Towards Trauma-Informed Employment Services: Implications for Street-Level Practice in the Delivery of Welfare-to-Work

EasyChair Preprint no. 13289

Abstract

Approaches to delivering welfare-to-work and employment services has significantly shifted towards a workfarist model, emphasising continuous job search and behavioural conditionality to foster labor market reintegration. This shift, marking a departure from human capital development strategies over the last quarter-century, aligns with changes in the governance of activation. These changes involve more rigorous performance evaluations of organisations and staff at the street level and the adoption of market-driven implementation frameworks.

Despite its intentions, the workfare model faces challenges in facilitating the inclusion of individuals who are long-term unemployed, particularly those facing complex barriers to employment. Research highlights the detrimental impact of workfare models on participants' psychological well-being (Carter & Whitworth, 2017), with critiques framing employment services as "violent bureaucracies" (Redman & Fletcher, 2022) that inflict social harm. This concern is magnified by evidence that many claimants have histories of trauma, affecting their interaction with welfare systems and career development. The call for welfare systems to adopt a trauma-informed approach is growing, yet the practical implications for welfare-to-work services remain uncertain.

This paper presents a scoping review on trauma-informed methods in welfare-to-work and employment services. Although trauma-informed practices are well-established in child welfare and youth services, their application in activation and employment contexts remains largely conjectural.

The review is part of a larger project in collaboration with an Australian employment services provider aiming to integrate trauma-informed practices. Over the next three years, researchers from the University of Melbourne will observe how this organisation implements trauma-informed strategies across a range of local offices.

Keyphrases: employment services, Trauma-informed, welfare to work

@Booklet{EasyChair:13289,
  author = {Emily Corbett and Michael McGann and Mark Considine and René Rejón},
  title = {Towards Trauma-Informed Employment Services: Implications for Street-Level Practice in the Delivery of Welfare-to-Work},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 13289},

  year = {EasyChair, 2024}}