Self-Protection in Careers Work: resilience and well-being of practitioners in the Local Employment Service

Dr. Lucy Hearne, University of Limerick

10/10/2014

Understanding Professional Resilience

Conceptual Framework

Governmentality (PES)

Critical Pedagogy(Career Guidance)

Professional Resilience(helping professions)

Professional Resilience

Unstable construct, varies across lifespan Involves psychological, behavioural and cognitive functioning and emotional regulationRange of personal, relational and organisational settings

(Day & Gu, 2014; Windle, 2011)

Qualities – risk factors, protective factors/developmental assets Process - coping with adversity, bouncing back

Innate resilience - motivational forces Ecological – negotiation for resources between individual and environment

(Flach, 1997 ; Richardson, 2002; Ungar, 2006)

Professional Resilience

Critical and constructionist views – challenge dominant discourses that narrowly define ‘successful adaptation’ and ‘challenging circumstances’

Embedded assumption: resiliency is responsibility of the individual, lack is a form of weakness

(Luther et al, 2000; McLeod, 2007; Price et al, 2012)

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Career Guidance as ‘High-Touch Work’ (Hearne, 2012; Hearne & O’Grady, 2013)

“making a highly skilled professional attachment, involvement and separation over and over again with one person after another”

(Skovolt and Trotter-Mathison, 2011:106)

Contextual factors: streamlining of public services (PES, SOLAS, AEGI, ETB’s) economic recession – clients and practitioners'’ anxiety about future unemployment rates (13.7% Quarter 1, 2013 – 11. 1 % Quarter 3, 2014 ) increased volume of clients seeking help; culture of accountability, targets, and cost-benefit; discourse of client responsibility and surveillance; government funding cutbacks and recruitment moratorium; disparate perception of ‘guidance’ amongst different stakeholders (public, policy-

makers, providers)

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‘Criticality’ in Career Guidance

Examination of human interaction and power relations Considers power, control, equity, social justice, bureaucracy in everyday lifeCritiques dominant technical-rational approach underpinning public service practices, e.g. career guidance,

(Bimrose & Hearne, 2012; Kincheloe, 2008; Prilleltensky & Stead, 2012)

Intensification of control and casualisation of employment practices (Douglas, 2011; Price et al, 2012)

Self-regulation and coping expected, despite oppressive structures (Parker, 1999)

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Governmentality in PES

Governmentality form of disciplinary power where relations have become elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or under the auspices, of state institutions

(Foucault, 1982)

Career guidance - instrument of ‘liberal governmental’ rationality for economic end

(Darmon & Perez, 2011; Hearne, 2009)

Government Technology: dominant frameworks for institutionalization of career and labour market guidance for employment (Activation) and education (Lifelong Learning)

Tension – ‘humanist’ perspective in helping individual’s development vs. national policy for economic stability

(Darmon & Perez, 2011)

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Governmentality in PES

• Global move in government rhetoric: from welfare state to workfare state • Assault on Human Services: bureaucratic control, accountability and fiscal crisis• Performance measurements: caseload activity used as a quantitative measure • Fiscal crisis: suspension of hiring, increasing penalties to public employees regardless of

implications for clients

• Street level bureaucrats: public servants “who interact directly with citizens in the execution of their work” (Lipsky, 2010:3), [e.g. career practitioners]

(Brodkin & Marston, 2014; Lipsky, 2010)

(Lipsky, 2010)

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Implications for PES Practitioners

• Relations with clients – mixture of conflict, reciprocity and control

• Social construction of the client - distribution of benefits and sanctions, control (standardized ways of processing clients), teaching of the client role, stigmatization of clients (l/t unemployed, good client, bad client)

• Helping orientation incompatible with judgment and control of clients for bureaucratic purposes

• Advocacy compromised by large case loads and mass processing of clients• Despite peer support, work alienation and sense of mistrust in

organisation(Lipsky, 2010)

Challenges in Professional Practice (Hearne, 2012)

1. Volume & diversity of clients 2. Complex client issues3. Realistic vs. unrealistic expectations of

stakeholders4. Outcome measurement

Report: https://www2.ul.ie/pdf/232957089.pdf

Professional Resilience (Hearne, 2012)

Stress/Burnout symptoms: from empathy erosion to mild depression, anxiety and weariness, rumination

Prevalence: mixed in cases, cumulative exhaustion - ‘peak’ and ‘trough’ periods Boundary erosion: bringing work home, inability to say ‘no’ Time squeeze: professional revitalisation and strategic planning difficult Long-term resilience: concern of stamina, lifestyle, burnout vs. need for new

professional challenges Subjective Wellbeing:- professional autonomy,- organisational valuing - workload and expectations of stakeholders explicit- self-care practices including professional supervision

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Follow-on Study 2013 (Hearne & O’Grady)

An investigation into the professional resilience of career guidance practitioners in the Local Employment Service (LES) in the Republic of Ireland

Method: national online survey of LES career practitioners (population circa 300 in 26 services)

Content focus: professional role; LES work practices (caseloads and support), impact of recession, client issues, emotional well-being, stress and burnout, professional resiliency and wellbeing, self-regulation, restorative practices such as supervision & CPD

Fieldwork, Findings & Dissemination: July/August 2013 onwards

Follow-on Study 2013 (Hearne & O’Grady)

• Sample (n=38): female (n=26) and males (n=12), • Working full-time (n=28) and part-time (n=6). • Average age 48, with age range of 29 to 63.• Length of time in current position - 9 months to 17 years• Of 36 replies: professional role titles varied:

19 Mediators, 5 Co-ordinators,

5 Guidance Officers/Workers, 3 Adult Guidance Counsellors, 3 Information Officers and 1 Career Guidance Practitioner.

Impact of the Recession

Impact of Policy Measures

Burnout symptoms

Support in professional role

External professional supervision

Professional boundaries

Work-life Balance

Qualitative Responses

• Rewarding aspect: “meaningful engagement” with clients.

• View themselves as: “change agents

• Process work: erosion with some practitioners “being pulled from all corners”.

• Do not have a high level of autonomy in their work, they experience reasonable rather than excessive demands from management

• Wellbeing: nutritionally, emotionally and psychologically as much as possible, have optimistic outlook, and a physically active lifestyle.

• Re-orientation of their work hours to “redress a work-life imbalance to some extent”.

• Another practitioner has so far “managed to leave the frustrations and feelings of powerlessness at work behind me when I go home”.

Conclusions of Study

• Most salient client issues: financial concerns, anxiety about future, sense of hopelessness, poor self confidence, and lack of motivation

• Exponential workload impacting on relational aspect work with clients

• Practitioners are largely supported by their family, friends and LES colleagues, but largely unsupported by government policy makers

• Most common burnout symptoms: low energy, empathy fatigue, emotional and mental exhaustion, increased irritability, and extreme dissatisfaction at work

• Concern: lack of external professional supervision (funding not provided)

• Rely on their own innate self-care strategies to maintain resilience and wellbeing for their work