentially highly traumatising experiences on a daily basis.

In Alisha's organisation there is group supervision with the director once a month, but no provision of one-to-one support when needed. There is not even a common room where staff members could meet spontaneously as a team. The provision of a welcoming atmosphere and space for workers to engage in mutual support on a daily and informal basis is not perceived as necessary, either in her organisation or by those agencies that are supposed to monitor it. Mutual support and how it could be enhanced is not acknowledged as a quintessential aspect of organising social care work in a sustainable way; it is not seen as a requirement. What is imposed instead are bureaucratic undertakings and administrative checklists to follow which result in an abstract formalisation of interaction and thus in the very opposite. Spaces and proven ways to convey mutually informed encounters between women are thus neither acknowledged nor facilitated.

Alisha sees this as highly problematic, as it undermines the organisation's own aims and objectives: namely, to empower women. It is isolating the support workers, leaving them to deal individually with the problems they are confronted with. This is not only against the work ethos of the women's sector and counterproductive for the objectives in terms of service provision, but potentially very harmful for the members of staff:

“Our mental health is not looked after; it's really not looked after.

Everybody needs a de-brief, it's the most normal thing, just speaking.

And you are dealing with women that commit suicide. I mean we had one woman – her face had been cut with a plate, I mean you are talking serious! Things you can't tell anybody else. I can't go home and say: 'dadadad'.

All the stuff is in my head! Hundreds of cases are in my head that I can just play out. And in the normal world people can't bear it, they can't hear it.

So you need clinical supervision, because you know you can't put that into somebody else, so you need that professional person that can hear it, and help you, you know. And we don't get that. And I think that is pretty true to most of these organisations. And then you are monitoring and doing this, and admin, but not the single most basic support!”

Being enabled to deal with affective burdens when confronted with structural violence is a specific requirement of work in refuges, especially in the field of DV

workers needing supportive professional and nurturing environments. It enables women to deal with their experiences and become supportive themselves to other women.

Supportive environments are crucial for this kind of work, which cannot be done without them. Alisha describes these as enabling a flow of receiving and giving support which is undermined and suspended by current conditions:

“We don't even have a kitchen, you know, we got a kettle, that's it. We don't even have anything in work to nurture you, you know, and then you are supposed to nurture the women as well. And then you are trying to say to the women, 'oh we will help you get counselling', when we can't even get it for ourselves! It's mad! Cause we are women helping women, aren't we? So we are stuck.”

Whereas some precarious workers might be better equipped and supported by their surroundings to deal with the increased workloads, isolation and non-nurturing environments, there are many who cannot, or are no longer willing to do so. Alisha highlighted the fact that she was only enabled to deal with the potentially harming experiences in her job because of the other experiences she had had in her life before she came to work for this organisation and because of the professional supervision she organises and pays for herself. Others might not have that. Others again, like her

Whereas some precarious workers might be better equipped and supported by their surroundings to deal with the increased workloads, isolation and non-nurturing environments, there are many who cannot, or are no longer willing to do so. Alisha highlighted the fact that she was only enabled to deal with the potentially harming experiences in her job because of the other experiences she had had in her life before she came to work for this organisation and because of the professional supervision she organises and pays for herself. Others might not have that. Others again, like her