BMJ podcast: Psychological coercion in UK government workfare programmes (11 minutes), 2015

Haveyoutriedyoga

Haveyoutriedyoga

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
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There is a full paper somewhere out there too.

Key points
Route out to employment is positive mindset
Lack of employment is a character deficit.
Maintenance of a positive affect is woven into decisions over sanctions.
Occurring in job centres and private provider premises, places of serious power dynamic.
Psychological benefits of work being exaggerated at a time when low paid/below proper living wages being so common
Ideas taken from and legitimate by psychology are being used in socially coercive and punative ways. Psychology and psychiatry professionals in positions of power should be taking more responsibility to call this out, currently its disabled people's groups and other groups pulling that weight. No formal response to the issue by the major psych bodies, only by some individuals psychs.
Other issues surrounding psychological coercion are the proposal to put psychologists in job centres and the proposal that claimants who refuse specific treatments may have their benefits cut.
 
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Haveyoutriedyoga said:



There is a full paper somewhere out there too.

Key points
Route out to employment is positive mindset
Lack of employment is a character deficit.
Maintenance of a positive affect is woven into decisions over sanctions.
Occurring in job centres and private provider premises, places of serious power dynamic.
Psychological benefits of work being exaggerated at a time when low paid/below proper living wages being so common
Ideas taken from and legitimate by psychology are being used in socially coercive and punative ways. Psychology and psychiatry professionals in positions of power should be taking more responsibility to call this out, currently its disabled people's groups and other groups pulling that weight. No formal response to the issue by the major psych bodies, only by some individuals psychs.
Other issues surrounding psychological coercion are the proposal to put psychologists in job centres and the proposal that claimants who refuse specific treatments may have their benefits cut.
Click to expand...

Ps apologies for the brevity, using my phone.
 
United against welfare cuts and welfare reform: report from the lobby of the British Psychological Society conference, 18th January 2017
https://freepsychotherapynetwork.com/category/jobcentres/

Edit:
This guy is having the same bright idea all over again. Posted since the pandemic started.
"Job Centres need to be places where people receive professional support with both their job search and mental health issues. The goal: employability and personal stability. This will require the existing role of Work Coach to change to one of Employability and Social Support Advisor – a role that is professionalised and well paid to reflect the heavy workloads and social responsibilities they already undertake as social worker, psychologist, friend, parent, guide and job adviser."
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/BeyondThePandemic_unemployment

I've been on the gov website and looked at guidance for contractors, it talks plenty about sanctions and mandatory activities but doesn't specify either.
 
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Haveyoutriedyoga said:
There is a full paper somewhere out there too.
Click to expand...
this one?
Positive affect as coercive strategy: conditionality, activation and the role of psychology in UK government workfare programmes.

Abstract
Eligibility for social security benefits in many advanced economies is dependent on unemployed and underemployed people carrying out an expanding range of job search, training and work preparation activities, as well as mandatory unpaid labour (workfare). Increasingly, these activities include interventions intended to modify attitudes, beliefs and personality, notably through the imposition of positive affect. Labour on the self in order to achieve characteristics said to increase employability is now widely promoted. This work and the discourse on it are central to the experience of many claimants and contribute to the view that unemployment is evidence of both personal failure and psychological deficit.

The use of psychology in the delivery of workfare functions to erase the experience and effects of social and economic inequalities, to construct a psychological ideal that links unemployment to psychological deficit, and so to authorise the extension of state—and state-contracted—surveillance to psychological characteristics.

This paper describes the coercive and punitive nature of many psycho-policy interventions and considers the implications of psycho-policy for the disadvantaged and excluded populations who are its primary targets.

We draw on personal testimonies of people experiencing workfare, policy analysis and social media records of campaigns opposed to workfare in order to explore the extent of psycho-compulsion in workfare. This is an area that has received little attention in the academic literature but that raises issues of ethics and professional accountability and challenges the field of medical humanities to reflect more critically on its relationship to psychology.
Click to expand...

https://mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/40
 
Trish said:
I just noticed this is from 6 years ago. I don't know what happened with the idea of putting psychologists in job centres.
Click to expand...
iirc IDS and George Osborne lost their jobs and the impetus behind an ever more unpleasant agenda went away for a bit. Now there's talk of post covid austerity and there's a danger of the old stuff being floated again, we're already hearing old chestnuts again like job centre engagement for the most disabled and 'focus on what they can do', etc
 
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