Another story from a parent and some theoretical reflections

Theoretical reflections updated today!
Here is some analysis of Rosie's story I posted here today.
Rosie is another parent I interviewed for this research who had been transferred from parenting payment to Newstart in 2008 when her youngest had turned 8.
In her story, the conflict behind many of the relationship breakdowns which precede becoming a single parent, was present in the ongoing battles being fought between her and her ex-husband over their children’s care arrangements.  The presence of this conflict is an ongoing cause of stress for many single parents who must negotiate behaviour that is challenging, and where reports of non-payment of child support are frequently experienced making financial survival more difficult.
Rosie’s experience of employment services takes places against a background of ongoing struggle with different service environments, and illustrates the ways in which individual’s contexts are more complex than just being a parent, a worker or a welfare recipient. Individual roles are multifaceted, and for those experiencing extreme hardship like Rosie, involve the navigation of multiple service providers and multiple causes of stress.
Rosie tells of how because of her relationship breakdown she eventually lost her house because she was unable to maintain the mortgage payments when she was on placed on Newstart. To make matters worse, in 2009 Rosie was in a severe car accident, which leaves her to this day suffering from chronic pain and with a scar across her face she would love to have fixed. She has been waiting for a Transport Accident Commission claim to come through she hopes will provide her with the money to do this, and to help repay her parents for the help they have given her over the last 5 years while her circumstances have been difficult.
Rosie is currently living in a shed behind their house because she can live there for low rent, as she cannot afford to pay rent on Newstart. She lives there with two of her teenage sons, there is another who has been staying with his Dad, because although he does not pay her child support, he is working cash in hand and can offer the son bribes to stay with him despite their being parenting orders that he shouldn’t be.
After her accident Rosie’s life really fell apart. She was unable to work to supplement her Newstart income, yet did not qualify for DSP.  She reports begging her Doctor and the ESP she was referred to for vocational assistance, to pass her as fit for work as she was desperate to earn more money and had always had a positive outlook on working.
When she lost the house she and her three sons became homeless, living in their car, and staying when they could with relatives while trying to not outstay their welcome.  She relied on food parcels, vouchers and all forms of charity and material aide, while all the while staying in the same location so she could provide her sons with continuity of schooling and community.   Community and social networks have all been useful sources of social support for Rosie.
Eventually she was referred to a housing support worker, who helped Rosie get her situation under control.  However, she says, her family bears the scars of the period of living rough and financial hardship.  She feels the strain of relying on her parents too much, at the same time, she is also aware of the disappointment she thinks her teenage boys have that their childhood has been disrupted by these events.
Before Rosie’s accident she was working long hours, and wasn’t able to be home after school or the weekends.  Her eldest sons did what teenage boys do when they are unsupervised, and got into trouble with drugs with friends from school.  It was a particularly dark period for Rosie and other parents in the neighbourhood where a spate of six suicides of teenage boys from the school. Rosie decided to quit her job so that she could be there to supervise her kids, but not before she feels some irreparable damage has been done to her eldest son’s attitude towards her as she had left him to supervise the other children, one of whom had ADHD.  She reflects with regret that you never get that time over again.
Rosie identities a direct link between being obliged to work the extra hours by the changes to participation requirements and parenting payment eligibility requirements and the harm that has been done to her family. While her eldest is now back on track she feels guilty that she was not able to be there so that he did not have to shoulder the burden of so much care. There is a profound sense of injustice throughout Rosie’s stories, especially for her boys who she feels won’t get the time back with her they needed to have had normal childhoods.
Rosie is highly active, a campaigner for improving the rights and recognition of the needs of single parents who she says are disadvantaged by the same sort of stigma there is for people with disabilities, and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds.  She has done her research, and notes there has been specific legislative and regulatory changes that are contributing to anti-discrimination measures for both these groups, but not for single parents.  She cites how single parents are still treated by politicians and the media as the wayward underclass and not as women who are struggling to juggle the demands of parenting, working and negotiating service providers.
She notes the ES providers she has encountered have not been at all well-equipped to deal with her circumstances and those of other parents she knows, and believes there should be special services for parents that understand the needs of families, the risks to children and young people not being cared for at home after school hours
Not only has she not found employment services helpful she in fact has found major faults with the way they have interfered to claim outcomes and provide unwanted wage subsidies for jobs she has found herself.  Her ES provider contacted an employer to offer them a wage subsidy when she had already started working them for them, and this caused them to withhold her wages because they would not be able to provide the subsidy (and claim the outcome payment).  This made her furious, to the point that it affected her relationship with the employer and the job did not continue.
Rosie felt discriminated against when she was placed in the Disability Employment stream because of her car accident. She felt this added another layer of discrimination to her situation, and she preferred to be treated like a mainstream job seeker.
Having to attend appointments and being hassled by both Centrelink and ES has caused Rosie to disengage, feeling they are just making her jump through hoops while she gets on with the real work of finding herself a job.  When they have threatened her with participation failures she reports being made to feel “incredibly, incredibly worthless, and angry, she can’t believe the government would do this to women, who do everything for their children. For Rosie, having to repeat the story about her circumstances to new service providers, ECs and consultants recalls the trauma of the events she has been through. She can’t understand why she has to tell the story over and over, especially when she feels that they don’t really understand her or care, and impose requirements on her that don’t make sense.
Rosie describes being made angry by the system which has not helped her, and which causes many people she knows to suffer also. She said, that since she has attracted publicity for her circumstances, she has been contacted by hundreds of others who have similar traumatic events in their lives, who are seriously depressed or who have turned to drugs or alcohol as ways of dealing with the overwhelming sense of despair and lack of self-worth associated with their position
Rosie wants to work, as she realises the poverty she has endured over the years has been bad for her health, and bad for her kids, who she senses are acutely aware they have not had the same things other kids have. Since starting her new job over a week ago, Rosie’s priority was to get her youngest son some golf clubs, so that they could get out onto the course on the weekend, and do things together, sharing time that they weren’t able to when he was younger and she was working.

The last six years have been a nightmare for Rosie. After having left a violent relationship and working long hours to make ends meet while combining low paid work with Newstart, then a serious car accident leaving her in chronic pain and in need of rehabilitative care, becoming homeless and living in a car. Her life has been made more challenging by the constant hassling of employment services and Centrelink, who she feels have not acknowledged her circumstance.

Rosie is very angry about what she has experienced with employment services, who seem to think her engagement with them is taking place in a vacuum in which nothing else in her life has significance. Her concern with maintaining the safety of her children, especially after having been compelled to leave them exposed to the risks that are the stuff of every parent’s nightmares, fuels her now to challenge employment services and Centrelink about the way they treat her. She says she has been so badly treated by the system she is not afraid, and has nothing to hide and wants the world to know what has been going on so she can help others not to have to go through what she has.