A chance to do some good in the world : an enquiry into frontline children's welfare workers in the climate of change created by welfare reform

Abstract

This thesis is about disenchantment with work through the loss of moral meaning. I set out to explore the reasons women do low-paid and stressful work in non-profit organisations to better understand the relationship between welfare reform, work place ecology and staff retention. I found that women who wanted to make a difference among children and their families often experienced conflicts of values that were a source of distress and attrition. Familiar values had been lost in the rapidity and complexity of changed social attitudes through welfare reform. Reform processes have reshaped the way Australians think about poverty, unemployment and welfare dependency. A media discourse has stigmatised welfare dependents, and in the public imagination it has also conflated poverty with the dark spectre of child abuse and parental failure. As a result there is a turbulent confluence where welfare policy constrains the services, and child protection failures lead to public calumny of workers. Frontline workers, often cast in the ambiguous role of family supporter and mandated reporter of suspected child abuse, experience powerlessness through resource poverty and blame. Welfare reform devolved many children's services from the government sector to the non-profit sector through policy processes that included vigilant auditing, constant evaluation, and a demand for inter-agency cooperation as well as competitive tendering between agencies for program funding. The frontline workers in non profit agencies are subject to the intense scrutiny of government, as well as the suspicion of media and the public, and the hostility of their clients. My methodology was critical social theory (Habermas, 1984, 1985, [1967] 1988) and Gadamerian ([1960] 1989) hermeneutics informed by constructionism (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Burr, 2003). I was concerned with issues of justice in all aspects of my research. A fair report would include textured multiple perspectives or horizons. This meant giving full expression to the thoughts of the frontline workers as well as inviting the perspective of people working at other levels in the non-profit organisation, such as middle and senior managers. Methods were long in-depth interviews, a focus group, and the analysis of relevant literature. A total of 25 people were involved in the research: 10 frontline workers and five non-profit managers participated in long individual interviews, there was a focus group of eight middle-managers, and two email correspondents who were not interviewed personally A chance to do some good in the world Ann Lazarsfeld Jensen 2009 provided feedback on the emerging themes, contributed their own ideas through material they had written, and validated developing concepts. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the understanding of how moral meanings operate motivationally at work. It demonstrates that in non-profit organisations there is an expectation that values will be central to practice, yet individual moral identity has become compromised by policy constraints on agency resources, tighter management and increased bureaucracy and social hostility to the child welfare clientele and workers. The significance of moral symbols is argued from the utilisation of moral symbols and language in the corporate and consumer worlds to enhance loyalty, commitment and worker sacrifice. The purpose of the argument is to show that moral community is an aspect of work place ecology in a non-profit organisation, and the central component is the integrity of its moral agenda which is a tool of recruitment and retention of value-driven workers. Four aspects of moral motivation are the thematic discussion of this thesis. In my analysis workers were suffering from what I described as moral distress, a frustration of their capacity to enact their personal principles in their work, and an apparent conflict between their personal and agency values. Other workers had made what I described as an altruism audit, which was a more pragmatic approach to protect their own interests without abandoning their desire to do good work. I found there was an absence of moral community, through the loss of traditional value systems, and the corporatisation of non-profit organisations. There was also a need to retrieve a sense of moral proportion, which would signal to workers and agencies what was possible in the light of the policy demands for greater financial audit and practice accountability. Moral proportion is a new secular value that I suggest could be constructed in a moral community of practice, increasing the possibility of values agreement both within and between agencies. This thesis is a sobering reminder that human beings cannot become efficient machines capable of solving complex human problems through protocols and formulas. Children's welfare work is driven by compassionate dispositions attempting to engage the hearts of recalcitrant parents. In order to sustain an emotionally engaged frontline workforce, support structures must address the moral core of the worker and the work.

Date of Award	2009
Original language	English