Down and Out in Sector Three
[Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.]
“Excuse me!”
Ah, that familiar voice, accompanied by that familiar come-hither gesture and that familiar stern face — I have been summoned. As I walk over to Ataur, he points at the Universal Jobmatch website displayed on the tiny Chromebook screen.
“How do I find job?” he asks.
The question of the century — and not one you want to go unanswered for very long. I spend the next few minutes of this ‘Digital Inclusion’ session — where I’m supposed to be teaching people basic computer skills — helping Ataur search for chef jobs. We start with his first choice, tandoori chef jobs. I type the keywords in, hit enter…and am greeted with a blank page. No results found.
“Uum… You might have to try something else,” I say awkwardly.
He looks at me quizzically, “No tandoori chef?”
I type in ‘Indian chef’ and again, there are no results.
“No, no, tandoori chef,” he insists.
I pause for a moment, the words stuck in my throat.
“You might have to be a bit less specific.”
He blinks a few times, the only visible movement on his face. I look around for any staff members that might be able to speak Bengali. No luck as, like most mornings at the Bromley by Bow Centre (BBBC), the Connection Zone — which functions as a waiting area, reception and computer room — is a hive of activity.
I rethink my wording.
“Try other chef jobs.”
It was only after repeatedly showing him that there were no tandoori chef jobs available in London that he got the message.
He nodded solemnly.
“OK.”
***
The Bromley by Bow Centre is one of the most innovative community organisations in the UK, featured in countless case studies for its holistic approach to wellbeing, with its many services — ranging from welfare advice to “chair disco” classes, small business support to “knit and natter” sessions — all being interconnected. However, no matter how innovative a third sector organisation is, its effectiveness at meeting client needs will always be affected by external factors — often more so than desired.
Take Ataur. It has become our weekly ritual for him to come into the Digital Inclusion (DI) class, which the Job Centre has required him to attend, only to make a half-hearted attempt at learning before calling for me to accompany him on the mission that is gaining employment. Week after week, month after month. Sous chef this, head chef that. Not one bit of luck.
There is a special mixture of emotions that arises when you are unable to help a client with their needs. It’s a feeling of helplessness, that you’re up against forces beyond your control. Add to that a sense of inadequacy, that you aren’t doing your job properly. Finally, finish it off with fluctuations between anger and hopelessness about the entire situation.
Nowhere did I feel this more than when I had to deliver Google Digital Garage sessions, which are online courses aimed at teaching small business owners digital marketing skills. Now if you’re thinking “how this is related to frontline work?”, then welcome to the stunningly illogical world of DI delivery and Payment by Results.
Firstly, DI is a genuinely important issue, as, in 2013, 21% of the UK population did not have access to the internet, whilst 7% had access but did not have the necessary skills. Both of these digitally excluded groups are much more likely to be socially isolated and much less likely to find employment, so a lot of impact can be made in bridging this gap. So, this sounds all well and good in theory — but how does it match up to reality?
Well.
Firstly, there are very few DI content providers available. As most people that are digitally excluded are either unemployed or have low-income jobs, it is evidently not a very profitable market. Secondly, there are simply not enough resources to adequately educate the endless stream of people coming into the centre for DI sessions. The DI team is composed of two people who have the additional responsibility of manning the reception desk, whilst the computers we use are old and buggy.
In an ideal world, the sessions would actually cater to the needs of a typical DI client by providing classes that have a practical focus, time for discussion, sensitivity to ESOL learners and, dare I say, are enjoyable. We could start with hardware classes, teaching people how to use a mouse and keyboard (yes, we have to do that countless times every week, and yes, it is the year 2017). We could then progress to practical projects such as how to navigate job sites and write emails, as well as enjoyable projects, such as how to find out about events using the internet, or how to keep in touch with friends and family.
Is this really too much to ask?
With the current Payment by Results (PbR) funding model, apparently so. PbR means that payments from the funder are contingent on results being achieved by the non-profit organisation. Again, this sounds logical on paper — until you examine the nature of these “results” that are being achieved. As the metric used by the various funders are simply the number of people who have completed the course (defined as having done a certain number of modules) by a certain date, this places huge pressure on staff to meet lofty targets. With jobs on the line, meeting these targets thus becomes the main focus of everyday activity, incentivising behaviour that is frankly rage-inducing.
Due to the combination of lack of resources and PbR, “quick wins” (a commonly heard term at meetings) are the name of the game. What this translates to in practice is DI team members being put in the ridiculous scenario of having to force people who have literally just learnt how to send an email onto a course that teaches you the ins and outs of such useful, relevant topics as Search Engine Optimisation and Advertising Analytics. This is somehow justified by the claim that Google Garage (which, by the way, has won awards as a Digital Skills platform) can improve people’s employability. This may be true for middle-class small business owners, but if someone can please explain to me how learning about targeted display advertising can help Ataur get a job as a chef, then I will be (a) very impressed, and (b) concerned that I’ve been drugged.
At best, this situation is a waste of time. DI clients are doing an irrelevant course, DI team members are pushing an inappropriate service, and managers must constantly chase up targets for a service even they know is not up to scratch.
However, it is more accurate to describe the situation as being actively harmful. Clients lose trust in our services when they see how inappropriate Google Garage is to their needs, as well as being made to feel inadequate and frustrated when they don’t understand the lessons. The DI team feels demotivated by having to spend time and energy forcing people to use a service they don’t believe in. There is little incentive for innovation, as client satisfaction is apparently not a worthwhile metric. The worst part, however, is that clients are dehumanised.
“Get this one on Google Garage, we need the numbers.”
This is, word-for-word, what I hear almost every DI session from a certain team member with a penchant for being particularly blunt. Instead of the one-to-one attention that they need, they are instead processed like so many widgets on a conveyor belt, subject to the inhumanity of mechanistic systems and mechanistic thinking.
After bringing this issue up many times, to people at all levels of the organisation, it became clear that it was outside of any one person’s control. The DI team have to do their job — hitting the targets. Our line manager has to do her job — ensuring the targets are hit, along with the targets for the many other projects she manages. Finally, the director of the department only has so many options when choosing a DI solution, and all of them are based on PbR.
It then becomes a question of why such shallow, dehumanising metrics are forced onto charities by funders. At a guess, this would be due to “efficiency”, as more appropriate metrics that account for client satisfaction would be much more expensive and time-consuming to gather and analyse.
***
So this is the frontline. This is where the most vulnerable in society come in to get help for the most complex of issues, but with the double whammy of both high demand and low funding for services, they often leave frustrated, despite the staff’s best efforts. What’s worse is, even if our services were adequately funded, their ultimate goal of improving wellbeing for clients is curtailed by the reality of the abysmal economy, with only low-skilled, low-paid jobs realistically available, featuring either precarious or unhealthy working hours.
For most of my time here, I thought perhaps that I was thinking too much, that I should just get on with my job. The general sentiment in the third sector is that, as these forces are outside of our control, dwelling on them too much is simply unproductive. Perhaps it was just the unrealistic expectations of a Millennial working on the frontline for the first time, naïve and inexperienced.
However, it wasn’t until last week, when I went to a workshop organised for BBBC staff, that I realised I was not alone in my recurring feelings of disillusionment. There were around 15 of us sitting in a circle, and we all had to take turns talking about a communication-related issue we had. Things got interesting once we had gotten halfway through the circle, as, having established a safe space for discussion, some people took the opportunity to really open up.
Nicholas was first. He spoke in a very measured, contemplative manner, and seemed to get more and more distant as he spoke.
“I just don’t like this…dishonesty when I’m applying for funding. […] Everything’s about money, money, money…”
He then went on to talk about how his work doesn’t align with his values any more, and that he was considering leaving for something altogether different.
The next person to speak was even more frustrated.
“I feel like I’m lying to my clients,” she declared, her body noticeably tensing up as she told us of how she had to refer clients with mental health needs to an organisation that “puts them in holding pens”.
“But no one will listen,” she sighs, looking absolutely defeated. “I’m just one little person, and they’re a big organisation.”
Another person echoed these sentiments.
“It’s the whole structure of the funding model.”
Her voice becomes distant and ever-so-slightly wobbly. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears.
“It just feels like every day I got to work … I have to sell these services that I just don’t believe in…”
A familiar feeling indeed.
***
Some days I wake up and think: what is the point of me going to work today?
These are usually Google Garage days.
Like everyone else, I signed up to do frontline work so I could really have an impact on people’s lives, yet some days, I feel like all I’m doing is wasting time delivering a “service” that not only wastes other people’s time but probably makes them feel inadequate. If this is how I felt after only a few short months delivering a service that wasn’t even all that bad in the grand scheme of things, I hate to imagine how the disillusioned people further down the line feel.
Now I’ll briefly pause here to say that it’s not all been doom and gloom. I had many hugely positive experiences at the centre, and the community-building project I was working on, EastXchange, was the source of most of them. At its core, EastXchange is about building the mechanisms to get vulnerable people out their house, meeting their neighbours, trying out new things and making them feel valued by recognising their skills. It is an example of a time bank, a framework for community members to exchange time doing valuable things for each other, which has transformed communities around the world — Bromley by Bow included.
Their power is evident when you talk to people who were Time Bank members, when it existed a few years ago. They talked about how it was the only thing that got them out of their house. They talked about all the friends they made and all the fun activities they did — international cooking classes, jewellery-making, the community cinema… A list of quotes I found, featuring old Time Bank members, was even more revealing.
“Before joining the Time Bank I was scared to talk to others. After I joined, I realised there were people who were kind, who I could talk to. Before I could only talk to my husband, that’s it.” — Alice
“I think it’s really good to have the Time Bank here because it brings the community together. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s like one big family. You do something and people appreciate you.”
“The Time Bank creates a unity among people. When you get that unity it removes the fear of speaking … it unites them, teaches them to communicate.”
“I feel like I have another home here.” — Janet
“I feel valued and appreciated.”
“The simple fact is that last year being involved with Time Bank was one of the key elements which meant I survived a crisis which saw me nearly lose my life. It also helped give me the foundation to recover and rebuild. Be warned, you will meet angels.” — Peter
So here existed a community project that literally meant the world to hundreds of people, transforming lives and even saving them — yet did the funders give a single damn? You bet they did. They rewarded the amazing achievements of the Time Bank team and all the community members by completely pulling the plug on the project after three years, just as it was gaining traction. This was, of course, devastating for the Time Bankers, who still feel somewhat betrayed. Because of this, they are a little suspicious of what EastXchange can deliver — and for good reason, as the funding is once again for three years only.
***
For me, all these experiences really beg the question: what kind of society do we live in where resources are pulled from services that have demonstrably and significantly improved people’s lives? A society where the Health Trainers Programme, which has been transforming people’s health and wellbeing for the past 10 years, is getting scrapped completely — I guess unhealthy people should just put their mind to it and get off their sofas, right? A society where a time bank for an entire community, which requires only two full-time staff to administrate, is not deemed worthy of long-term funding — I guess all the stay-at-home mothers and people with mental health needs should just quietly wallow in their misery at home, right? A society where charity workers are forced to channel clients into services that they know are completely inappropriate for their needs — I guess we should just accept that that’s how things are, and get on with our jobs, right?
As I reach the end of my placement here, another unsettling question plays on my mind. All this work that we on the frontline do — in communities, in education, in housing, in health — how sustainable are our achievements in the long-term, given the context of austerity for the foreseeable future? How long will people benefit, before more “savings” have to be made, and “non-crucial” services are cut?
These are, of course, not problems with any individual organisation, or anyone working within them. These are problems with the whole system. A system where the wages of two Time Bank staff members, who were crucial to the well-being of hundreds of vulnerable community members, were deemed too much to sustain in the long-term, while at the same time the government can pull £1.5 billion out of a hat to appease the DUP. A system where social services must compete for the scraps, whilst corporate profits and cash piles (estimated at up to £700 billion of uninvested cash in the UK alone) are higher than ever before. A system where, simply put, profits and the preservation of the status quo will always come before real human needs.
In the third sector, there’s a lot of talk about how, since politics is broken, we should concentrate on the here and now, what can be achieved in the near-term future. The dominant narrative is that, by getting straight into the thick of it, we can have a lot more impact than by wasting our time pursuing political solutions that will inevitably be fruitless. This is, of course, understandable, and even largely true, given the lamentable state of mainstream UK politics for the past few decades. However, one does not solve a problem by refusing to touch it, never mind the biggest problem facing society today — our broken economic system and the Establishment that defends it.
Working on social problems without participating in politics is like trying to patch up a derelict house without campaigning to build a new house altogether. Sure, there have been many failed attempts at building new houses in the past, but does that mean we should abandon all hope in this strategy? Sure, a fix here and a fix there will make life more tolerable for its inhabitants — but how long will these fixes last before the rot starts seeping through again? How many of these problems that we are trying to fix are a result of the dismal, oppressive architecture of this house, a house that was simply not built with human welfare in mind?
As frontline workers, there is only so much impact we can make through our jobs, given the limited resources we have at our disposal, the constrictions imposed on us by our funders and a host of other complex reasons outside of our immediate control. However, we are also amongst the best-placed people to highlight the contradictions of society today. Every day, we are exposed to the injustices meted out to the most vulnerable of people, injustices that no human should have to go through. We are also amongst the best-placed people to understand the concrete changes that need to take place to truly meet the needs of our clients.
Because of these reasons, I think we are especially well-placed to help movements for change. As the maxim goes, we must “educate, agitate and organise” in order to build movements. We can fulfil the first two criteria in two ways. Firstly, we can highlight the problems in the system by writing and talking about our experiences, so that people understand the limits of working within the system. Next, by elucidating the concrete changes that must take place for our social problem of choice to be satisfactorily “solved”, we communicate (a) the level of change that must take place, (b) the various areas that could be targeted for political action, and (c) which goal is most realistically achievable, because, like humans, movements build their confidence by achieving small victories first.
But we cannot do this alone, hence the importance of organising, which is something all of us can — and should — do. We can start by joining a political party, a trade union, an activist organisation or a campaign group. We can help build links between campaigns through the organisations we belong to. We can start a petition to help move motions in our organisation. We can support striking workers. We can start our own campaigns.
These, and many others, are all ways to get involved, and meet like-minded people. The most important thing is taking the first step.
We must also balance action with theory, which should serve as a guide to effective action. We must have an understanding of political, sociological and economic theory, to understand the underlying forces that shape the world we live in. We must also know our history, especially the history of social movements and class struggle, as they are effectively case studies where we can learn from past mistakes, past successes — and why they happened. If your organisation does not have a political education program, then you can start one, beginning with a reading group.
The most important thing is taking the first step.
Change through politics or activism can seem like a fanciful, abstract notion when we are caught up in the concrete realities of everyday work and life — but it is the only way large-scale, meaningful change has ever happened in the world. Take the NHS. It did not simply drop out of the sky, due to the benevolence and foresight of the government, but was won through decades of struggle by the working class against private medicine and its backers, the Conservatives. Despite the abysmal state of pre-NHS healthcare in the country, with hospitals and doctors charging for their services and thus excluding the poor, Conservative members of the British Medical Association launched a smear campaign against the NHS, using terms like “medical Gestapo” and publishing Daily Mail articles with titles such as “No Future for Us in Britain” and “50,000 Doctors Say the Plan Won’t Work”. And yet Nye Bevan, who had previously been expelled by the Labour Party for his socialist views, was able to make it a reality — something that could not have been achieved without a movement to back him.
The same goes for many features of modern life we take for granted today: the banning of child labour, the eight-hour day, the five-day week, the minimum wage, occupational health and safety, and many more achievements. All these were won on the basis of organised political movements who were up against the full weight of the Establishment. It’s been done before, and it can be done again.
***
To clarify, I am not calling on all third sector workers to abandon their jobs for politics and activism. Meeting the immediate and medium-term needs of the most vulnerable in society is a vital task that cannot be ignored. However, we need to be aware that if we only ever work within the system, we will always get that special feeling we get when we know we’re failing a client, whether it be through lack of resources, restrictions by our funders or societal factors — that mixture of inadequacy and helplessness, of anger and hopelessness.
Politics and activism won’t solve that immediately, or even in the next few years. But without a long-term perspective that includes changing the very structures of our society and our economy, the structures that create the problems we are trying to solve, these problems will never go away.
The most important thing is taking the first step — then to keep going.
***
Epilogue:
What was discussed at the workshop seemed to have left a lasting impact on Nicholas. Yesterday was his last day at the BBBC.
Meanwhile, Ataur is still looking for a job.
