Sheffi eld: The Centre for Welfare Reform. Kinderman, P. (2017) President’s letter. The Psychologist, 30: 4. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty. Chichester: Wiley. Loopstra, R., Reeves, A., Taylor-Robinson, D., Barr, B., McKee, M. & Stuckler, D. (2015) Austerity, sanctions, and the rise of food banks in the UK. British Medical Journal (Clinical research ed.), 350. McCartney, M. (2012) The disturbing truth about disability assessments. British Medical Journal, 345: e5347. Morgan, H., Randall-James, J., Lyons, A., Oliver, S., Saff er, J., Scott J. & Nolte, L. (2019) Pebbles in palms: Counter-practices against despair, Psychotherapy and Politics. NHS England (2014) Five Year Forward View: October 2014. Care Quality Commission and Public Health England. Nolte, L. (2017) (Dis)gracefully navigating the challenges of diversity learning and teaching – refl ections on the Social Graces as a diversity training tool. Context, 151: 4-6. Richardson, T., Elliott, P. & Roberts, R. (2013) The relationship between personal unsecured debt and mental and physical health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(8): 1148-1162. Reynolds, V. (2010) Fluid and imperfect ally positioning: Some gifts of queer theory. Context, 111: 13-17. Saff er, J., Nolte, L. & Duff y, S. (2018) Living on a knife edge: The responses of people with physical health conditions to changes in disability benefi ts. Disability & Society, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2018.1514292. The Black Triangle Campaign (2015) Retrieved from http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/ [Accessed 10/06/19]. UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2016) Inquiry concerning the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Carried out by the Committee under Article 6 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention. Report of the Committee. Waldegrave, C., Tamasese, K., Tuhaka, F. & Campbell, W. (2003) Just Therapy – a Journey. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. White, M. & Epston, D. (1990) Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. New York: Norton.


The Zone of Fabulousne connection, collective care a


people we work alongside Vikki Reynolds


The Zone of Fabulousness: A person-centred approach to “Burnout”


T is work off ers an alternative approach


to understanding the ways we as workers are harmed in the work, and our collective resistance to these harms, that is diff erent from vicarious trauma or burnout. Instead of looking at workers’ traumatic symptoms we look at how we treat people we work alongside (persons), and if we are able to create relationships of respect and dignity. Are we in staff -centred teams, or person- centred teams? If so, how are persons at the centre of all we do? As workers, are we responding to the heart-breaking work with disconnection where we are moving too far away from persons, taken with negativity and moving into cynicism. Or are we moving in too close, with heroic posturing, becoming enmeshed and enacting transgressions of intimacy and ‘specialness’? If we are able to hold persons at the centre of our work and care, and stay with connection, resisting disconnection and enmeshment, we are more able to resist burnout and create collective sustainability. T e Zone of Fabulousness is the space of connection, where persons are at the centre, we are connected as workers in our collective ethics with collective care (as opposed to self-care), the bringers of a believed-in hope as an ethical obligation, collaborative and creative, messy, imperfect but accountable, and shouldering each other up.


Where I am standing:


Decolonising and unsettling While my aim is to enact justice-doing and


Jessica is a clinical psychologist who works in child and adolescent mental health services in St Albans for Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. She uses systemic ideas in her work and is interested in the impact of societal issues on individuals’ experiences. Email: jessica.saff er@gmail.com


36


decolonisation in all of my paid and unpaid work, I am immersed in the ongoing work of unset ling myself as a white set ler (Reynolds & Hammoud-Becket , 2018). Tuck and Yang (2012) teach that decolonisation is not a metaphor, and means commitments to indigenous governance and land return. I aim to be directed in all my activist work and


organising by indigenous people (Manuel & Derrickson, 2015).


Resisting burnout with justice- doing


Resisting burnout with justice-doing


refl ects an activist position for staying alive in our work (Reynolds, 2011a). Ideas of vicarious trauma are based in ways persons’ pain infects us with hopelessness, yet oſt en persons inform, transform, provoke and educate us. T e harms in our work are most oſt en from structures that are oppressive and do not allow for the resources and practices needed to respond to human suff ering with dignity. Four decades of neo-liberalism, the destruction of the social net of care, and mean-spirited and hate-fi lled politics must be understood as the context of our work and inextricably linked to our struggles for sustainability as workers. Our resistance to these contexts of structural oppression and horror is to enact our collective ethics which are the values that drew us to this work and the fabric of the solidarity that can hold us together in acts of collective care. Self-care is a required, but limited response. Self-care is essential so that we can de-centre ourselves as workers, and truly hold the person at the centre of our care. Working against our ethics leads to spiritual pain or ethical pain, and workers have taught me across decades that spiritual pain is a bet er way to understand the harms workers experience than burnout. If we can enact collective care, as opposed to only self-care, sustainability becomes possible, and we can act in solidarity as activists to change the social context, and shoulder each other up in resistance to the dark spaces of our work. From a justice-doing lens ‘Vicarious


Trauma’ inventory measures are more accurately revealed as measures of the privileged locations of practitioners. Workers with more access to power and life choices can measure up as more professional, more ‘mentally well’. I believe a bet er measure


Context 164, August 2019


The Zone of Fabulousness: Resisting vicarious trauma with connection, collective care and justice-doing in ways that centre the people we work alongside


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