Political PIEs: Learning f om
f ontline housing services Rachel Brown, Coral Westaway and Clare Watson
T is article will introduce readers to psychologically-informed environments (PIEs); progressive developments in the homelessness sector, which place the psychological and emotional needs of people at the centre of services and identify relationship as the foundation of change. Homelessness will be placed within a political and social context, drawing on evidence and research that show how oppressive political agendas perpetuate systems of inequality and directly impact on the psychological health of individuals and communities. T e strengths of psychologically-informed environments will be highlighted and considered within a political frame. Finally, drawing from the practice of frontline housing services, we will consider how value-driven practice and a relational focus can fuel hope and sustain connection for all practitioners working in this challenging political climate.
There is an energy in the homeless sector…
Within the homeless sector, there is
a momentum building as creativity and progressive thinking generate hope and fuel growth. In this time of depletion, scarcity and cuts, this is a rare vitality within services more recognisably dominated by anxiety and fatigue. Tasked with supporting people presenting with multiple and complex needs, the homeless sector leans upon systemic and system change frameworks. Thus, unlike services that target an individual aspect of difficulties, many homeless services seek to understand people in context and to design a response that acknowledges a context of multiple and severe disadvantage. This progressive thinking, as we
will discuss, draws on psychological and systemic principles – with a clear relational focus. A refreshing approach has the potential to energise some of the current hopelessness that can be observed in public services as we negotiate the effects of neoliberal capitalist politics.
We are all responsible Against a backdrop of reductions
to government spending on welfare, the number of people experiencing homelessness has continued to rise. Offi cially estimated rough-sleeper numbers are up by 169% since 2010, a 15% increase from 2016 to 2017 (Fitzpatrick et al., 2018). Other fi gures show the much wider extent of the problem; in the past six years, there has been a 60% increase in households living in temporary
Context 164, August 2019
accommodation (National Audit Offi ce, 2017). These fi gures refl ect the reduction in social housing, rising costs in the private rental sector (National Audit Offi ce, 2017) and the decrease in services designed to help people in need of secure and stable accommodation (Homeless Link, 2017). The evidence regarding the
links between poverty, inequality, homelessness, trauma and poor mental health is strong and clear (Macintyre, 2018), and has prompted Psychologists for Social Change to take a clear stance outlining the causal link between austerity policies and mental health problems (McGrath et al., 2015). For practitioners, the psychological ailments of poverty: humiliation and shame, fear and distrust, instability and insecurity, isolation and loneliness, being trapped and powerless, are evident. Thus, the professional becomes political.
Homelessness is indisputably an
economic and political issue. Yet public narratives around homelessness remain focused on individual defi cits; “They are all on drugs” and “It’s a lifestyle choice” – forgetting that living in conditions of poverty strips people of choice and control. In Pascale’s (2005) examination of the
“cultural production of homelessness” (p. 251), she highlights that, for many in society, our only knowledge of people who experience homelessness is through the media. Pascale proposed a strong relationship between the cultural production of homelessness, politics and economics. She demonstrated that, over time, the term ‘homeless’ changed from describing someone who had lost their home, and could thus be empathised with in terms of “It could be me”, to being associated with “substance abuse,
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Political PIEs: Learning from frontline housing services
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