People Professions
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of most of the ‘people professions.’ We deal with phenomena like chronic drug and alcohol use, homelessness and mental health, which have largely structural causes, by giving that person an individual worker. The true root cause is often poverty and the fractured lives that can stem from poverty, whereby people find meaning or escape in being self-destructive, because at least you feel alive, and all other routes out are closed to you.
However society constructs such issues as something within the individual, who is seen as ‘sad’, ‘bad’ or ‘mad’. Solutions are also individualised, whereby as long as they talk to a worker for long enough, they will overcome their issues somehow. The onus is then on the worker to make the conversation ‘work’, even though they are often the least powerful person in the organisation aside from the client themselves. At least in bygone ages there used to be group work, where people could have the support of the collective, and even find collective solutions – but those days have largely gone to be replaced by case work.
We also do not question the patriarchal motivations of those who wish to ‘save’ others, rescuers need victims and a canny client will work this out, projecting themselves as someone who has issues to solve, but making sure that they are solvable by the person in front of them. Such survival tactics to get some resources are then interpreted and labelled as the person being ‘manipulative’ if found out. David Brandon talks about how workers really need to work out why they are doing what they are doing,
Work with the homeless may be based on feelings of worthlessness, inadequacy, guilt and oppression. In the latter case, it may be a way of acting out an idealised image of self; of manipulating and dominating others in the name of ‘doing good’; or of vicariously venting unacknowledged feelings of frustration and self-pity.
Even this again relegates manipulation to the worker or client missing out how manipulative agencies and welfare structures are, as Ravenhill says of the homeless industry.
much of the current system for tackling homelessness evolved by default and can itself be a cause of homelessness. it is a system that inadvertently discourages and prevents people from leaving homelessness and fully reintegrating back into housed society. The resettlement process at present appears to be an assault course, with obstacles designed to prove the individuals’ desperation, rather than the intended gradual rehabilitation. This makes the current system counterproductive, actually discouraging people from trying to resettle.
This induced desperation equally applies to workers who are rarely properly supported, more often blamed- burnout rates are horrendous, perpetuated by a macho culture of who can deal with the most difficult clients. Terrible pay rates and short term contracts are the norm, often with exploitative conditions. Unions are discouraged and often not even recognised, constructed as those workers being ‘selfish’.