5Social work practice and homelessness
This chapter focuses on social work practice responses to homelessness, commencing with a discussion of social work and homelessness literature in the USA, UK and Australia. Drawing on data from interviews with Australian social workers employed as managers, policy makers and ‘frontline’ workers, I highlight the complexities of social work responses to homelessness, that social work feminist approaches to homelessness can be broadened to incorporate intersectionality, and that social workers embody unequal and intersecting power relations and social locations that constitute their responses to homelessness. To engage with the reflexive aspects of intersectionality and to illustrate personal and professional tensions for two social workers in this field of practice, I provide my own reflexive commentary and a case study analysis by Dr Chris Horsell. In this chapter, I highlight how an intersectional social work approach can subvert dominant practices and expand social work advocacy, by focusing on intersecting power relations.
The central purpose of social work is to influence social change and redress inequalities (Allan et al., 2003), which also resonates with the social justice aims of intersectionality. Social work ethics involve effectively communicating with diverse population groups, showing warmth, empathy, respect, compassion, respecting people’s self-determination, being reflexive, non-judgemental and developing trusting relationships (Bezunartea- Barrio, 2014, p. 15). Social workers are involved in social mobilisation and collective action to advocate against breaches of human rights, including how globally, Indigenous peoples, refugees and migrants are affected by homelessness (Bezunartea-Barrio, 2014, p. 15; Mostowska, 2014). However, homelessness is responded to by social workers within historical policy contexts, organisational imperatives and social institutions that are unequal, multilayered and complex, and that can continue to promote disempowering policies and colonising practises.
The social work and intersectionality literature includes: advocating for teaching intersectionality to students of diverse disciplines at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (Carbin and Edenheim, 2013); using it as a human rights policy frame and incorporating it in social work practice, research, policy and education (Murphy et al., 2009); as a tool for critical reflection in social work for analysing a critical incident (Mattsson, 2014); and as an approach when considering creative research methodologies (Bryant, 2016). Social workers have been criticised for neglecting their activist roots and adapting to the contemporary neoliberal context that promotes individual responsibility (Zufferey, 2008; Gordon and Zufferey, 2013). Therefore, embracing intersectionality in social work practice with people who are homeless would involve re-examining the radical social work agenda and how homelessness and social work are constituted through unequal and intersecting power relations.
Historically, social work responses to poverty were dominated by religious, church-based, charity welfare organisations, including the Charity Organisation Societies (COS) that distributed relief to the poor. Direct service workers were often volunteers who were predominantly white, middle-class women with particular values about class, gender, family, work, age and sexuality, which they tried to impose on the working classes (Abrams, 2000; Cree, 2002, p. 280). Men tended to be in paid leadership positions and managers (Camilleri, 1996), which continues in the contemporary social work workforce. The Settlement Houses (or Movements) took a more community-focused approach, in which workers from the ‘educated classes’ lived in ‘working class communities’ and became integrated into the neighbourhood and community life (Camilleri, 1996). This movement emphasised community and state responsibility for sanitation, housing, health care, education, social services and employment. These responses to poverty as the practice origins of social work have shaped the individual-structural tensions discussed in the discipline’s literature and its responses to homelessness.
Furthermore, in Western countries, the majority of social workers continue to be of Caucasian background. However, the client population include a disproportionate number of women and ethnic minority groups (Whitaker et al., 2006), including people living in unfit dwellings. When examining homelessness and intersectionality in the USA, Lurie et al. (2015) note that discrimination results in disproportionate numbers of racial minority groups, women, people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ), individuals with a mental illness, formerly incarcerated individuals and veterans being evident in homelessness statistics. As well, similar to the unequal power relations between service users and social workers, the social work profession itself is permeated by intersecting and unequal power relations. For example, despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963 being passed, an National Association of Social Workers (NASW) workforce study notes that a significant gender gap in salaries for licensed social workers continues (Whitaker et al., 2006), which reflects the experiences of social workers in other Western countries. Therefore, the social work workforce itself is constituted by intersectional inequalities and social work practice is imbued by gendered, classed and racialised social relations.
As discussed previously, historically ‘social work’ with ‘the homeless’, especially in the USA, was practised by voluntary organisations that predominantly focused on older white males with alcohol problems, living in lodging houses, in ‘skid row’ areas (Johnson and Cnaan, 1995). After the 1930s, when social workers took a more clinical role, ‘serving old hobos’ was not deemed a priority (Johnson and Cnaan, 1995). A ‘new face’ of homelessness was noted in the 1980s that focused on families, children and young women, who were deemed more deserving of assistance (Neale, 1997; Rosenthal, 2000), and were often from ethnic minority groups. More recently, Bowpitt et al. (2014, p. 1252) examined homelessness day care services in the UK, and found that they function as both places of refuge and places of change, for the ‘undeserving homeless’ (often men), who are frequently barred from other services. They argued that contemporary individual and social change efforts to end homelessness resonate with historical individual-structural tensions and dilemmas in social work (Bowpitt et al., 2014).
Early feminist and social work scholars who focused on working with homeless women correctly noted that the feminisation of poverty, shortage of affordable housing, abuse and violence ‘will not disappear in the 21st century’ (Harris, 1991; Russell, 1991; Johnson and Richards, 1995, p. 248). More recently, social science scholars Mayock et al. (2015) documented the biographies of 34 women with lengthy homeless histories in Ireland. They found that women who were homeless at an early age ‘typically reported family conflict, parental substance use, and/or violence or abuse in the family home’ (Mayock et al., 2015, p. 883). For women who became homeless at a later age, the cause was frequently related to intimate partner violence, whilst for those who were bought up in foster care, they always considered themselves ‘homeless’ (Mayock et al., 2015). They also found that women depicted emergency hostels as ‘compromising’ their efforts to escape homelessness, through ‘an attempt to regain a sense of themselves’ (Mayock et al., 2015, p. 895). This resonates with my Australian research in which I found service users resisted being ‘told what to do’ in accommodation services (Zufferey and Kerr, 2004, p. 350). This research and its findings are discussed further in the next chapter.
It must be noted that social workers have not always been perceived to be the frontline responders to homelessness. Homelessness is often not deemed desirable work or a priority for social workers because engagement is difficult and the work not seen to be ‘therapeutic’ (Johnson and Cnaan, 1995), when framed within such social work discourses. In listing occupations that care for the homeless, American psychology and health scholars Shinn and Weitzman (1990) did not identify social work, potentially inferring that the profession’s expertise was not required. As well, ways of working with the homeless (including case management) is often not taught in social work schools, and field work placements are often not provided in this area. Moreover, in the UK, social workers in local government authorities did not generally work directly with ‘homeless people’ because of the eligibility criteria for adult social care. Homeless people in the UK tended to be supported through ‘housing support workers’ who are mostly unqualified workers based in voluntary agencies, rather than by social workers employed in local authorities. However, the recent focus on ending homelessness in policy priorities and legislation means that social workers have increasingly become involved (Benjaminsen, 2014).
In the USA, the NASW policies do focus on homelessness and intersectionality. From 1996 onwards, the NASW Delegate Assembly had approved and revised policy statements on homelessness (NASW, 2005). This comprehensive policy statement categorised homelessness and noted the importance of including the perspectives of people with ‘psychiatric disorders’, physical disabilities, women and children affected by domestic violence, children living in shelters needing medical treatment, people employed on little income, single mothers unable to work due to lack of child care, ‘runaway youth’, rural families who have had to abandon their farms, men who are veterans, people with ‘chemical dependencies’, refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, individuals excluded due to their criminal history, and people affected by disasters (NASW, 2005, pp. 178–179). The NASW (2005) advocate for long-term solutions to homelessness (such as affordable and adequate housing) and for employing social workers to work actively alongside people who are homeless to create advocacy groups, build collaborations between housing, income and support services, support subsidised housing, organise housing assistance programmes for low income families, provide education and supportive job training, end the cycle of homelessness by focusing on children, expand treatment and supportive services and take political action that supports a ‘living wage’ (NASW, 2005, pp. 182–183). As well, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), which is the US’ accrediting body for social work schools, departments and programmes, stated:
The dimensions of diversity are understood as the intersectionality of multiple factors including age, class, color, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, political ideology, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.
(CSWE, 2008, pp. 4–5)
This focus in homelessness and intersectionality was not evident in British Association of Social Workers (BASW) or Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) documents. The AASW accreditation standards do focus on foundational curriculum content in social work education, which include values, attitudes, knowledge and skills required for particular specialisations: child wellbeing, mental health, cross-cultural practice and working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities (AASW, 2012). These policies mention multiple disadvantaging conditions but not intersectionality.
In regards to legislation in the UK, the implementation of the Care Act 2014 for local authorities now requires the development and review of a care and support plan, including collaborating with other services to address housing and accommodation needs. The general responsibilities of the local authorities in the UK, as defined by the Care Act (2014, p. i), include: focusing on individual well-being, preventing the need for care and support, promoting the integration of care with health and other services, providing information and advice, advocating for diversity and quality in the provision of services and co-operating across services in relation to specific cases. Individuals or families who are homeless (or at risk of homelessness) can potentially be encountered by social workers in all services, including these statutory services.
In Australia, Parsell (2011, pp. 330–339) outlines different outreach models for responding to ‘rough sleepers’. Traditional models of outreach provide people with blankets, food and so forth (but not housing). Indigenous-focused outreach emphasises ‘return to country’ strategies to move Aboriginal people back to their remote communities of origin. Assertive outreach responses (such as ‘Street to Home’) are aligned with Housing First initiatives and aim to end homelessness, by housing people from the ‘streets’ to a ‘home’. Parsell (2011, p. 339) argues that assertive outreach interventions are ‘consistent’ with the principles of social work because they involve respect for individual self-determination, as well as a commitment to social justice and collective advocacy, such as advocating for access to affordable housing.
In response to Parsell’s article in the Australian Social Work journal, Coleman (2012, p. 278) calls for a broader social work response to homelessness that extends beyond advocating for rights to housing:
In a still prosperous, post-industrial Australia, advocating for the right of people sleeping rough to housing will never be enough. Social work needs to actively engage in advocacy for the right of people who sleep rough to education and training; to income security; to freedom from arbitrary ‘move-ons’ and detention; to basic amenities; and for their right to be recognised as citizens of dignity and worth equal to that of other citizens.
While Parsell (2012) agrees with Coleman’s position about social work, he disagrees on another aspect of the debate, which is about whether social workers should advocate for people to have a ‘right to be homeless’ or ‘sleep rough’. According to Parsell (2012, p. 284):
Accepting rough sleeping as an inevitability and then focusing energy on the rights of people sleeping rough who are left impoverished and marginalised – rather than directing effort toward enabling them to access housing – is, in my view, a misdirected endeavour that is hard to rationalise on the basis of social work principles.
This debate in the Australian Social Work journal illustrates some of the dilemmas for social workers in their research and practice with people who experience homelessness and are ‘sleeping rough’. In exploring the role of day centres as a ‘sanctuary’ in the UK, Bowpitt et al. (2014, p. 1252), refer to this as the ‘oldest dilemmas of social work: how to facilitate change while respecting people’s free agency’.
American sociologists Wasserman and Clair (2010, p. 23) have examined how businesses and government work together to legislate and respond against those who are homeless. These strategies involve physically managing city spaces and promoting particular conceptualisations of the public sphere that encourage middle-class pursuits. Inner city legislation and policies across the world have included criminalising homelessness and banning the ‘homeless’ from public spaces. This trend surely invokes the question of: who counts as a citizen? Wasserman and Clair (2010) argue that the charitable approach of social services that purportedly aims to get people who are homeless ‘off the streets’ is viewed as a kinder alternative to business and authoritarian government approaches. Yet, social worker and policy maker conceptions of homelessness do not always resonate with the perspectives of people themselves, as discussed in the next chapter.
Whilst universal social work ethics, values and principles are clearly outlined in numerous Codes of Ethics (BASW, 2002; IFSW, 2005; NASW, 2008; AASW, 2010), their implementation is far more complex, and depends on local contexts and individual subjectivities and preferences (Coleman, 2012; Parsell, 2012). Social work responses to homelessness are constituted by economic, social and political aspects of different countries, as well as organisational contexts within which social workers are employed (Zufferey, 2008). This complexity creates tensions for social workers in responding to homelessness. Nonetheless, an intersectional social work approach aligns with the social work mandate for supporting radical social change, and a person’s agency within his/her environment (Murphy et al., 2009; May, 2015). Integrating intersectionality in social work responses to homelessness involves: pursuing self-awareness, promoting individual and social change, understanding dynamic and intersecting social contexts, locations and identities, and developing social work knowledge about social diversity – not limited to gender/sex, race, ethnicity, skin colour, migration, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, political belief, religion, mental, intellectual and physical disabilities (Murphy et al., 2009, p. 43).
Intersectional authors have pointed to the importance of researching all members of society, to question the ‘imagined normality’ of the majority (Christensen and Jensen, 2012, p. 112). This ‘majority inclusive’ principle points to the value of examining the discourses and lived experiences of privileged populations (such as social workers) and how these privileges shape daily interactions within unequal power relations (Frankenberg, 1993; Christensen and Jensen, 2012, p. 112). This thinking inspired me to conduct research on the experiences of privileged populations, such as social workers employed in the field of homelessness for my PhD, which I discuss next (Zufferey, 2007), after I had completed my MSW research on service user perspectives (Zufferey and Kerr, 2004), which I discuss in the next chapter. In the spirit of self-reflexivity, the lens is turned inwards, onto social workers themselves.
Social work responses to homelessness
What is social work? Who is a social worker? What is the role of social work in the field of homelessness? As published elsewhere (Zufferey, 2007; 2008; 2009; 2012), I interviewed 39 social workers employed in homeless services (during 2003–2004) in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. The roles of the participants included policy developers, managers, advocates and frontline service delivery workers (Zufferey, 2007). Professionally trained, they were all eligible to be members of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) and all worked with people who were defined as homeless. The findings of this study have been reported in more depth in Australian Social Work (Zufferey, 2008); Journal of Social Work (Zufferey, 2012) and Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work (Zufferey, 2009). However, I briefly discuss this research in this chapter to highlight how social workers construct the complexity of homelessness and advocacy, and how social work is an embodied practice constituted by gendered, classed and cultural differences. In the field of homelessness, social work practice is complex, dynamic and diverse, such that it warrants a more complex response, underpinned by intersectional theorising.
The complexity of homelessness and social work practice
The social workers that I interviewed also noted that homelessness is complex and that people who are homeless have complex needs – yet policy and media representations are often framed simplistically. For example, one participant explained: ‘I think people want simplistic answers and look at things in a very unilateral, simplistic way and don’t want to deal with those sorts of complexities’ (female, 41–50, government service manager). Another participant stated:
I think people that don’t work in the area or even bureaucratic … senior people don’t understand the complexity … that whole matrix of events that has led that person to being on the street and feeling like they can’t get any assistance, or they don’t want assistance.
(female, 41–50, government policy manager)
Whilst not mentioning intersectionality, these quotes refer to how media representations and policy responses to homelessness fail to acknowledge complexity and diversity. The quotes also allude to social work dilemmas and debates about individual-structural causes of and solutions to homelessness that have a long history in literature on social work and homelessness.
From its inception, social work was understood as both ‘individualist’ and ‘structural’ (or environmental) with the inherent tensions this divide continues to present for contemporary social workers (Lundy, 2004). While the social workers I interviewed did engage in deconstructing the power relations that constitute individual and systemic/structural/social justice dichotomies (Zufferey, 2008; 2012), they noted that their practices were framed around individuals, as evident in the following participant’s quote: ‘If you want to make a judgement about what are the fundamental causes of homelessness, it’s got very little to do with individuals and yet the focus of our work is always around individuals’ (male, 41–50, non-government (NGO) worker). However, this same social worker argued that individualised definitions of social problems were a social construction and failed to acknowledge systemic barriers: ‘A construction now … people have “multiple and complex” problems … individualize … the problem is the person’s … it fails to acknowledge … changing social and economic circumstances … the response of service systems … are far more complex and difficult to access’ (male 41–50, NGO worker).
These quotes highlight that whilst social workers can argue that responses to homelessness are both individual and structural, in practice, social workers respond primarily to individuals. As well, this social worker noted that the construction that homeless people have ‘high and complex needs’ ignores unequal social and economic structures, and that service systems are increasingly complex and difficult to access. This resonates with the ‘new orthodoxy’ of homelessness that complicates understandings of individual and structural disadvantages, when discussing explanations for and responses to homelessness (Pleace, 2000). Building on this, an intersectional social work approach would acknowledge intersecting individual and structural (or micro, mezzo and macro) inequalities that contribute to shaping homelessness (Winker and Degele, 2011; Murphy et al., 2009). Furthermore, the social locations of social workers and service users contribute to how homelessness is framed as a social problem and responded to by social workers. Therefore, an intersectional social work approach would acknowledge the complexities of social work practice, by intersecting individual and structural tensions, as well as reflecting on the social locations of social workers and service users, thereby contributing to new understandings of homelessness and social work.
Whilst none of my research participants referred specifically to intersectionality, this combining of individual and structural social work approaches does resonate with multilayered analyses of social structures, constructions of identities and symbolic representations of social issues (Winker and Degele, 2011). Social workers also expressed tensions about balancing their organisational responsibilities as ‘gatekeepers’ of services, a role that involves excluding those who are less ‘deserving’, with their social work ethics of advocating for the most disadvantaged. As Payne (2014) notes, ‘clients’, ‘social workers’ and the process called ‘social work’ are socially and historically constructed, within organisational contexts and institutional regimes of power. However, social workers do attempt to challenge and resist institutionalised practices that disadvantage their client groups.
Social workers’ critical thinking and questioning of dominant ideologies is guided by social work values and ethics that focus on social change and social justice (Mostowska, 2014). How social workers frame homelessness has implications for what interventions are promoted and enacted. In Europe, Polish social geographer Magdalena Mostowska (2014) used an interpretive frame analysis to examine social workers’ perspectives when working with homeless migrants in European cities. She found that different countries promote different frames, such as the ‘migrant worker’ overlaid with an ‘exceptional humanitarianism’ frame in Copenhagen, in contrast to the ‘undisciplined deviant’ frame in Dublin (Mostowska, 2014, p. 18). In this discourse analysis of social work interventions, Mostowska argued that the humanitarian frame is less focused on economic efficiency and deviancy, allowing service providers to express professional values and ethics more aligned with their profession (Mostowska, 2014, p. 19). This research highlighted that whilst social workers can engage in ‘submissive’ strategies that are compliant with state regulations (such as excluding persons from a city shelter with no personal documents and number), they can also engage in ‘subversive’ strategies that undermine state regulations, such as resisting rigid government regulations and informal co-operation between diverse organisations (Mostowska, 2014, p. 24). For example, in Copenhagen, ‘subversive’ social work strategies included funding migrant-specific programmes with private funds, campaigning, advocacy and change-focused research (Mostowska, 2014, p. 25).
In my Australian research, I also found that social workers resisted and complied with processes that replicate dominant practices and reinforce unequal power relations (Zufferey, 2008; Mostowska, 2014). The positioning of social workers as having greater power over service users was made overt by the following social worker who said: ‘There is an increasing subjugation of client’s voices and experiences and greater capacity to access power over homeless people’s lives’ (male, 41–50, NGO worker). This resisting of dominant power relations by listening to client or service user perspectives is an important consideration in social work advocacy when responding to homelessness. This point is also illustrated by the following participant by reflecting on disempowering practices: ‘What do our clients understand and how connected do they feel to us, when we use this very alienating, disempowering and disengaged rhetoric?’ (female, 21–30, government worker). Thus, the social work profession has a powerful role in publicly questioning and resisting the impact of unequal power relations on people who experience homelessness, advocating for and with people experiencing (or ‘at risk’ of) homelessness (Zufferey, 2008, p. 368). In this book I aim to reinforce the advocacy and social change mandate of the social work profession in order to resist and subvert disrespectful responses to homelessness. However, this book also expands on this, to advocate for making visible intersecting social inequalities that contribute to shaping social work responses to homelessness.
Social work responses to homelessness are influenced by particular social work theories, such as strengths-based practice (Krabbenborg et al., 2013), empowerment (Lee, 2013), and feminism when working with women who are homeless. This includes intersectional feminism, in social work and the field of family and domestic violence (Laing and Humphreys, 2013). Feminism as an approach has been described as being ‘by, about and for women’ (Wahab et al., 2012, p. 459), which is valuable in understanding the experiences of women, and giving voice to people who are marginalised and disadvantaged. This beneficial approach can be further expanded using intersectional research, to examine gendered, racialised, classed, heteronormative, ageist and ableist social work practices, and the experiences of service users in multidimensional ways (Connell, 2002; Pease, 2011).
Twelve out of the 39 social workers in my Australian research advocated for a feminist approach to practice (Zufferey, 2008), particularly by those who were female and who were employed to respond to domestic violence in homeless services for women. As one social worker stated, feminism assists social workers working with women to: ‘recognise that we are quite different … there is not one kind of women but we do share similar kinds of oppressions’ (female, aged 21–30, government social worker). Women (and their children) who are escaping violence experience fear, shame, poverty, lack of respect, recognition and the loss and destruction of their feelings of connection to a ‘safe home’, often resulting in homelessness (Zufferey et al., 2016). The feminist perspective did enable a critical examination of how gender and homelessness is responded to by social workers. However, at the time of the interviews, none of the social workers articulated an intersectional feminist approach to homelessness, which can expand on and complicate this feminist analysis.
In regards to intimate partner violence (IPV) and homelessness, our recent large Australian study found that IPV erodes women’s citizenship, which includes their access to safe and affordable housing, connections to ‘home’ and participation in community life (Zufferey et al., 2016). When social workers were advocating for people that they worked with, social work advocacy for social justice and social change was occasionally positioned within a discourse of citizenship: ‘A homeless person is basically not seen as important or as valued, than a person with a house, who is seen as a “respectable normal citizen”’ (female, 31–40, government worker). Social worker participants argued that a ‘houseless’ person was perceived by society as less worthy or valued, compared to a person who fulfilled normative housing expectations, such as being homeowners. They said that homeless people were perceived as being ‘lesser than’ citizens but homeless women in particular were deemed more disadvantaged by masculine notions of citizenship: ‘Women certainly are … the second class citizens … especially women who are at the edges of society … homeless women are’ (female, 51+, NGO worker). Lister’s (2003) notion of gendered citizenship is a useful concept to draw on for social workers, to make comment on gendered inequalities and how women who experience homelessness and violence are further disadvantaged and unfairly socially located. However, an intersectional approach would intersect gender with other potentially disadvantaging social locations around experiences of racism, sexism, classism, nationalism and so forth.
There was some acknowledgement by social workers of the institutionalised sexism and racism that affects Aboriginal populations and new arrival communities. This institutionalised discrimination was emphasised particularly in regards to female refugees from African backgrounds whose temporary immigration visas prevented access to social security support, employment and housing. One example was provided by a social worker who worked with migrant and refugee women: ‘The situation of domestic violence, where she is not even registered here as a citizen, who is not entitled to any form of assistance, just falls through every single possible gap you can imagine’ (female, 31–40, government service). This quote highlights service gaps for new migrants experiencing domestic violence and homelessness. However, the social work profession has been slow in taking up wider concerns of intersectionality. Social work literature argues that the profession itself is ethnocentric because it is a culturally and historically embedded activity that exists within white institutions, unequal social relations and taken-for-granted dimensions of power (Quinn, 2003; Briskman, 2003; Pease, 2010; Walter et al., 2011). The social workers in this study understood this position but without articulating intersectionality. When I asked them about the influence of their gender, age and cultural background, they discussed their experiences of gendered, classed and racialised practices that were privileging and oppressive. As discussed next, class, gender and cultural backgrounds shape social work practice and these social markers are embodied within practice.
Embodied gendered, classed, cultural backgrounds in social work practice
In my analysis of the interviews, I found that social workers’ personal and professional subjectivities were embodied, gendered, classed and racialised, and their responses to homelessness contested (see also Zufferey, 2009). For example, an experienced male social worker of working-class background who was employed in a non-government organisation explained how gender and class influenced his perception of social work:
Work means that you are developing a whole pile of muscle … sweating … digging a hole in the ground. I still have to actually say ‘this is work’, sitting in a room where someone is bawling [crying] their eyes out … [It] is still work – different work. I have to keep telling myself that.
(male, 51+, NGO worker)
This quote illustrates gendered and classed constructions of social work, and also highlights its practice as a form of gendered emotional labour, that requires social workers to show genuine but controlled emotion and empathy towards clients or users of services (Barron and West, 2007; Lupton, 1998). This type of emotional labour, such as listening to someone ‘bawling’, is often considered to be feminised work, not like ‘digging a hole in the ground’ as masculinised physical work. This dilemma was not experienced by female social workers who tended to describe social work as a ‘calling’ that they essentialised as their ‘nurturing’ and ‘compassionate’ nature. As one female social worker said: ‘I have always been a people’s person … I needed to be in this field … it is kind of … what I was meant to do’ (female, 21–30, NGO worker).
Social workers openly discussed how gender and power inequalities can function as a normative, invisible form of oppression. Confronting his own sense of masculinised privilege, one male social worker who worked for an advocacy body explained: ‘I am not the Other. I am man. I am the norm. I don’t experience it… . I am not confronted with it’ (male, 31–40, advocacy policy worker). This invisible gendered oppression was also noted by one female government social worker who said: ‘The subtleties of [gender] oppression … you internalise that … subsequently you start to see that you have been oppressed, but you did not know it at the time’ (female, 41–50, government manager). These quotes illustrate that social workers in their practice are also affected by intersecting unequal power relations that shape their gendered and classed perceptions and experiences of power within social work practice. These themes are further discussed in my 2009 journal article in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, drawing on Connell’s (2002) multidimensional gender relations.
As well as gender and class, 12 out of the 39 social workers interviewed identified that their family were refugees, or had migrated to Australia. One non-government female social worker felt that her own experiences of being ‘othered’ as a migrant (as a child) assisted her to empathise with her client group: ‘I was an outsider when I arrived … I know about outsiders who are homeless people … I was abused as a child, as “a wog”’ (female, 51+, NGO worker; see also Zufferey, 2015, p. 95). In Australia, the term ‘wog’ is widely used to racially abuse people who migrated from Europe and the Middle East after the Second World War. From the 1980s this term of abuse has been reclaimed in Australian movies such as Wogs Out of Work (1987) or Wog Boys (2000) written and acted by comedian Nicholas ‘Nick’ Giannopoulos. The term ‘wog’ is now often used to assert ethnic identity and ‘wog humor’ is popular. However, as Mitchell (1992, p. 2) noted, these racial representations also function to caricature and stereotype the physical appearance, culture, customs, habits and language of men and women from culturally and linguistically diverse groups, as a form of ‘colonial discourse’ and ‘apparatus of power’.
Using an intersectional lens, Mehrotra (2010) argued that social workers in a global context must increasingly incorporate discussions on migration, diaspora, nationality, class, age, gender, ethnicity and citizenship status into their analyses. The material realities of homelessness and feeling ‘homeless’ are embodied experiences marked by limited citizenship rights and economic, political and social power (Arnold, 2004, p. 122). In relation to homeless women, it is well known that the majority were once victims of domestic violence and this gendered experience intersects with classed and racialised experiences of violence. The most severe and lethal domestic violence occurs disproportionately among low-income women of ethnic minority backgrounds, challenging the mainstream feminist contention that domestic violence (and homelessness) affects all women equally (Sokoloff and Dupont, 2005). Moreover, women with disabilities are often in vulnerable situations where abuse can occur, and encounter more frequent domestic abuse and abuse by people in positions of power, such as health care workers (Lockhart and Danis, 2010).
Social work codes of ethics worldwide emphasise that social workers advocate for and address the impact of oppression, social injustice and human rights violations (Murphy et al., 2009). Social workers in my research explained that their personal and professional experiences of racism or sexism have reinforced their commitments to influencing social change. One woman of Chilean background spoke of her family being refugees because they fought for social justice, and this continues in her life today: ‘A big part of my life … fighting for social justice and human rights … helping refugees … doing community work without even being paid … that has continued on’ [in work with homeless] (female, 31–40, NGO worker). Therefore, in my research I found that professional social workers’ commitments to social justice and advocacy for disadvantaged community groups intersect with personal identities and experiences that are embedded within diverse political, social and cultural histories that constitute social work identities and practices (see also Zufferey, 2015). An intersectional social work approach has enabled me to analyse and deconstruct how intersecting unequal power relations constitute social workers’ own embodied experiences.
Intersectionality involves reflecting on social workers’ own social locations, including for example, highlighting white race privilege, xenoracism, unequal race relations, ethnicity, gender, class, age, sexuality, ability, religion, political orientation and other social markers. These intersecting differences constitute the practice and advocacy efforts of social workers. However, different service users potentially experience the social locations of social workers and their advocacy efforts differently. An intersectional social work approach can emphasise the importance of responding to diverse, embodied and interrelated inequalities, by also giving due accord to the voices and agency of service users, without losing sight of the structural inequalities that impact on their experiences (see Chapter 6).
Intersectionality can assist social workers to reflect on themselves and their practice in the field of homelessness, as constituted within intersecting and institutionalised power inequalities. However, social work has been slow to take up intersectional theorising and to engage with the difficulties involved in incorporating an intersectional analysis into its practice, especially when working with people who experience homelessness. An intersectional social work approach would include examining multifaceted subjectivities and social structures that contribute to maintaining particular social work privileges as they intersect with multiple intersecting oppressions.
As previously discussed in Chapter 2, the notion of siting involves the social worker reflecting on his/her situatedness in time, space, history, body, and the intersecting power differentials in his/her own life (Lykke, 2010). In the spirit of reflexive practice, I am interested in focusing on the processes and practices all social workers engage in that continue to reinforce power relations in the field of homelessness, including my own. An analysis of whiteness and white privilege has often been invisible in social work, in the struggle to incorporate notions of power and diversity (Kemp and Brandwein, 2010). This creates tensions for me as a white social work academic, practising in predominantly white and ‘racist’ ways, in a country where the majority of the population (including social workers) are white, such as Australia. A self-reflexive intersectional approach acknowledges that social work has been criticised for being dominated by white, Western and middle-class discourses (Leonard, 1997; Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Self-reflexivity includes examining my own privilege/s, as well as my own oppression/s. As a social worker who purports to engage in intersectional scholarship, it is important to also locate myself as a subject of privileging/oppressing forces and to attend to the ‘oppression and privilege’ of my own social location, which includes examining the processes involved in maintaining my own privilege (Hulko, 2009, p. 53). Next, I provide a personal account of my professional and personal engagement with intersectionality; my homelessness practice and research in the Australian welfare system, as well as the privileges and oppressions that constitute my own subjectivity.
I have personally and professionally reflected on social work and my white race privilege working as a white social worker in the child protection context in a previous journal article in International Social Work (Zufferey, 2013). As a white social worker in Australia I am ascribed an invisible power and privilege as a member of the dominant cultural group (McIntosh, 1992). I am a middle-aged, middle-class, white woman, a first generation Australian of Swiss background. As a white social worker and academic, white race privilege and professional ‘expert’ power positions me as a ‘situated knower’ within a racist society (Moreton-Robinson, 2009). As a white person, there is much that I do not know about and will never know or experience of racism in a racist Western society (Tuana, 2006). Although white privilege is a global phenomenon, my experiences of white privilege are geographically and culturally located in the local Australian context.
Although I did not intentionality design the project as intersectional research, I did begin thinking about the notion of intersectionality in 2001, when completing a MSW research thesis on the perspectives and identities of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal men and women who experience homelessness in Adelaide, South Australia (see also Zufferey and Kerr, 2004). This research was my initial engagement with how experiences and perceptions of home and homelessness were influenced by diverse racialised, classed and gendered social locations, particularly focusing on the perspectives of Aboriginal Australians. At the time of this research, I was a social work practitioner in the field of homelessness in the inner city of Adelaide, South Australia. My role was to collaborate between government and non-government services to improve responses to homelessness, engage in assertive outreach and assist people who were sleeping in the streets and parklands to exit what is commonly understood as ‘rough sleeping’ or literal ‘homelessness’. People I spoke with who were Aboriginal Australians protested about being asked to ‘move on’ from their traditional meeting places in the inner Adelaide parklands. As one Aboriginal woman in my research explained, the parklands belong to Aboriginal people, stating: ‘find out whose land you’re really running your cars on. Whose land is this underneath all your little cement?’ (Zufferey and Kerr, 2004, p. 348). This raised considerable tensions for homelessness outreach workers who wanted to be culturally responsive but were politically and organisationally constrained, as they were employed within white institutions funded to move people from the ‘streets’ to a ‘home’. This practice tension has remained with me and guided my thinking about the importance of intersectional social work approaches in the area of homelessness.
Whilst considering that the central aim of social work is to be inclusive of diverse client groups, normative social work practices raised dilemmas for me, about being a white, Western and middle-class social worker intervening in other people’s lives. I experienced my own social locations in an emotional and embodied way, which was sustained through interactional and relational processes, including my relationships as a social worker with service users. I often felt outraged and frustrated at the social inequalities that were institutionalised within social structures (such as the rich–poor divide) and service systems, including the lack of access to affordable housing. Since completing my PhD research on social work and homelessness in 2007, I have become increasingly conscious of the intersecting influences of class, gender and cultural inequalities in social work responses to homelessness.
More recently, I have been thinking about my own intersecting experiences of both privilege and oppression, as a woman and a single parent. I have been a single mother by choice for the last 22 years. For the first 18 months of being a parent I was entirely dependent on welfare payments, which situated me within a ‘welfare dependent’ discourse. For example, I recall incidents when my neighbour, who was a truck driver, asked me to clean his house for money and when I declined the job, he was outraged that I was taking money from the government and not wanting to accept his cleaning ‘work’. I did (and still do) try hard to ignore and resist the assumptions made about me as a single mother by neighbours, students I teach, colleagues at work and even family and friends. These ideas about single mothers include that I was (or am) sexually promiscuous, that my son who is from a ‘broken home’ will live in poverty, be a delinquent, not do as well at school, needs a father figure and will consequently, lack self-esteem or self-control. These societal attitudes about single mothers position me as having an ‘epistemically disadvantaged identity’ reinforced by knowledge practices and prejudices about my character, intellectual capacity, body and nature (Tuana, 2006). As a consequence of experiencing this, I did feel the pressure to return to work earlier than I would have liked. I did not want to be labelled a ‘welfare-dependent mother’ and to disadvantage my child economically. This shows how I embodied the assumptions of welfare policies and practices that constitute lone mothers’ identities as ‘worker citizens’ that delegitimise ‘mothering as both an activity and social identity’ (Pulkingham et al., 2010, p. 280). Consequently, my son spent most of his early life in child care, whilst I built my professional and then, academic career. I dedicate this book to him and the parent I might have been, had I not internalised assumptions that as a single parent I was an invisible mother and immoral citizen (Pulkingham et al., 2010). Therefore, when reflecting on my background as a mother, social work researcher, practitioner and now educator, and drawing on intersectional feminism as a theoretical approach, I conclude that it is important to acknowledge our own intersecting experiences of both privilege and oppression. In recognising our own social positions, we are more able to deconstruct the power relations that constitute diverse social worker–service user relationships, when working with people who experience homelessness.
This reflection on my own narrative is aligned with the constructionist approach to intersectionality that views identity as a (subjective) ‘narrative construction’ (Prins, 2006, p. 277). I do not intend to ‘name’ my own privileges and oppression as binaries (Prins, 2006, p. 277), as they change over time and in different contexts. This type of self-reflection would be different for each person who reads this book.
The next case study and reflection was provided my colleague and partner Dr Chris Horsell, pertaining to his professional practice as a white, male social worker, when employed in a homeless men’s night shelter. The case study below highlights responses of service users that reflect dominant heteronormative assumptions and homophobic responses towards people who identify as LGBTIQ (including ‘youth of color’), as identified in literature (Quintana et al., 2010, p. 27).
This case study of Ian provides an illustration of how gender binaries and homophobia are institutionalised in the homelessness service provision system that provides for women or men’s only services. This case study offers some insights and reflections on the barriers to human rights and social justice for one transgender person experiencing homelessness in Australia.
Ian is a transgender person from a multiracial background, in his mid-thirties, who identifies as a woman. As will be evident from this case study, there were significant challenges in providing a safe and secure environment for Ian within the current homeless services sector. Officially, he could not be accommodated within services for women but within the men’s shelter system, he was particularly vulnerable to abuse.
Ian has been homeless for several years and accesses an inner city homeless men’s shelter every eight or nine months for emergency accommodation. The accommodation service was renovated in the early 2000s to provide single rooms for some residents, after many years of dormitory style accommodation. However, shared rooms continue to be the case for approximately half of those adult men who present to the shelter.
Ian usually presented wearing a pink jumpsuit (referred to as ‘onesies’ in the UK) or floral dress. He wore some makeup – usually eyeliner, and on occasions lipstick. He had platinum blonde hair and more often than not wore a tiara. Ian said he suffered from bouts of depression and attempted suicide several times in his life – but did not seek assistance from mental health services, stating he felt they did not understand him.
Staff at the accommodation service noted that on a number of occasions other residents would taunt Ian about his appearance and sexuality, often to the point of provocation. For the most part Ian was relatively calm but if provoked he would invariably respond with a verbal riposte to provocateurs. This occasionally led to other service users attempting to assault him physically. While every effort was made to seek longer-term accommodation for Ian, staff would often experience systemic barriers founded on rigid gender classification.
While one cannot overly generalise, as a social worker in the homeless sector over a number of years I noticed that many male homeless clients performed a dominant heterosexual masculinity that was proscribed by rigid gender classifications which allowed for minimal, if any, crossing of gender boundaries. Additionally, while workers in the field did not necessarily hold similar views, systemic barriers that reflected heterosexual norms made it difficult to provide an appropriate and safe service response for people such as Ian. For example, there were no homeless services available for transgender people and therefore, no service support referral could be made.
Ian’s situation challenged me as a social worker at a number of levels. I found myself at times totalising his ‘vulnerable’ identity as a transgender person and frequently became over protective in the face of the attitudes of other clients who frequently said that he shouldn’t be in the service. His situation led me to think more expansively about structural and systemic causes of homelessness. A structural framework in its most orthodox forms takes on board binary gendered responses to men and women and is thoroughly imbued with masculinist assumptions about home and public space, including in a homeless men’s shelter. In my own work with Ian at the men’s shelter, I had to reflect carefully on my own assumptions and feelings towards other clients, who in many ways were disenfranchised but with regard to Ian, were blatantly abusive and at times violent.
Ian’s situation brought into sharp profile for me long-held views about the limitations of normative masculinist assumptions regarding both the social work client base I worked with and the broader homelessness sector that also constructs rigid gender-oriented services. I often felt angry and at a loss as to what would be best to do, not least because of a lack of service options. I learned to deal with gender ambiguity and relearned some basic social work skills about deep listening and affirmation. Whilst I did aim to challenge normative gender constructions in conversations with workers and clients of the service, and advocate for system change and services that could respond to Ian, this was mostly unsuccessful.
This case study points to the problem of integrating and operationalising intersectionality in social work responses to homelessness within service systems that are structurally constructed along rigid gender lines. The challenge for social work practitioners is how to collectively respond to the intersecting inequalities experienced by male, female and transgender clients, within normative socio-political and organisational contexts that construct gender/sex binaries and homogenise social issues. An intersectional approach invites social workers to take into account socially constructed aspects of gender performativity (Butler, 1999), and to consider heteronormative assumptions that disadvantage transgender people such as Ian, within multiple and intersecting power inequalities. The complexity of Ian’s homeless experience led Chris, the male social worker working in the men’s night shelter, to reconsider traditional masculine assumptions in services and by service providers and service users when responding to homelessness. As stated previously, as Murphy and colleagues (2009) noted, intersectionality provides a systems-focused perspective, consistent with social work’s commitment to social justice. To dismantle intersecting social inequalities and to move beyond simply focusing on complexity and diversity (May, 2015), social workers also need to challenge normative sex/gender constructions (Lykke, 2010), and advocate for changes to service systems that can respond more inclusively to Ian’s experience. However, as Rowntree (2014) has noted, sexuality and gender constructions are neglected areas of analysis in the field of social work education.
In addition to the lack of social services for transgender people and the invisibility of sexuality in social work education, literature indicates that the ‘failure’ of ‘family and social safety nets’ to support LGBTIQ people has ‘catastrophic consequences on their economic stability, educational attainment, physical and mental health, economic future, and life expectancy’ (Quintana et al., 2010, p. 1). A disproportionate number of young people who experience homelessness are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, have higher rates of victimisation and abuse, and are more likely to be discriminated against, attempt suicide and experience mental health, and drug and alcohol problems – but they are overlooked by the welfare system and systemic responses to homelessness (Quintana et al., 2010). The literature on social work and LGBTIQ people does, however, take an intersectional approach, such as Neill et al.’s (2015) edited Canadian book that provides insights into multiple and intersecting identities of LGBTQ people and communities, to inform social work practice in the pursuit of social justice.
An intersectional social work approach is reflexive, holistic, empowering, systems-focused and socially just (Murphy et al., 2009). Intersectionality highlights ‘that people belong to more than one social category at the same time’ by focusing on ‘interactions of different social locations, systems and processes’ and investigating ‘the significance of any specific combination of factors’ (Hankivsky et al., 2014, p. 13). This approach can expand advocacy in social work and homelessness, to include diverse and previously invisible intersecting inequalities. For example, it can broaden anti-homophobic, anti-racist and feminist activism in the area of homelessness, to be inclusive of other categories of disadvantage such as disability, whilst also acknowledging social workers’ positions of power and advantage (Nixon and Humphreys, 2010; Shaikh, 2012).
An intersectional approach can extend social work understandings about social constructions that intersect to constitute social workers’ own professional and personal subjectivities. It invites social workers (and other professions) to reflect on their own social locations and to challenge intersecting social inequalities and contribute to social change. Thus, in the context of social work practice responses to homelessness, an intersectional social work approach allows for a more complex, flexible, multilayered analysis of power locations.
Whilst this chapter is related to social work practice specifically, the range of issues that are constructed as underpinning experiences of homelessness, including domestic and family violence, mental health, complex trauma, physical ill health and drug and alcohol issues, are also domains of other professions. Intersectional analysis is not the exclusive domain of one profession, and is equally relevant in the responses of other disciplines involved in the field of homelessness. Therefore, an intersectional social work approach can be multidisciplinary, assisting different professions to work together, for the benefit of people who experience homelessness, and to contribute to the potential of inter-professional practice. This book focuses on social work because this is my profession and expertise, and because intersectionality is neglected in the field of social work and homelessness. The next chapter examines the perspectives of service users and people who have experienced homelessness.
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