Jo Prestidge, Head of National Practice Development at Homeless Link explores how a new approach can support staff and lead to better outcomes for clients.

You don’t hear it so much these days, but one of the considered tenets of being British is to have a ‘stiff upper lip’. Regardless of how supple your lips actually are, this idea of not showing emotion in difficult situations is something that’s pretty pervasive in our culture.

The subtext to this is that one should quietly tolerate, ignore or repress one's emotions and in doing so maintain the collective fantasy that the chemical reactions taking place in our body will somehow disappear. Of course that’s absolute rubbish and whether we like it or not, are conscious of it or not, emotions underpin how we navigate our personal and professional lives all the time.

We know that the homelessness workforce experience a lot of adverse emotions at work. Rates of primary and secondary trauma are higher than in the general population and burnout and compassion fatigue are commonplace. These experiences arise through the difficult job of supporting disadvantaged and vulnerable people who have often fallen through the gaps of other services. But the context within which this work happens – a significantly reduced public sector, facing increased need– also has a major impact on those tasked with delivering this work for society.

Organisations are much more aware of the need to support staff wellbeing and many have put interventions in place to mitigate the risks. However I suspect that, in order to survive the day to day, emotions are often still denied or avoided in many services. And there’s a problem with this – not only for individuals. Unaddressed emotions can affect relationships, partnership working and lead teams and organisations to unintentionally act in ways which cause more harm than good.

That’s why my interest was piqued when Joe Baldock approached me for a conversation about how concepts from a therapeutic approach developed for people experiencing trauma and addiction, could be introduced to help people working in the sector. Joe had worked in homelessness services before undertaking training in Compassionate Inquiry with Gabor Mate and felt that he would have benefited hugely from some of the knowledge when working frontline. Through our conversations we agreed how something like this could enhance PIE/TIC by helping individuals actually connect with their experience. It could help to get under the surface of what it feels like working in the sector and provide practical tools to enable emotions to be experienced safely. The sessions also more broadly enable a different way of thinking about behaviour as communication.

With funding from St Martin’s Charity to test innovations in homelessness provision, we piloted new workshops which explored common emotions stirred up through difficult work. “What if how we react to the crisis, is the crisis?” considers anger, blame and identifying normal human needs from both the perspective of the people accessing homelessness services and those working in them. Providing safe spaces to think about, experience and explore these emotions received extraordinary feedback from those who bravely signed up for the pilot:

‘These 2 sessions have had a significant impact upon my stress levels and how I manage my teams stress and frustration. I've taken away some useful tools, not only to use with clients but also with my team’.
‘I loved the sessions. I was able to be emotionally honest for the first, for a long time. It felt safe to be myself and speak of things I normally shy away from’.
‘It was so interesting to think about responding instead of reacting and practical tips for how to do it’.

I’m really pleased that we’re now able to offer these workshops out to the sector more widely. You can find information about them here if you’d like to book them for your organisation, and see this link for our next public course.

For more information on staff wellbeing in homelessness services visit our resource page and check out series 2 of our podcast. You might also be interested in this recent blog on moral injury.

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Jo Prestidge

Head of National Practice Development

Jo is Head of National Practice Development at Homeless Link.