Outcomes and Measurements Project: Interview with Multiple Disadvantages Support Worker

This is an interview with someone who works as a Multiple Disadvantages Senior Support Worker exploring a series of questions about outcomes and measurements aiming to get nuanced views from people about the bureaucracies they face in their job roles.

Below is a transcript of the conversation which has been anonymized.  Special thanks go to the person who took the time to talk about their thoughts and experiences.  This is a part of an action research project which examines the impacts and effects of outcomes and measurements culture on complex jobs and the lives of people: https://www.raggeduniversity.co.uk/outcomes-and-measures/


 

Alex Dunedin: All right, so can you talk about your role and relationship to care work please

Interviewee: To care work…

Alex Dunedin: To the work you do

Interviewee: Yeah it’s more in support work and so we work with people in the community who have got masses of barriers whether it’s physical, emotional, financial. So, you know, clients get referred to us with an array of problems – could be domestic violence, could be addictions, it could be that they’ve been in jail for a long time, it could be that just they’ve been in a low-paid job and they now feel it’s time they want to look for something else but they don’t know how to do it because the whole employment market has changed and it’s geared up for younger people; it’s not geared up for people that are – I don’t know – 40 and 40 plus, it’s just not.

So we help them. We do a one-to-one work and it’s all needs-led and it goes at a speed that the client can deal with, so some weeks will be very productive, other weeks there won’t be anything done; it’s just about listening, you know, to what the issues could be.

 

Alex Dunedin: How long have you been in in this area of work ?

Interviewee: I have been in this area of work since 2000….

 

Alex Dunedin: Can you talk about the successes you’ve had in your support work.

Interviewee: There’s been a lot of successes but it’s been down to having the flexibility and the time to work with people. So we’re not short-term interventions, we’re supposed to be short-term interventions – six months – but we can ask for an extension but some of the clients I’ve had that have been really good successes I’ve been working with for two years because there’s, you know, as one thing gets eradicated another thing crops up and people aren’t used to having a linear life so then they start creating their own issues and…but eventually they start to see that, you know, this is quite good – quite like this life – so we’ve had more successes than failures but you know it all depends on what the need is…

…you know for addictions they have to be able to… – you know, we complete on all we want but it has to be down to the person that wants to change once you start want to change then we can start making helping make them changes happen but if they don’t want to then all we can do is make sure that they’re safe in what they’re doing and they’ve got the information.

We can’t make the choices all we can do is give them the information and then they make their own choices and we can help guide them to do them choices. So yeah, the successes have been good there’s been great job outcomes, there’s been houses that have been saved there has been, in my work, families that have not been broken up because we’ve managed to signpost them to Amber Mediation Service.

There’s been all sorts of stuff I can’t think of – I don’t know, I can’t think – when you’re doing it day to day you don’t think about it, you just do it; you’re not reactive, you’re proactive but you just do it. You know, you just learn to do it. I don’t know.

 

Alex Dunedin: Well, also in this, take the interview where you feel it needs to go; what’s important is to build up a realistic and true picture what you’re doing, the complexities, the subtle bits that are often missed and I think that’s what I’ve come to understand – a lot is not…

Interviewee: You can’t evidence a lot of it; you can’t evidence a lot of the work we do so it could be taking somebody just to the shops; could be going to the doctors with them; could just be taking them for a haircut or helping them find the money for a pair of trousers or taking them a food parcel along because you know they’ve no food, you know they’ve no money but they won’t ask so we just turn up with with food bags or we….

…We’re lucky because we can see their lives but from a distance so we don’t preempt what their issues are but because we’re in, we work within their lives with them and you build up a relationship you get to know them really, really well.

So things that people talk – we learn to read between the lines and see what we can do. So you, know it could be about, you know, the kids; the kids are going to school and you know the mum can’t focus at work because the kids are going to school but they’re getting bullied because they’ve no shoes or they’ve got the wrong type of shoes so what we try and do is find grants or money or things to sort of, you know, get them a pair of shoes and the kids are okay at school, mum’s settled at work, home life’s settled so it’s just the tiny, tiny things.

I had one lady a couple of weeks back, she had no beds for a kid so the two boys were sleeping with her; one of the boys had ADHD and the other boy was fine but she wasn’t getting any sleep because three of them were in a double bed – they’re quite big boys, one of them doesn’t sleep and she was then having to get up put them to school and then do a full day’s work.

So we just managed to get some money; fine – we had to research it and find a trust and we managed to get two beds so everybody’s sleeping a bit better so now she can concentrate at work and things like that. There’s been a lot of successes like that, it’s been good, it’s been good.

 

Alex Dunedin: Do the current systems of administration help you achieve these successes

Interviewee: No. We have to work with the system but around the system. So I know I’m quite lucky because I have a freedom – my boss trusts me so I have a freedom to do what I need to do because he knows I’ll still get the results. So the current sort of workload we have takes away some of the time because from the clients but it’s that catch 22 – if we don’t do the paperwork we can’t evidence the funding, if we can’t evidence the funding and there’ll be no service for the clients so we just have to do it, we just have to suck it and see and just get on with it. Yeah.

 

Alex Dunedin: So can you talk about the difficulties of measuring the outcomes of your work

Interviewee: Well the outcome’s of our work you can’t measure; you can measure the hard outcomes because you can evidence it – like if people get into work, people sustaining work and people, you know, setting up a debt repayment scheme and things like that but you can’t evidence…

…nobody’s interested in the soft outcomes of what actually makes that journey – and I hate that terminology – what makes that journey work and get to the end because they’re just interested in the hard outcomes because then, like my funders, they’ll send that to the government so my stats go to my procurement team, the procurement team send it up and the government are happy because they’re like ‘oh well, that’s another 40 people off the dole queue or 40 people in college or…’, so they’re off my stats. So they’re not interested in how we did that they just want to know what the end result is; that’s as simple as that.

 

Alex Dunedin: Can you explain to me what a hard outcome is and the soft outcome is ?

Interviewee: Okay, so in my service we have my contract; I have, I’m quite lucky because I can sort of plan out my own service because I’ve been doing it that long. So my funder is really, really good and she said to me ‘Right, what is it you can do because you’re one person doing this and this is what we need to do’

So I’m lucky; I can give the numbers myself but my the funding comes from a specific fund; so it’s called the Flexible Support Fund and the Challenge Fund and the Employability Support Fund – so all the names are around employability so there has to be some employability outcomes, so that could be getting somebody into a full-time job, a part-time job; it could be sustaining for four weeks 12 weeks and 18 weeks – so I have to evidence all that with wage slips.

So a lot of my clients get into work and then just say cheerio because that’s it that’s all they wanted but I have to keep chasing them for wage slips which is a pain because they’ve got what they need, they don’t need the support anymore, that’s all they came for and I’m just like ‘Well, I’m really sorry can you send it or…’ and it’s an awful place to be but I have to have it to evidence it.

Another hard outcome could be getting somebody into training, vocational training or just employability training so that could be anything from fork lift training, bricklaying and IT skills and then you’ve got the other ones which are cooking classes, budgeting skills but all this has to be evidenced so then I have to go and try and find a service that can do it so my client can afford to do it; and then I have to say can I have a letter to say that they’ve gone to your course, can they have a letter to say they’re engaging with your course, can they have a letter to say that they’ve finished the course, and it’s constantly just chasing evidence

…and everybody… so there’s 50, 52 services in Edinburgh; five services work with people who are 25 and over. The other agencies all work with youth (16 to 22 year olds) so they’re all chasing the same people, the same outcomes, but they get money for incentives so they can say ‘if you bring me that waist up I’ll give you 40 quid because that service is getting 100 quid’, where we can’t do that…

…so for my service I have to build upon the relationship that I’ve made with the client because in Edinburgh the kids are worth more than the adults so it’s… but everybody’s chasing the same thing so if you can get one kid who’s worth about eight outcomes to different services – so all they’re doing is they’re not even passing him round the services for the client – for his needs they/re passing him for their own needs. It’s all about that.

Alex Dunedin: So how does that work when people are passing them ? Do outcomes get shared ?

Interviewee: No. No. So for me I sent an email around to all the services saying there’s a pipeline in Edinburgh; it’s called the Strategic Pipeline, Employability Pipeline; so it goes from one to five – so I would be clients from zero to two; so these are the clients with like a lot of barriers, a lot of issues, addictions and then you’ve got people who at stage three say they are job ready they’ve just got a few things like time management or presentation skills to sort out.

Then you’ve got four and five; so everybody wants three fours and fives because they are job ready so the job outcomes pay more; so they all want them. Where me and [my colleague] work with all the clients at the front, so my job is – and [colleague’s] job is – to take people, try and get them to address the barriers in six months, and then pass them over to a stage three provider who then bounces them into work.

That would be ideal if there was services to bounce them into but there’s nothing. Unless – so there’s… – out of the four services for adults you have to offend in backgrounds for two; you have to have mental health for the third and you have to just be claiming Job Seekers Allowance for the fourth. If you’re on the work programme nobody’ll take you.

Yeah, it’s a mess, an absolute mess, but luckily for me and [my colleague] we can do what we need to do, you know I mean, so what we do is we work around the ‘Joined Up for Jobs’ (www.joinedupforjobs.org); so the procurement team started up this ‘Joined Up for Jobs’ which is the 52 services in Edinburgh.

People are supposed to pass people on through the system along the pipeline but nobody’s doing that because if they move them that means they’re going to lose outcomes so what they do ? They sit on people – so like this week I’ve moved four people along the pipeline; so one lady has gone to Remploy because she needed supported employment.

I couldn’t give it, I can’t do it so I moved her through so that was an outcome for me because I moved her through to a stage three provider – you understand what I mean ? It was a specialist thing that I couldn’t do so it’s no use me sitting with her and saying ‘Yeah I can do this and I can…’ because I just couldn’t do it but some – a lot of – organizations will sit on her and not move her in case she gets a job.

So then this client starts getting that, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy – ‘I’m useless I’m not getting interview; I’m not getting a job; I can’t cope with this and….’, but the agency’s like ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll see in about six weeks time, don’t worry about it, we’ll see what we can do. Yeah I’ll see in six weeks time’.

So instead of passing them on to agents that can help them they’re just sitting with them so at the minute in Edinburgh there’s a complete halt on any movement so I’ve just done a report to my funders highlighting that saying I have referred people out, I’ve sent an email around saying ‘I am not an outcome based service, if there’s an outcome you can have it but just bring the people through the service’. Nothing.

So where are all the people going with offending backgrounds, addiction backgrounds, homeless backgrounds? Where are they all going because me and [my colleague] certainly aren’t getting them, so we don’t know, we don’t know.

 

Alex Dunedin: You mentioned a procurement team. So I’d like to know more about the procurement team and process

Interviewee: I don’t know that much about the procurement process but what happens is, every year the government say ‘right we have got’ – I don’t know – ’30 million to help people get back into work and to help address the welfare system’. So what they do then, they get the 52 services – there used to be more but they’re culling them.

So what happens is they get the 52 and so they look at the reports and they go ‘Well…we gave them a target of 50 people but they’ve only managed to work with 20; they’re not doing the job so we’ll give them six months funding. Edinburgh Cyrenians [cyrenians.scot] well they’ve done what we asked them to do so they’ll get full funding. Four Square [www.foursquare.org.uk], oh they’ve always been around we’ll give them double’

There’s no rhyme or reason to how this money is…. So for me I’ve just got, last year, got three year funding but it was cut by a quarter to what I’ve had previously. So when I first started it used to be every six months we got funding – so we had to put in a tender every six months. Then it went to yearly and then in the end we’re just like ‘oh, you know what…’ – so they’ve just given me three years funding but if I don’t meet my targets, probably next Christmas, they could pull that money and just shut me down.

They’ve just done it with ‘Women onto Work’ (www.womenontowork.org), they’ve just pulled them and said you’re not doing what we asked you to do give us your money and they’ve just gone to the wall.

 

Alex Dunedin: And they were providing a valuable service…

Interviewee: …they’ve been going for 20 years, but saying that, the whole, again, the service itself imploded you know. There was a lot of internal wranglings and a lot of internal mess so I’m not really surprised they’ve gone to the wall but that’s just how easy it is to take the funding away

So every quarter now… so last week I had to send a report to say how many people…so I had to say how many people I’ve engaged with since July. So July to October how many people I have engaged with and how many outcomes I’ve got and then I have to give a case study but we’re lucky because I’ve always gone to….

My procurement officer is all right, she’s actually all right, and I’ve always been able to say to her look it’s not about the process it’s, about the people so don’t get me to tick boxes because I won’t do it. So she understands what I do, so she’s been my saving grace because, I mean I have gone out on a limb a few times and thought ‘you know that’s not what I’m supposed to do but hey ho’, and I’ve sailed close to the wind with the number of clients because I keep clients because it’s like you, you know, you probably should have been shot months ago but we could see you getting really near to the door of education and we’re like ‘No, we can’t, we can’t close it because if we close him that support he’s got will go then he might not even get to uni, so let’s keep going till he gets into uni.

So we’re lucky because we can argue that case and they know that what we do is about the quality of the work and not the quantity but there’s other procurement officers within Edinburgh City Council that are just awful – they’ll just pounce on you for anything.

So, so yeah, so every year every quarter you’ve got to evidence what you’ve done, how you’ve done it and then they’ll release a little bit more money, a little bit more money, a little bit more money. So, yeah, but I don’t really know; I mean, you know, I’ve been part of the process of when we’ve gone in we put the tender in about what we do, how we do it, and we had to give a whole drivel on this tender but then you don’t know if you’re gonna get…

…you don’t, I don’t, I’m under threat of redundancy every March because they leave it four weeks till the deadline, to let you know if you’ve still got a service or not. So I mean I’m safe now for the next three years-ish but there’s other services that are threatened redundancy for Christmas and the council dont bother, they dont bother

 

Alex Dunedin: And this comes, so the way you talk about the procurement team, is this Capital City Partnership ?

Interviewee: Right, yeah and there’s six of them there so there’s four procurement officers and then there’s a woman that comes around and does audits every two years or every year or whenever, they just drop in. Luckily I’m quite anal with my files so everything I’ve got is evidenced it’s all signed.

But there’s agencies that don’t, that just say they’re doing it, they don’t sign any paperwork, there’s no confidentiality clause is signed or anything; and they just pull money off you – they say ‘right all the money that you’ve got off that client give it us back’; they are quite strict, quite strict…

 

Alex Dunedin: How much time does all of this take ?

Interviewee: What, the report writing and stuff or ?

Alex Dunedin: Yeah, all the paperwork; roughly a percentage I guess

Interviewee: For me I just keep a note constantly; keep a note of everything I do so it’s not hard for me because I’m in charge of my service but if it was somebody else that was having to do it I’d have to go and chase them for the numbers but I do all my own. I put all my own figures on the database; I take it all off; I don’t verify anything until everything’s in my hand so I know what’s going on so it’s not a big deal for me but for big services where eight and nine, ten, workers, it could take forever, it could take forever.

 

Alex Dunedin: Can you think of helpful and unhelpful examples of bureaucracy in relation to your work

Interviewee: Yeah the criteria that the council set for working with different clients. So if you’ve been unemployed for two years nobody in the voluntary sector work with you. I’m supposed to work with you because the big the two contractors that got the work program off the government are claiming a lot of money from the government.

So what’s happening is, so like A4E (Action for Employment) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4e] and Indus [indusgroup.org] aren’t doing the work, so they’re not seeing clients for months on end so I’m picking up the clients and I’m doing their work, they’re claiming the money so it makes their success look really good.

So they, say for instance they’re getting £4000 for every client they get, I get £300 for every client I get and all the work I do. Well they get £14000 per client and then two grand per outcome. So Edinburgh City Council are going ‘no you can’t work with anybody on the work program’ because why should we do the government’s work for them ? But the end of the day these people still need help because the A4E’s and the Indus aren’t doing their jobs

So you still got people unemployed; so they stay with A4E and Indus for two years and then they’re back to JSA (Job Seekers Allowance) with no skills, they’ve just been left. So I’ve had clients that have been with these agencies for two years and had three meetings and then they get…so then when they come back from being, you know, the two years with the work program they come back to JSA and then they’re demonized because they’ve not got a job, so they’re deemed as useless and they’re put on a pile.

So it’s the criteria that Edinburgh Council set – so it’s the age group – so anybody sort of over 30 nobody’ll work with because they’re like ‘no they won’t get a job they’re too old now’. Apprenticeships are all aged at 19 year olds if you’re not 19 you’ve had it. If you’re going to college and you’re married you don’t get a bursary because it’s deemed that your partner should pay for you while you’re in education

Yeah so it’s all geared up not to help and we have to fight this daily, so you know, and if somebody wants to work they can’t afford to take a part-time job, they need 30 hours but then the jobs are being offered are under 10 hours a week or zero hour contract so it’s not worth the while.

So I’ve got a client just now he’s been forced to take a job with Royal Mail; he didn’t want it because it’s not enough hours. So…this is gonna totally knock off his housing benefit and everything. He didn’t want it, he still wants to work, he wants to work full-time. This job with the Royal Mail is 12 hours a week it’s going to cost him 11 pounds a week to get to work because it’s a night shift; then it’s only temporary over Christmas so in January he’s gonna have to claim and he’ll want Universal Credit…

That means he’ll go nine weeks with no money. He won’t be entitled to housing benefit neither for nine weeks so…he’s gonna accrue rent arrears and he doesn’t want to take this job but they told me if he doesn’t take it they’ll sanction him and they’re paying under the odds for money so post office staffing and agency staff would probably get eight pound an hour this guy’s getting six because the job center have provided the workforce.

 

Alex Dunedin: So the kind of language that Im hearing a lot, like this private sector leasing which mentions housing costs and housing benefit… now in dealing with support for clients have you encountered any problems or or do you find the private sector leasing particularly helpful ?

Interviewee: I don’t really deal with that, I only deal with once they’re in work so I only make sure that a change of circumstance is – you know – given to the housing office to make sure that there’s no overpayment and things like that. I’d refer them into homeless prevention.

I mean…I’ve got two of my clients are in PSL’s (Private Sector Leases) and they’re left there; they’re supposed to be – it’s supposed to be temp accommodation – they can be left there for seven years and they can’t move, you know, they can’t move to another flat or they can keep bidding but while they’re properly housed the council have got no duty of care because they’ve already provided you with housing. So I don’t really have much to do with them to be honest.

 

Alex Dunedin: Do you get a sense whether they’re affordable rents ?

Interviewee: No, most of my clients who are in private accommodation are having to get discretionary housing benefit to cover the rent to help, you know, pay for it; and that’s why they can’t take any other jobs apart from full-time jobs because they can’t afford the shortfall in between the cutting housing benefit and the low wages so it has to be full-time or nothing.

 

Alex Dunedin: How often do the funding and administration systems change and do they have continuity?

Interviewee: The funding for me; it used to be three streams of private funding and they used to be alongside Edinburgh City Council but all the private funding’s gone now because they only did it for a year just to get me off and running. So JP Morgan set me off running.

So for me my funding is con… you know, it is continuous and there is continuity but when my three years is up of this funding I don’t know, the whole landscape could have changed, it depends what the flavor of the month is so a couple years back it was all around women so all the funding went to women’s services

This last two years it’s all been for young people to a point now where there’s not enough young people in the city to go around, so something’s got to change. So this year when I stripped my service back and said ‘right well, it has to be for people that have got multiple issues, all of a sudden all the big boys that are doing nothing but taking all the money are going ‘oh yeah, yeah, we’ll work with them as well’, and they’re like well…

So, like Forth Sector [www.forthsector.org] now they have completely blanketed the city; every service you can think of Four Square [www.foursquare.org.uk] have covered it; they’re not doing their job but they’ve covered it and they’ve took all, a lot of, the funding from everywhere even though they’re not doing the job.

So what’s happening is clients are being parked, they’re claiming the money and then social work or the police or whatever coming to me and saying can we take this boy on he’s not even had a phone call from Four Square and he’s been with them now for four months but they’re just lying and ticking the boxes. So I’m hoping that the whole landscape will change in two to three years time, I don’t – I’m not holding my breath I think it’ll get harder to get funded.

 

Alex Dunedin: Do the funding structures allow you to plan long term ?

Interviewee: No. It’s all built on short-termism and you can see with the way the amount of money that they give you. I mean for me I’ve been fighting for another worker, now, so I’ve had two workers over the past seven years but both only on yearly contracts so it’s ended where it’s just me.

So when I’ve gone to my funders and said look I need another worker and they said there’s no money. So all I can do is plan from year to year because even though the need’s there the council is saying there’s no money so you can only plan – for me I only plan quarterly because I know how easy they can pull that money but most… like there’s top management plan on a yearly basis from year to year.

 

Alex Dunedin: So what difference does that make to the things you can do ?

Interviewee: I just continue but it doesn’t mean… I can’t expand so I’ve been the same for seven years and I’ve had to do everything I do on a shoestring so I’ve had to go and you know rob money from here or take money from there to try and get people to where they need to be but I can’t expand.

So other services can, like the young peoples services and homeless prevention, even they’re being shrunk but the young peoples services are all growing but you can only grow so much and then once you have stopped being flavor of the month – you know – that money will go so you have to reduce again; but for me, yeah, I need to expand but I can’t expand because there’s no more money, there’s no more money.

 

Alex Dunedin: So you feel you have the latitudes to implement the policies you feel are important ?

Interviewee: I don’t but I think the management team do, but once it comes to things like that I don’t really get involved. All I do is go to conferences and things and just get out there, get your face known, get your voice heard, let people know what you do.

So the policy, you know, things like that; I can do a little bit like today my funding officer, my procurement officer phoned me and she said to me can I use some of your case studies as part of the strategic thing to go to the government and I said ‘yeah that’s fine’ so I’ve had to sign a document to say that I’ve… because they’re all anonymized anyway… so I’m hoping some of the work I’ve done comes through the case studies and can implement, and just to show that it’s not all about the kids that are out there, you know; it’s about, you know, people that are over 30; there’s plenty of us out there but it’s just no help so I’m hoping that, you know… No… I don’t have a lot of input in policies.

 

Alex Dunedin: Are you able through existing structures to forge the connections with outside organizations that you think are important ?

Interviewee: Yeah, I always work with outside agencies that don’t get council funding because they’re easier to work with. So I work with the police; I can work with social work; I can work with National Health Service, even though they grind very, very slowly. It’s about the person, it’s not about the outcome.

So what we try and do is look at privately funded services around the city so anybody that’s not part of this ‘Joined Up For Jobs’ [www.joinedupforjobs.org] because they’re all doing the same thing, there’s nothing new; so what we try and do is look outside the box for other things that are coming up but more often than not the procurement team have got every angle covered. It’s very difficult to find anything new or in the, you know, sort of – I don’t know – anything fresh; out there it’s all the same.

 

Alex Dunedin: So can you just unpick that why is it tricky to work with organizations that have council funding ?

Interviewee: Because what happens is what we found is, for instance, I had a meeting the other day with two organizations that were out marketing so we said ‘yeah we’ll come and see what you can offer us’. Okay, so one said they work with young people 16 to 19; the other one works with offenders okay. Both were offering exactly the same thing and it was all classroom based so I was like ‘is there anything’ – you know, they were like…one said ‘we do two weeks in a classroom, five weeks placement, so that’s free employment somewhere, and then an interview for a job, no guarantee of a job; an interview for a job’; the other one said ‘oh I do six weeks in a classroom then two weeks of a placement and then an interview for a job’, and they said ‘well what do you do ?’, and we said ‘well we take people out, we work with them in their homes, we are the invisible entity behind them, you know; we don’t do any classroom stuff’…

…and I said ‘how do you hold people in a classroom for that long ? How ? You know, from eight o’clock to four o’clock every day for six weeks. How does that help ? – ‘well they have to go, it’s mandatory, once they sign that bit of paper it’s mandatory’.

So we find it very difficult because a lot of the people we work with don’t want to go in a classroom; they want to do something physical or they just want a job – they don’t want to be taught by a 12 year old and told what to do, I mean this girl that come to us with this, she was 19, and she was working with people with offending backgrounds.

Just doesn’t match up and she was working with him on communication and confidence and I said to her but some of the guys have been in prison have got degrees, you know, just because they’ve been in prison doesn’t mean they’re thick and she just looked at me, she just couldn’t answer it.

So I just thought oh we’ll just watch and this is what we’re getting all the time or because they’re an offender then we’ll do a cleaning course. They don’t want cleaning, they want a bloody job, you know, some of them have been in prison for a long time and they’ve got four or five degrees, some of them are counsellors, you know they’re really going to offer them cleaning but that’s all there is out there. So we have to just keep looking and trying to pick out bits that we need – yeah, it’s very challenging.

 

Alex Dunedin: Do you feel the language used in administration and outcomes and measurements culture adequately represents you ?

Interviewee: What do you mean I don’t understand what you mean with that one…

Alex Dunedin: So when you’re asked to fill in these bureaucracies to get your funding, and of course put what you’ve been doing into certain…

Interviewee:…boxes…

Alex Dunedin:…boxes, language and frames of reference does that language accurately represent you ?

Interviewee: No. No, definitely not and when you are filling in the – specially forms which the council require – and one of the bits of paper is twelve boxes and they go from asyl… so you have to say these are the barriers, these are circumstances or barriers stopping you from working. And I always say to my guys, if you are not here dont put yourself in a box if you are not in it. So it is like, asylum seeker, economically inactive, addictions, offenders, etc, care leaver, mental health, and it is all these things, all the language is aimed at a label because they don’t…

…and the person is lost; the person is lost so we just fill it in and say – well I just make it as brief as possible and just say ‘client has none of the above issues, many personal issues, none of the above’ or whatever; I just put it all in there, just let them see it because you cant put somebody in a box but the council have said that if it is not in a box you should not be working with them. And Im like ‘well, they dont recognise themselves or anything’.

You know, if they did, if I recognised something then I would say ‘well are you sure it is not this one ? Have you got a problem with drinking ? Or whatever’; well they might just say no even though they are reeking, you know what I mean. You cant expect someone to identify and put themselves in a box – I wouldn’t do it.

So yeah, the language that is used is very stigmatising and it is very derogatory a lot of it. I mean on a lot of the forms they want to know your sexuality. What the hell has that got to do with anything ? Whether you are straight or gay or transgender – ‘when was your operation ?’ – why ? For an employability thing, why do you need that ? I just ignore it. I just dont get people to fill it in. So yeah I don’t understand, a lot of the information, what they want it for.

 

Alex Dunedin: You mentioned earlier soft outcomes and hard outcomes; soft outcomes – I guess – don’t get represented in the language

Interviewee: No. And there is nowhere to put it so the only place that it goes is [my organisation] have a matrix – you’ve seen it yourself – it covers the 12 elements and it could be physical well-being or whatever so we put it in here in there and I put it in my case notes and then me and my colleague have done this database that collects the soft outcomes so it could be acknowledged – the drinking; acknowledge, the drugs; had a haircut done a wash; had a balanced meal; you know… So we capture that as a service, as an organization, partly, but as a council – they are not interested. They’re not interested.

 

Alex Dunedin: Is the sector adequately funded or resourced ?

Interviewee: No. It’s… I think there’s adequate funding but I think it’s very unevenly distributed. Totally, you know, like I keep saying there’s 52 services but three quarters are aimed at one age group and then whatever’s left goes to ethnic minorities or women or whatever and then regular people that need the help, there’s nothing there for them.

So it’s just whatever the flavor of the month is so whatever the bank – the drums of Westminster are banging, then we follow suit and it’s just very unevenly distributed and just because one service has been around for 20 years doesn’t mean to say that they’re doing the job well but, you know…

…we have to stop funding these services, we have to make them a lot more transparent and at the minute, I mean – you know – CCP (Capital City Partnerships – capitalcitypartnership.co.uk) can come into our office and we can give them everything we’ve done, we can evidence every meeting we’ve had, but they don’t look for that so you’ll find a lot of big organizations that get in three and four and five million a year for doing things that they’re not really doing; they’re just claiming the money parking the people. So yeah, it’s not evenly distributed at all, yeah…

 

Alex Dunedin: Is there a problem of scale here ?

Interviewee: Well I mean – you know – CCP [capitalcitypartnership.co.uk] have always said that ‘[my organisation] do what they said they’d do; they don’t just tick boxes’, we’ve never been a tick box exercise so why has our money never gone up ? Why have they never given me enough money to give me another worker when other organizations have got 20 – 25 workers ?

You know, and they can’t keep the same staff; they’re always recruiting for staff so I’m not saying the money is just from the council, it’s not, they’ve got funding from all over the place but, you know, we’ve proved what we can do now for seven years so surely there should be some money there for another one more worker. But I don’t know if it’s scale, I don’t know what it is, I really don’t know. Nobody seems to know and it’s not that your face fits, I don’t know what it was.

 

Alex Dunedin: Do they present everybody with clear criteria of how they distribute the funds

Interviewee: No, not that I know of, no. That’s done behind closed doors I think. So like my procurement officer says she has six organizations, so what you have to do is you send her your reports all year then she put’s in the tender and then what she has to do is go to the panel and walk your service… just to showcase your service to the panel and say is it value for money or is it not. So you’ve had it if your procurement officer doesn’t like you, really, but it comes down to the basics.

 

Alex Dunedin: What role should broader society play in facilitating the work you do ?

Interviewee: I think… ehhh, oh God, I dont know. Offering more chances and opportunities instead of… So for me agencies, so employment agencies – just get rid of them. You know, you’re paying big money so what they could do is employers could come to organizations like me and say right this is what we’re looking for; if you have any people that fit this criteria give us a shout.

So basically they don’t have to advertise they’re getting somebody that’s coming with my reputation; they’re ready, they’re fully trained and they’re ready to go. So employers should play a bigger part I think. They should stop being so risk averse about people with offending backgrounds as well.

PVG’s (Protecting Vulnerable Groups) have now lost their – you know, the disclosures – have now totally lost the value that they had because now everybody, even kitchen porter jobs they want them for. So a lot of guys that used to be able to go for these kind of jobs to be able to rehabilitate them and get back into society are now closed out of even kitchen porters jobs or anything like that because they’re all on this disclosure journey.

So we should just get rid of them just make them for the jobs that you need them for, you know, so some of my guys I know fine well I won’t put them into schools; I won’t put them into shoe shops; I wouldn’t put them into kids playgrounds but there’s places for them that they can go.

You know I mean, we can’t stick them on an island and send Tesco up every three weeks for their shopping, you know, we have to put them back into society; but that goes for everybody who’s been in jail or who’s got any kind of a criminal background – you know – give them a shot – you know, give it a go…

 

Alex Dunedin: How might the clients or service users best support you in doing your job ?

Interviewee: Turn up, turn up… emmmm, oh yes, it’s a hard one, I mean for us to motivate them is enough and this morning I went to a womans house and she was still drunk when I got there and I said to her ‘there’s no use looking for work this morning, look at the state of you’; I mean she was bobbins but she knew I was coming…

Normally she wouldn’t have been like that but she was just on a… so I don’t know; just by, I don’t know; I think they do what they can do now, you know, by telling the prowls about us. Just let people know that we’re there really and that we actually do what we say we do and that we don’t give false promises. I dont know, I dont know about that one….

 

Alex Dunedin: Tell me about stress levels and what creates stress ?

Interviewee: Stress levels come and go, they go up and down, stress levels can be brought on by anything really, all you need is one bad day. So, you know, you get up in the morning turn your phone on, one client’s cancelled that you really needed to see, another one’s been arrested and then two turn up at the office at the same time and then you plan your diary for the week and with a Friday to do paperwork or admin or whatever…

…but then, me and [my colleague] talked about it today; I had Friday this week in for admin because I’ve not done anything for about 10 days but now that’s getting full because of people that should have turned up on Monday didn’t.

So yeah, it’s just that hamster wheel. Emmm, stress can be brought on by anything, especially this job, but especially when you go into people’s houses and you’re dealing with stuff that you can’t help with…. emmm, very, very stressful – very emotionally draining and especially when people are telling you things that you didn’t expect to come out of their mouths; quite the most harrowing things…

What do you do with that ? I mean I was lucky I used to work with an organization that gave us access to a counselor every month and the counselor taught us some really good tricks on how to leave stress at work and I use that but there’s a lot of stress in the jobs we do, especially in our office; there’s a lot of hidden stress as well.

You have to be tuned into your staff to know the subtle changes. I mean I think i’m quite good at looking at them and sort of analyzing; you can tell – I mean when I’m stressed out people can tell when I’m down I’m very quiet, I go sort of introverted which is my style; when I’m stressed out I’m very vocal where other people go the opposite way so it’s how you learn to manage that and the only way I tell my staff to manage it is to talk about it and don’t ever go with it on your own shoulders but it’s very very… On the everyday it’s very difficult but then it’s a job that we’ve all chosen to go into.

 

Alex Dunedin: This is a question that somebody else asked… ‘are we really doing what matters ?’, is the question she was asking herself, as a sector ? What does that mean to you ? Does it resonate with you ?

Interviewee: I do what matters and that’s what gets me in trouble all the time because I always… I’ll always go that extra mile and even if it’s not in my job description or whatever I will see if I can help out with that as a service.

I think, yeah I’m quite comfortable with what I do and what my staff do because I know that they’re very much like me – you know – if I can ease that burden a little bit I will give it a whirl but if I can’t I’ll stay with you till I can, until we get some resolve but as an organization are we doing what matters – I think we are but in a very small way.

I don’t know if getting bigger would do more, I don’t know but as an organization I think, you know, even the last two years we’ve come from being quite hidden to coming now out and we’re a lot talked about if you like and I think now, yeah; I think we…I don’t know it’s a strange one but for me I’m quite comfortable with the extra mile I can go for my clients but that’s because I’m lucky a lot of staff can’t do that because they’re so tightly bound to what they have to do or they just have that ‘oh well, that’s not my job’ but I just don’t have that mindset. So I try and do what matters yeah.

 

Alex Dunedin: What questions do you think are important for working towards greater understandings in this area, about the problems the barriers and the things that are good practice ?

Interviewee: What questions ? The questions should be asked, why, you know, I always… I mean I get called nosy a lot and stuff but if I don’t ask the questions how am I gonna know ? So I always ask why are you unemployed ? What happened ? You know, why did that happen ? Why did you turn to drink ? Why did you turn to drugs ? You know, why did your husband hit you ? I always ask those questions and then their questions, you can’t just think they’re unemployed because they’re lazy, you know.

I mean some people say I don’t want to work, we’ve got a lot of them; I’ve got no time to work, I don’t want to work – but majority people want to work or want to do – they’ve got things to aspire to. So the basic question is asking why ? How have you, you know, why are you unemployed ? Why do you drink ? Why do you take drugs ? Why do you beg on the street ? Why have you no shoes…

…and you’re not being, you’re not being obnoxious or anything you’re just asking why it’s got to be a starting point because if you don’t know the why how can you help ? So yeah, so they’re the basic questions – you know, do you see yourself as ever working because the more you talk about it instead of saying ‘oh what can we do, what can we do; oh we can do this, we can do…’

It’s about ‘no, you take responsibility, I’ll be with you but you take the responsibility; you’re not working, why aren’t you working ? what can we do together to get you back to work ? If that’s what you want to do instead of saying right you’re unemployed so that’s you written off’, you know I mean…

…yes, we’ll keep giving you, this we’ll keep giving you that. No, you know, take responsibility and take a bit of – have a bit of pride in it. So it’s asking them basic, basic questions for me anyway.

 

Alex Dunedin: Just before I finish the interview, is there anything else you think is important for people to understand what you are trying to do and what prevents you from achieving that ?

Interviewee: It’s the barriers that are put in place by governments that stop us doing what we need to do and it’s all done to money. You know I’ve got a few guys that would love to train as HGV (Heavy Goods Vehicle) drivers; we cannot find the money for that because it’s 800 pounds; nobody’ll…

…but then you know you go to the Job Center somebody will give you a bus pass if you get into work but how do you get to the interview up the road without a bus ticket ? You know what I mean, so it’s about these barriers they put in place, so it’s about you know what – we know there’s a pot of money for each person in the Job Centre; make it more transparent and let us use it for what we think – what we know it’s needed for or you know put more options out there for people, you know, and stop putting all this bloody paid expensive training…

So that you want somebody to do security guard training right, so the Job Center went ‘yeah, everybody can do that’ paid for the training but then he left you with no badge because it was 90 quid and they were like ‘oh we can’t afford that’; so, you know what, think about it.

So not everybody wants to be a security guard but what they did they made all…well in High Riggs (Benefits office and Jobcenter) especially they needed to get 300 people through it, so they were like – ‘you, you, you, you’ – whether you wanted it or not you had to go through it.

What use is that when you have not got any ID and you have no idea how to be a security guard, you know, how to get a job as a security guard; so it’s actually, take it back to basics, now you go in the Job Centers and it’s a joke and we know that the Job Centers aren’t going to be there in two years time it’s going to be computerized.

So take it back to basics make the Job Centres. As they stand now a place where you can get a job instead of a tick box and you know you’ve got computers there but people can’t use them. You can’t use the computer suite because there’s no security guard because in case you nick the computer.

You know it’s just like ‘oh my god’ you know, well lease it out to the voluntary sector, let us use the space but like this week the schools are off so you can’t use the computer suite. Well why not ? Because what’s that got to do with the Job Center ? You know, so I’ve been down at Leith library today using that because we couldn’t use the computers because the schools are off.

What’s that the hell got to do with the Job Center ? So it’s stupid rules that are put in – ‘yeah yeah yeah yeah, so yeah, sorry there’s no security guard and you might steal the computer so I can’t let you use it’ – well they don’t find a job – go to the library – I can’t, it’s shut because the schools are off.

You know, it’s one of them things, it’s just it’s mad but it’s all these little things and like the Job Centers; like I say, I remember going and taking a card off the wall and giving it to the guys and put me forward for that interview and it was a really easy way to do it. But now…if you go into Job Center now a lot of these kids are brought in by the agency.

Some are on work placements from the Job Center working in the Job Center and they’re not trained so you’ve got somebody there with a challenging attitude so the client’s going to come back with a challenging attitude, and this is why they need four and five and six security guards in the Job Center; so it becomes a place where nobody wants to go and tensions are high – make it so that people want to go to look for a job instead of going with fear and dread and stop labeling people.

 

Alex Dunedin: Fantastic thank you very much.

Interviewee: Sorry I think I’ve droned on a bit but hey ho.