In 2007 the Medical Research Council, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) held a joint conference: Employment and Mental Health. Absence from work due to mild and moderate mental ill health. This was intended as a gathering together of the research into mental health, mental ill-health, employment and unemployment. One of the conclusions of this conference was that:
“Work is broader than ‘employment’ and should encompass voluntary work, home making etc. The majority of the research evidence refers to full time work whereas it might be more informative to consider ‘activity’.”
In 2008 the BACP campaigns manager wrote an article on how changes to employment legislation might be a useful 'opportunity for counsellors.' It included this sentence:
“. . . access to psychological therapy and/or support, with the aim of helping people achieve improved mental health and wellbeing, thus improving their ability to gain and/or maintain employment.”
The October 2009 issue of Therapy Today published an article called ‘Work is good for you’. It was illustrated by a picture of a godlike figure - the counsellor - holding a key with which he winds up tiny broken people on one side of him to send them on their happy, straight-backed, employed way on the other. The article was based on government policy and mentioned “… growing evidence that work is good for your health” but offered not one reference to research.
This was repeated in February 2012 in another Therapy Today article: ‘Counselling the jobless back to work.’ Again assertions were made about the “research evidence” of the harmful effects of being unemployed with not one reference to that research. This piece was, like the October 2009 article, concerned with “opportunities for counsellors.”
All three pieces were alarmingly unbalanced with no reference to serious criticisms that were live in the public sphere over the years they were written in, including allegations of fraud within the privately owned, publicly funded organisations contracted to implement the Government’s Welfare To Work policy. There was no exploration of the complex external influences (such as the demonisation of the unemployed across media and the ubiquitous rhetoric around ‘hard working tax payers’ vs. ‘benefits scroungers’) that gratuitously contribute to the distress of people whose identity is fundamentally altered the day they become unemployed or claim benefits. There was no recognition that unemployment rates were at their highest in 17 years or how failure to find employment after being processed through various ‘back to work’ schemes might affect a person’s wellbeing.
Neither was there mention of dissent to the Welfare Reform Bill (which became the Welfare Reform Act in 2012) from respected organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Trust, Disability Alliance, MIND, National Housing Federation and the CAB amongst a great many others; no mention of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ concerns about “the capacity of relevant members of staff in Jobcentre Plus and work programme providers to make appropriate decisions about what type of work-related activity is suitable for claimants with mental health problems” or the fact that the College would not support the Health and Social Care Bill.
There was no discussion of the Welfare Reform Bill being demolished, cross-party, in the House of Lords, or that the Government forced these policies into law despite its Lords defeat. There was no mention of the DWP’s six-point guidance to Job Centre staff around increases in self-harm and suicide.
There was no recognition of, let alone reflection on, the essential shift in the purpose of counselling summed up by Kevin Friery, past chair of BACP Workplace, who became the Clinical Director of an EAP:
“The prime contractor doesn’t want to pay you to have a nice chat and help the person cope with being unemployed; they want you to increase their employability so that they can get work, and help keep them at work.”
We’ll return to the complete absence of any discussion around consent, informed or otherwise.
In sharp contrast to this, in October 2009 when Therapy Today led with the news that “One in 6 therapists still sees fit to offer gay clients treatments that aim to make them straight" that article resulted in shock and outrage that so many counsellors should be abusing clients by telling them what they should be and do, purposefully aiming to change them to suit the counsellor’s worldview. Therapy groups large and small had meetings, events and discussions and a Memorandum of Understanding was created, agreed and adapted over many years. CPD courses on sexual identity and preferences exploded, language and understanding evolved quickly and people who did not keep up were censured until even the most resistant or disinterested therapist was either forced or came to realise that it was expedient to do so.
There has not been a similar reaction to the same and recurrent message when it involves people who are unemployed. Instead, there seems to be a consensus that counselling and psychotherapy should be one thing for people who can afford private practice but the polar opposite when the counsellor is working as part of the Work Programme, or indeed when meeting with any person who is unemployed. This attitude was described as a “hanging offence under our Ethical Framework,” by the BACP itself.
But not if you’re unemployed, or poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment