Professor wins award in the Literati Network Awards...

Professor Helen Colley, Professor of Lifelong Learning and Director of Graduate Education in the School of Education and Professional Development, has won a Highly Commended Award for one of her papers in the Literati Network Awards for Excellence, run by Emerald, a major academic publishing house in Europe.  

 

Winners were chosen following consultation amongst the Editorial Team of each Emerald-published journal, many of whom are eminent academics or practitioners. The award states that the paper "has been selected as it was one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2012".  The paper is entitled "Not learning in the workplace: austerity and the shattering of illusio in public service work", and was published in the Journal of Workplace Learning (Vol. 24, No.5, pp.317-337), a European-based international peer-reviewed journal.

 

The paper discusses the serious pressures which are being brought to bear on public service workers under conditions of 'austerity' policies and harsh cutbacks in public spending.  Drawing on research conducted with the youth support service Connexions immediately after the 2008 financial crash, it reveals severe restrictions on service resources, and unfeasible government targets for getting young people into education, training or employment, despite a dire lack of suitable opportunities and growing need among disadvantaged youth.  Connexions workers themselves felt under increasing pressure to take actions they believed to be deeply unethical, both from a personal and a professional point of view - 'massaging' service statistics, sending young people for unsuitable vacancies, and prioritising work with youth facing lesser difficulties, rather than those with social circumstances and health conditions that demanded considerably more support.  As a result, personal advisers found it difficult to learn how to cope with this context.  Many suffered physical and mental ill-health, and some quit the job, while others lost theirs as a result of protesting about unethical practices.  Many practitioners in youth work, social work, healthcare and education have responded to the findings with similar stories of their own, suggesting a broader problem that needs to be addressed.

 

As Helen states, 'I am honoured to have my work recognised in this award by international leaders of the research community.  Most importantly, it allows those who participated in my research to have their voices and experiences heard by a broader international audience, and to bring them to greater public attention.   Winning papers are made available for free download for a time after the award - an important opportunity to disseminate the research findings much more widely than usual, including outside of academic circles.  I hope very much that this will help to stimulate public debate about the loss of moral compass in public services as austerity bites ever deeper.'