Worker stories

I've been working on interviews with workers to provide another perspective on job seeker resistance and some more understanding of what it is like to work in employment services.
The three stories I am publishing on this blog provide a perspective on how employment services have changed since the transition from Job Network to Job Services Australia, a story which makes for depressing reading.
Read  Jo, Sarah and Barbara's stories.
I am enjoying undertaking more Bourduesian style analysis on the way inter-subjective mediation influences welfare exchange outcomes and have added my reflections on the worker's experience here. The significance of this is that it adds depth to our understanding of what occurs in service encounters and what other factors are influencing the outcomes besides policy makers' intents!
Unfortunately, the analysis to date indicates that (mis)recognition is such as significant problem with employment services design, both in the way system rules have been designed not to accommodate the diverse needs and interests of job seekers, and in the harsh and punitive compliance that employment service workers are compelled to enforce which are detrimental to achieving engagement with the people who are most in need of assistance. Read the analysis here.
I am nearing the completion of data collection (i.e interviews) so if you have views you would like represented here please get in touch with me s9502268@student.rmit.edu.au.

6 more stories

There are six new stories this entry all with quite different perspectives on the welfare system.  For all the people in this recent round of interviews the theme of conflict between their preferences and what they are required to do by employment services recurs.  By being classified as job seekers they are indiscriminately exposed to participation requirements and treatments by employment services agencies they find at best unhelpful, and generally patronising, demeaning and demoralising.  

 For all of these participants, various forms of capital (economic, social, cultural) enable and constrain their capacity to shape their own destinies and make choices that align with their preferences.  The degree to which their preferences are recognized and validated in their service exchanges directly impacts on the level of empowerment they have within the rules and economy of welfare to work. It is remarkable how in most part, the participants constantly talk about being square pegs being thumped into round holes, a finding about employment services that is hardly new yet which keeps being reproduced at every iteration of the contract.

I am currently interviewing workers whose stories will shed light on another side of the story, what it is like trying to work with the rules of the employment services system and how this impacts on their relationships with their un/underemployed clients.  The analysis from these interviews will explore how the square peg round hole phenomenon is reproduced through the practices workers are compelled to implement and the personal conflict this creates when worker values do not align with those of the “system”.

The latest stories from people subjected to the rules of welfare to work include:

Laura: A highly articulate and educated woman who has eschewed welfare because of the compliance and surveillance she considers dehumanising

Annie: A parent who has worked in skilled administrative jobs who had been forced to return to an abusive relationship because she cannot afford to live independently on Newstart after becoming homeless, who finds employment services make her jump through hoops but do no actually assist her in any useful way

Claudia: A highly qualified widow who has had an extremely confusing and frustrating time with her employment services agency who does not support her efforts to find work in her chosen field

Lisa: A student who has been grappling with finding seasonal work to accommodate her participation requirements and student workload, while also managing the demands of the employment service agency for her to take work

Cari: Another student who has found treatment by employment services to be degrading and demeaning; who has undertaken work for the dole

Jill: A young person who has been experiencing the transition from school to employment, and having difficulty managing the paperwork to apply for Austudy and Newstart especially because of she has reported income from baby-sitting work which classifies her as  self-employed.

Two more stories and some theoretical reflections

Today I'm posting two more stories, this time two men of different ages. Desmond is an artist in his mid 60s whose story illustrates how people from the creative community interact with welfare to work while they attempt to eke out their living as artists.  His story highlights the importance of classification struggles over definitions of what is valid and invalid activity and how this can be reflected in the judgements and treatments of the different workers he encounters.

Classification struggles have become an interesting preoccupation of this research, given they provide insight into how conflicts over valid and invalid social roles are acted out in social interactions. This theme was identified as having a strong presence in the analysis of the parents who formed the first tranche of interviews, and has also proven useful for understanding the dynamics of welfare service exchanges for the latest batch of interviews.

If you are interested in reading more about these see my latest theoretical reflections.

Matthew's story is similar in some respects to Kevin's - he is a younger man who has been suffering from a mental health condition which for him has only been recently diagnosed. I have posted the analysis of this below as I think it warrants a read as it helps to illustrate a phenomenon that I believe is prevalent under Workfare and which causes so much disruption  His story shows that being subject to workfarist type policy is unhelpful and damaging for people who are pre-diagnosis; or who have been diagnosed but don't qualify for exemptions, and/or are otherwise finding it difficult to adjust the social expectation to be "functional". Matthew's experience highlights another classification struggle over whether people with mental health conditions are worthy or unworthy of welfare.  As eligibility rules for DSP continue to become harder to meet, we can expect to see a lot more people like Matthew struggling to get by in the labour market. 

Another final important point Matthew raised is how difficult it is for people suffering from mental health conditions to access services and to create the right kinds of linkages between services to support their needs. Even Matthew who has worked as youth worker found it difficult to navigate service complexity and advocate in his own interests, it is like, as he said expecting someone with broken legs to run a marathon.

Analysis of Matthew

Matthew’s case study provides an interesting example of an individual who has the education and work experience (cultural capital) to observe his own experiences of welfare coercion with a significant degree of detachment and reflexivity.  He has recently become aware that he has been trapped in a destructive cycle because of a mental health condition that has recently been diagnosed and for which he is seeking support.

Matthew’s experience draws into focus another classification struggle for people on welfare over the status of mental health conditions. While severe and permanent psychiatric disabilities can qualify people for DSP if they don’t have the capacity to care for themselves and others, people with less severe mental health issues will not quality and be placed on NS. 

Pre-diagnosis Matthew experienced cycling in and out of employment on a conveyer belt of self-destruction. As he notes Newstart is so low, and the prospect of dealing with employment services was so distasteful that he does anything he can to avoid going to them.

I always with Newstart, I know you get 3 months, so I kind of breathe for two weeks, and then like hustle for jobs then I get a job because I was kind of stressed about and scared of having to deal with employment agencies, and it’s kind of like I have a fear of them, or don’t understand them, or can’t be bothered, or you know what, I don’ want to be forced into some shit job that’s going to deteriorate my mental state.

Matthew’s strategies are those of avoidance because he does not believe there will actually be any help provided to him and that he will be forced to take a crap job. He opts out by finding jobs on his own before he is fully coerced by employment services into finding jobs he knows will be even worse for his mental health than those he finds on his own.

The few times that Matthew reached the point where he had to use a JSA he reports it as not being very helpful. 

I had the feeling like I’d cycled in out of work a few times, but this isn’t what I need right now, and even if I did, I didn’t think this was going to help me. It was probably a bit arrogant, but if you don’t need help you don’t need help, if you do you do.  

He continued to explain how he felt JSA was a waste of resources because he was not accessing the services he really needed, while he was in the state of limbo:

You’re in limbo you can’t do anything. Yeah that’s the cycle I’ve been in for a quite a while and even though I’ve got that exemption it’s kind of like, oh well, that’s good enough for the moment I don’t have to worry about employment services busting my chops.

I just want to make the point, being in out of employment with mental health, I could have been highly employable highly work ready and the fact that I didn’t get a job slowly chipped away and I was little bit aware of this

I’ve been aware that I’ve taken that on in my own action which I guess is little bit lack of faith in the system then, that these people can’t assist me because I’ve been to uni because I’ve done this and that, that’s my core belief, that kind of sucks a bit because I’ve learnt now, if you give people like myself the right assistance, we will flourish so it’s like losing the resource.

This area of policy where there is greyness on definitions regarding mental health diagnosis and the severity of effect on “functioning” is not often scrutinised.  His explains for example how he knows others who go down to Centrelink and kick up a fuss, who get better treatment, something that he does not feel like doing himself.

But if I was in the red, and went down to Centrelink bang bang bang here you go. So I couldn’t get assistance because I was kind of OK, but kind of not, so that’s why I kind of had the thing where I just go and get myself a job and what are they ES going to do?

Matthew’s story shows how difficult and destructive life can be for people in similar situations to his.  The unhealthy cycle he was trapped in was made work by the poverty of Newstart which exacerbated his mental health condition, as if it is actually disabling:

Is surviving on Newstart difficult?

Yeah extremely difficult, I am lucky, over last 3 years, this is how I’ve survived, NS, bits and pieces of work, basically only spending money on bare necessities

Not buying anything for myself, like clothes and stuff, like a tree stripped of branches and only keeping the trunk going, and borrowing money off my parents, and using my credit card, and living very unhealthy situations, because they were cheap, which exarcerbated the mental health

Yeah definitely, so you think living on low income has exacerbated mental health stuff?

Yeah it has just because it makes you make life choices makes you have to make life choices that aren’t healthy…

Matthew also described how he saw the low rate of Newstart as being like giving starving people rice, when they need a meal, causing them permanent malnutrition. He clearly sees the rate of Newstart being set so low as a form of punishment.

So they’re doing it it because they want to get people off social security by making life harder, its like saying, I don’t think you deserve $50k a year, it’s not realistic but, I don’t know, it’s just a fall out of being punished for being unemployed or underemployed, it’s just as hard, so yeah, there is definitely..

So you feel like the way it is set is about punishing people?

Yeah that kind of attitude, boot straps, why have they set it so low? There has to be a principle of why they’ve set it so low: that its dead money, it’s not going anywhere so we want to spend as little as we can - or is it connected to that idea that they’re not really working, they’re not being productive they’re not paying tax so we should give them anything.

I think there’s a lot of undercurrents

I think that’s Australia culture as well

Anti-bludging?

Anti- Bludging, Yeah I think that tars everyone with the same brush, and there are people like myself who are under and unemployed with health issues, so everyone’s not the same but they’re treating them the same. You can’t have one philosophy for such a complex thing, my feeling is they’re just thinking it’s too hard, why help the bottom, what’ the bottom gonna give us. I think it’s the government and our culture, we talk ourselves up as really generous I don’t think Australia’s that good for the resources we have, and I say this because I’ve worked in community services, with poor people so I have a pretty broad understanding of this.

Being on Newstart has involved him in racking up debt, and like many other of the research participant, being dependent on the goodwill of friends and family to help him out. The social networks of care and support that many people on welfare rely on are well documented by (Bodsworth 2010),  and it is often the immediate families who shoulder the additional burden of welfare that’s not met by the state/

Struggles for recognition of mental health

While he shows and speaks of high level of resilience in being able to negotiate between welfare agencies, something he has to do a lot of when he applies for the DSP, he speaks about how challenging it has been

I have I found their approach at Centrelink to someone has health issues, they treat you exactly the same as someone who didn’t, but you’ve still got to do this it’s kind of like, there wasn’t much understanding, how hard it is when you’re in that mental state.

Like many other people, Matthew identifies childhood trauma to be the cause of his mental health condition.  It has had a deleterious impact on his capacity to achieve in life that has only recently been able to recognise as having become a vicious cycle.  Recognition of his mental health condition continues to be something he struggles for, battling both unsympathetic GPs, and a maze of service providers he has to negotiate when as he describes It’s like:

Exceptionally [challenging] it’s like someone with broken legs now you’ve got do a fun run, or a marathon when you’ve got broken legs, when your brains not functioning that well and it’s the tool you need most, and I’m extremely resilient, people say it’s a skill, but I don’t think it is if you are forced to be

Relief and recognition

Admitting that he is unwell has brought Matthew relief, he no longer has to conform to the ideal of “functionality” a state he has been aware he has not been achieving for some time as he has cycled in and out of work after one incident or another.

His is an interesting portrait of what happens to people who are pre-diagnosis, or don’t feel quite “normal” but who are not ill enough to get off the “hampster wheel” of Workfirst. 

His experience is of “disconnection” or as he describes it, an affective state, where he is not in control of what is happening in his life and is going through the motions. He describes this experience of life in limbo, where it is like someone playing a guitar strumming the strings, but not really playing the instrument.

Even Matthew, who is talking to a psychiatrist about getting a second diagnosis to support an application for DSP when he did not have enough points, faces only being able to get an activity exemption and there will be an uphill battle before the system recognises provides him with a permanent exemption of DSP if he gets it.

However, knowing his mental health has afforded him a higher ranking in the JSA stream system provides Matthew with higher levels of confidence that when he does go back into service he will be treated more appropriately than he had been in the past.

I have highest stream of assistance for JSA, stream 4, so that made me feel a bit happier because it’s more appropriate to my circumstances.

You said you will be seeing stream 4. Are you curious?

I’m not too worried they’ll get my issues and it will be kind of more focused, that would be really good and Ill be really grateful that, that’s how I feel about that coming up, it shows that in my case that they’ve done something right

But you had to get to really bad place to get there?

Yeah I had to get to a really bad place, which and I had to get help from resources outside of Centrelink to get help from Centrelink it would be great if they could integrate that. You get really good at navigating at resources I’ve been taught that from really young, so I m really good at it, so I imagine if someone doesn’t have those skills it’s really difficult

I didn’t trust the system that’s how I felt, and it’s so hard to explain, at least you have something concrete with diagnosis, how can you explain, it’s so hard to explain

Not only does he find it hard to explain to me as well, he describes how hard it has been to explain himself to other service providers including Centrelink, and laments the lack of connectedness between social supports supposed to be there for people in crisis.

Symbolic violence

The symbolic violence of misrecognition is present for Matthew, when he talks about feelings of failure and the compulsion he has experienced to be functional.  It has taken a full scale breakdown for him to realise there was something wrong that needed recognition. His experience prior to this is one of feeling like there was something wrong, but something he has only recently been able to articulate and seek help about.

Matthew describes an outlook similar to that of Kevin, where he feels a sense of helplessness. He feels helpless only in his case he describes how his resilience has enabled him to keep going to connect himself with services that many others would not have been able to. This resilience is derived from his  cultural capital, he knows the community sector because of his work as youth worker, and because he has had support from family and friends (his social capital).

Like Kevin there is tension between what he feels are social expectations about work ethic, and his own state of helplessness.  He expresses a strong work ethic and belief in the rewards of work, but also see that any old crap job such as that he might get through employment services, would exacerbate his mental state.  He knows this because he has tried it and it hasn’t worked out. 

Conflict between values

There is a feeling of ambivalence about himself, where he judges himself from the position he assumes is social attitudes that his negative towards people on welfare, and his own preferences not to be exploited, that appears in his interview, where he appears both to blame himself and find ways to explain how to exonerate himself, that he finds incredibly hard to explain. 

Yeah, I’ve and I’ve had massive issues with work in my 20s, and also as well, it’s more personal I don’t want to a job that I don’t want to do, not because I’m lazy, but because it will exacerbate my mental health, and then I’m just going to go in a cycle, but its more I’m struggling to identify how much it’s because of that because it’s complex and me personally.

Researching rules for better outcomes

When asked whether he would be interested in seeing the impairment tables, which prescribe how high a score you need in order to qualify for DSP, Matthew did not show a high level of interest. He says he is an honest guy, and not interested in manipulating the system, as a feels he has observed others doing. There are therefore limits to the benefits that can be obtained from researching rules that are sometimes a result of the motivation of individuals to pursue strategies to optimise their outcomes.

And then what do you do (after the exemption?)

I’ve started getting my next application for DSP together and ideally as well, I feel like want to be working a bit so I don’t have to rely, I cant rely on Centrelink that’s the feeling overall I get,which is

They make you wait a year now as well for DSP, certainly if you feel you have entitlement stick with process

Im just gonna stick with it, and fuck it, what can you do?

He says he does not undertake research to help optimise his outcomes because his focus is on everyday living which he said he is already finding challenging enough. This suggests the relationship between the capacity to research welfare rules is dependent on the pre-condition of a kind of security

Symbolic value

Matthew is conscious that the symbolic value (prestige) of his qualifications affords him a position in the eyes of Centrelink workers he describes as looking up, rather than down at.  Once they have read his file, he says he thinks they become confused about who he is, because on paper he appears to fit the mould of success, that does not correspond to their mental assumptions about who people are on welfare are.

In describing this treatment Matthew is reflecting on the symbolic categorisations he assumes are occurring in other people’s judgements about people.  He knows he doesn’t fit with their assumptions, and also observes, that whether they view him as being “higher or lower” than themselves, that these again are only assumptions because they do not really know him.

Symbolic recognition and workers

Symbolic recognition is a two way street and often people don’t feel workers are actually qualified enough to help them:

…and I remember thinking you know the girl who was trying to help had just started in the job, she was like 19, and I’ve been at work for years in this industry, I thought you can’t help me, I thought kind of arrogant

I felt like a bit kind of like, the help wasn’t specific, I felt like it wasn’t going to help me, just something that I wanted to do, and I was also aware that I was OK, and there doesn’t seem to be much impression of them helping me, and if you in the stream, at that point stream 1 ready to work sweet kind of thing

Variations in offices and treatments

Matthew observed great variation in the ambience of Centrelink offices he attributed to the higher levels of complexity and stress involved for both workers and clients. He learns to avoid the more chaotic offices in favour of those that are more “chilled” because he experience has shown him he will get a better outcome, and the experience will be more stressful for himself if he adopts this strategy.

I am big on the office, so I’ve deliberately gone to one’s that are nice, so I’ve deliberately gone to the ones that are, to be honest, certain offices, to be honest, it’s like, you know, so hectic

Where’s the worst one you’ve been?

X places,  and let’s be real that’s a lot to do with the clientele

How much stress their under?

How much stress their under, the socio-economic status, levels of poverty in that area

So where less poverty it’s calmer?

Yeah and I think you get better service so therefore those areas they have to resource  a lot more highly.

He also observes different judgements are made by different workers depending on judgemental or authoritarian they are.  Furthermore he finds the quality of services at Centrelink are hampered by the levels of confusion they experience because of the frequent changes to rules.

One of the experiences when I came out of uni I was on student payment, one of things I’ve found they’ve changed the policies so much, often Centrelink staff are confused because policies changing so much, so I remember getting my student allowance, they kept telling me something different, it was really frustrating.

The outcome for people like Matthew is an experience of Workfirst that is frustrating, unhelpful and that through their failure to treat people according to their individual needs, actually contributing to make the causes of welfare dependence worse.

Today I added more theoretical reflections and Kevin's Story.
The theoretical reflections focus on analysis of the experiences of the research participants from a perspective in which the interests of employment services users are suboordinated to the interests enforced through the rules of the system.  These interests are particularly at odds for those who have the strongest capability of articulating their own interests, such as the parents.

It raises a question I shall be further analysing - how can employment services be designed to reflect the interests of a diverse range of individuals, some of whom may not be able to articulate a strong sense of their own interests.

Individuals like Kevin for example, who have suffered ill health that has interfered with the tertiary education and the capacity to pursue the career he would have preferred.  There are many people like Kevin in the employment services system, who don't have a strong sense of their own interests, but who also find employment services do not seem like they are actually there to help them.

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.

First stories from parents

The first participants for this research were recruited via the Single Parents Action Group (SPAG) Facebook group. In what follows I have extracted some of the key points from their stories they have generously made available to this research and for the purpose of this blog.

As of 1 January 2013, all the remaining 100,000 parents who had been able to stay on parenting payment after the 2006 Welfare to Work changes, were transferred to Newstart if their youngest child had turned 8 years old (see ACOSS briefing for more background). On SPAG, women had been sharing stories of the hardships they had experienced since the Parenting Payment – NewStart changes. They also shared stories of the strategies they had adopted to cope with the loss of in many cases what amounted to over $100 per week (taking into account the impact of changes to taper rates between the two payments).

Others on SPAG were interested in recruiting people for a television documentary being planned which would capture the darkest impacts of the changes such as the stories of those who had been forced into prostitution or other illicit activity as ways of avoiding the low paid trap.

One told harrowing stories of how they had been helping others by delivering food to homeless people, only to find women and children sleeping under bridges. The particular correspondent of this story, called out to the members of SPAG to unite to provide support for people at risk of losing their homes, so that the community could provide responses to problems the politicians wouldn’t.

There were also stories written by parents who had to work long hours and how this would mean, since they were in single parent families, the children would spend even less time with the only parent they had.

There were messages on the SPAG page from women trying to decide whether it would be better to use their last remaining money to put petrol in the car to go to work to earn money, or buy food so that her family did not have to go hungry again at night, and also about the related difficulty of applying for time off from work, in order to collect food or petrol stamps from the Salvos.

Leanne’s story - link to full story here

Leanne’s story illustrates how many of the parents who are now on Newstart have varied backgrounds. In her case she was married for 10 years before exiting a relationship from a partner who had a gambling addiction. Her newfound independence as a single parent initially on parenting payment meant she felt for the first time she was in control of her family’s finances, and that there was enough money to get by on. But then after a period when she was not on income support, Leanne needed to go back onto parenting payment, only to find the social policy rules had changed and that she was placed on Newstart, replete with the 15 hour participation requirements. Like others in this research, Leanne’s experiences of the system once she has been placed on Newstart are radically different to those of it previously when she had been on parenting payment.

The work she had already been undertaking at her children’s school was not recognised as ongoing because she was employed as a casual, and therefore did not satisfy her participation requirements. Leanne showed great initiative and perseverance to get her role at the school recognised especially by embarking on a traineeship in administration there, and eventually by getting the school’s employment contract to reflect the ongoing nature of the work. Unfortunately this initiative and capacity to work with the system to get the best results for herself, were once again affected by changes in the external environment (a school amalgamation) that caused the job to be terminated.

In order to satisfy her participation requirements Leanne was required to take a second job, meaning she would have to put her younger child in after care and give her son in year 7 a key to the house. Perhaps the most dramatic element of Leanne’s story is when she tells how her son, like as she observes, the other teenage children of the single parents in her neighbourhood, begins to truant and fall off the rails.

Then the ‘wheels fell off’. My eldest and his friends had been getting into serious trouble at school. What I noticed about the situation was the similarity in all our family situations. The children were all boys, all parents were low income earners, half had sole parents who were trying to work / study / volunteer and most of the children were the eldest sibling. I quit the second job after looking at risk and protective factors for psycho-social development in adolescents. The only risk factors I had any control over were – authoritive parenting and parental supervision. (Leanne)

Leanne felt compelled to quit the second job so that she could fulfil her parenting role, and found herself once more subjected to participation requirements. She reports finding her employment service agency unsympathetic to her situation, that she is forced to attend job club and other activities she is already over qualified for. They send her to job interviews she is too afraid to say no to attend, because of her fear of receiving participation reports. Her experiences of the bureaucracy of her reporting requirements is Kafka-esque to the point where she is afraid to correct mistakes she notices on their file, for fear of inducing more frustration for herself, and for the staff who serve her.

Leanne decided to enrol to train to become a community services worker a qualification she completed without support from employment services that satisfied her participation requirements. The sense of relief she expresses at no longer being subject to the employment services regime is palpable. She notes that the withdrawal of the pensioner education supplement affected her ability to be supported while she did this.

Financial uncertainty, hardship, and relying on the generosity of her friends and her social networks had enabled Leanne to get through these periods living on Newstart. Leanne counts herself lucky because she is paying off a mortgage that while still a significant drain on her meagre income, is not as high as the rents others in metropolitan locations must pay. However, there are costs of repairs and maintenance associated with being a home owner she finds it problematic to pay.

For Leanne, being on Newstart has increased her financial uncertainty, when situations she managed to negotiate backfired because of changes over which she had no control. These episodes of uncertainty speak of sorrow or sadness, like she is being abused or punished when she has not done anything wrong. In fact, what she had done was do everything she could do to have her skills, capabilities and needs recognised within the systems rules which seemed to frustrate her efforts at every turn.

Kelly’s story - link to full story here

Kelly is a sole parent whose youngest child turned 8 in the last quarter of 2012. Kelly decided to leave her job once her payment changed to Newstart so that she could avoid being caught in a low paid trap, meaning she would have to work more hours to cover her costs and spend less time with her daughter. She also decided to move to another area in the hope she could find a job that would better suit her commitments as a mother, and so that she could pay less rent by housesitting. Kelly said:

...that’s why I chose to leave my job, I wasn’t going to buy into that and work more hours, I’d rather modify my lifestyle and move somewhere more affordable so I could still be supported in what I needed in life - I’ve got a contact through a friend who has a one bedroom converted garage cabin place, we were living a 3 bedroom, now we are going to live in a little cabin, and that won’t compromise our happiness, and I’ve rather do that than have that lifestyle than live in the 3 bedroom house where I was having to you know not see my daughter very much because of that and work long hours (Kelly).

Kelly had experienced an employment service agency in a rural area who she had found helpful prior to her participation requirements becoming mandatory. Once she was activated by the 8 year old child rule, she began to visit an agency in another district where she had moved, which was a $32 and 1 hour journey away.

Unfortunately for Kelly, she had moved to an area where there were few jobs that matched her qualifications. The support she had requested from her employment services provider to help her update her resume was overlooked through a persistent focus on participation requirements and compliance.

When she reported not having been well, she explains she was treated badly by the receptionist who told her she would have to get a medical certificate or she would be reported for a participation failure meaning she could lose some of her payment. Kelly commented on how the focus on compliance here diminished her needs as a human being which were as she was recovering from an illness to be treated with some sympathy. The handling of her illness while she was also caring for her sick child again reinforces the misrecognition of the role of carer it was her natural priority to fulfil.

Being threatened with participation failures made Kelly feel bullied by her employment provider, and misunderstood while her needs for support went unanswered. Like Leanne, Kelly had voluntarily upgraded her qualifications and had not received any support from the employment service to do this and found the withdrawal of the pensioner education supplement made it impossible for her to study.

Her experience with this agency was so unpleasant and unhelpful, she “resigned herself” to moving away to another area, so that she could did not have to work with that employment consultant who she felt had treated her unfairly.

Kelly made conscious decisions to choose a lifestyle that would enable her spend the time with her 8 year old daughter she feels is the right things for a parent to do. She is aware she is lucky in this respect and that not everyone is able to find ways to live frugally enough to do this.

I know that I can make ends meet by going back to basics, but not everyone is able to live like that. I guess this makes me fairly unique that I have learnt how to live back to basics and feel confident that I can do that, whereas a lot of women don’t have the material independence to survive like that and need to take on jobs to keep their living standards at a level like that.

Implications for social policy

While ending long term welfare dependence was the aim of the welfare to work policy changes, it affects all parents equally regardless of their history of benefit receipt. However, the broad brush approach, sometimes known as tough love, has begun to reveal some defects of major significance for social policy makers.

Firstly, many of the women affected by the Parenting Payment – Newstart changes had already been working (about 60% - see article by Eva Cox about this). The changes have made it more difficult for them to survive by balancing work with caring, to the extent they have been forced to make radical changes to their circumstances which in some cases, like Kelly’s, have actually made them more welfare dependent.

Secondly, the capacity to exercise autonomy, self-efficacy and choice, have all been severely impacted by the changes once they have been exposed to the rules of activation and the punitive nature of the employment services compliance system. The focus on compliance rather than employment assistance services has introduced high levels of antagonism as the service user comes to mistrust the service and the client worker relationship. The approach has denied access to the basic services that might have enabled them to find suitable work, and provide social and economic continuity for their families.

Yeah, I just think of like they’ve cut our payments back and the'y’re making us see these people and they’ve got all these offices, and how much money is going into these services is it worth the output, and like, if there’ve got 5 offices in one street and you’re paying rent on all those buildings and ECs in there, why can’t they just pay us back the money and just give us back the money and give us one centre to go to, and I know some people need more support than I do, but I’m not one of those and to be forced through this system it’s just like putting a round peg in a square hole, it just doesn’t fit. (Kelly)

Employment services have been experienced not as environments in which they have been enabled to participate to negotiate or construct roles and identities that align with their capabilities or preferences, but as institutions which actively prevent that from occurring.

They put everyone into the same basket, it’s not saying well do you need help, not grading people in degrees of help they need, or individualising treatment according to what sort of help the need, well not treatment, support, the support I need is a good computer with office so I could do a resume, and if there was someone there who could quickly look over my resume and make suggestions, that would have been ample support, I think in the degrees they are trying to over support us,, and it comes across as harassment, because I’m educated I can do this sort of stuff if given the resources and where are these computers where I can sit down and do my resume. (Kelly)

These single parents have exercised choices they believe are rational for example by not getting into low paid jobs with high number of hours, but which have also exacerbated levels of disadvantage they experience, increased their level of poverty, and made them become vulnerable and dependent on welfare. As Kelly said:

I know of a lot of women there who don’t have that ability who are being forced into low paid jobs who are really stressed and worried about what’s happening to their kids while they are not home, and just keeping on top of everything they have to do.

Socially beneficial activity such as helping the school with NAPLAN exams, and using this as a venue for networking for potential future work were not accepted as valid forms of activity for the 15 hour activity rule, even though it is known the 80% of people find their next job through friends and word of mouth (DEEWR 2013).

The cases I have encountered to date have also indicated the complex reasons why these parents are doing it on their own, not always by choice and because of intolerable factors in the relationships they have left. While the myth of the welfare dependent and morally deficient underclass informs policy assumptions about sole parents, the facts are that many of the women in this research show extraordinary resilience and entrepreneurialism in their efforts to secure conditions of employment that are safe for themselves and their families. This means being at home to care for their children after school.

However, few jobs are available in the professions for which they are qualified – yet they are forced to apply for and take up jobs to meet their participation requirements in lower paid and insecure roles. Meanwhile they are subject to ongoing supervision by employment services while actively attempting to find jobs that reflect their capabilities as this final quote from Leanne indicates.

So presently I am attending weekly ESP ‘training’ sessions where I am advised on how to look for work as I am considered one of the most employable job seekers. Really!? I am also working approx. one day a week enjoying doing Project work for a school in partnership with our local health department and local university. I have also picked up another short term role for this term facilitating two orientation sessions at our local TAFE provider. I’m spending at least two full days per week writing job applications, addressing key selection criteria. Oh, and you know, I’m also caring for my children! (Leanne)

ABOUT THIS BLOG

This blog will track the progress of the research I am doing as part of a PHD at RMIT.

The aim of the research is to explore the ways people who use employment services find the system, especially when they might not agree with the nature of their participation requirements and feel like they have been punished because of this.

 The analysis and stories that are mentioned on this blog have been published with the permission of the research participants.

If you have any questions about the research or would like to get involved, please contact me via this blog or email s9502268@student.rmit.edu.au

The material on this page is copyright of Simone Casey and may be reproduced only with the permission I will seek from the research participants.