Practitioner Emotions in Penal Voluntary Sectors: Experiences from England and Canada

Tomczak, Philippa; Quinn, Kaitlyn

Abstract

Mixed economies of welfare have seen increasing numbers of service users funnelled into voluntary, rather than statutory sector services. Many service users with (complex) human needs now fall within the remit of ill-researched voluntary organisations that are rarely social work led. Voluntary sector practitioners comprise a large and rising proportion of the social services workforce, but their experiences have received minimal analysis. Despite the importance of emotions across the helping professions, voluntary sector practitioners’ emotional experiences are largely unknown. We address this gap, using an innovative bricolage of original qualitative data from England and Canada to highlight how emotions matter for penal voluntary sector practitioners across diverse organisational roles, organisational contexts, and national jurisdictions. We examine the emotions of paid and volunteer penal voluntary sector practitioners relating to their (i) organisational contexts and (ii) relationships with criminalised service users. Problematising positive, evocative framings of ‘citizen participation’, we argue that continuing to overlook voluntary sector practitioners’ emotions facilitates the downloading of double neoliberal burdens—‘helping’ marginalised populations and generating the funds to do so—onto individual practitioners, who are too often ill-equipped to manage them.

Citation

Tomczak, P., & Quinn, K. (2021). Practitioner Emotions in Penal Voluntary Sectors: Experiences from England and Canada. British Journal of Social Work, 51(7), 2282-2300. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcaa020

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 26, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Apr 14, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-10
• Deposit Date: Mar 6, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 15, 2022
• Journal: The British Journal of Social Work
• Print ISSN: 0045-3102
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-263X
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 2282-2300
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcaa020
• Keywords: Emotion, nongovernmental, punishment, voluntary sector, volunteer
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4095413
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/bjsw/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjsw/bcaa020/5819722?redirectedFrom=fulltext
• Additional Information: This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in British Journal of Social Work following peer review. The version of record Philippa Tomczak, Kaitlyn Quinn, Practitioner Emotions in Penal Voluntary Sectors: Experiences from England and Canada, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 51, Issue 7, October 2021, Pages 2282–2300 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093.