Targeting single mothers? Dynamics of contracting Australian employment services and activation policies at the street level Abstract Activation reforms targeted at single parents simultaneously construct them as a legitimate target for activation policy and subjects them to new obligations to engage in paid work or education/training. The social policy literature has established that the work of ‘makingup’ target groups occurs at the street level as well as in government legislation. The street level has become even more significant in recent years as there has been a shift towards establishing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programs and organizing these around the principles of performance pay and process flexibility. However, what is largely missing from the existing literature is analysis of how contract conditions together with individual’s activation obligations shape how they are targeted at the street level. Drawing on an eight year study with agencies in Australia’s quasi-market for employment services this paper argues that the changes to the contracts for governing this market changed how Australian single mothers were targeted by employment services. Over time there was a shift over time away from making-up single parent clients as a distinct, vulnerable target group and a shift towards viewing them in terms of risk categories described within the agencies’ contracts. fdIntroduction As in most Western jurisdictions, Australia has in recent decades subjected single parents to new activation policies. Activation reforms simultaneously construct single parents as a legitimate target groups for activation policy (Raffass, 2017), and subjects them to new obligations to engage in paid work or education/training. The construction of single parents as a target group for activation policy has been strongly shaped by the moral politics surrounding them (Korteweg, 2003 2006; Ingram and Schneier, 2015), and the development of new technologies and discourses that enable individualised, risk-based governance (Henman, 2004). A significant and growing literature has identified how single parents became a legitimate target for activation policy (Brady, 2011a; Lewis, 1997; Shaver, 2002). However, what occurs at the street level is proscribed but not determined by official policy. A small literature, primarily focused on the US, has identified how single 1 parents are constructed as target groups at the street level (Altreiter and Leibetseder, 2015; Korteweg, 2006, 2003; Brodkin, 1997). The street level has become even more significant in recent years in Australia, and many other countries, as there has been a shift towards establishing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programs (Finn, 2011), and organising these around newpublic management principles of performance pay and process flexibility (Jordon, forthcoming; Bennett, 2017; Cowling and Mitchell, 2003; Finn, 2011; Carter and Whitworth, 2015). In Australian this market was called the Job Network (JN) when it was created in 1998 and it was renamed Job Services Australia (JSA) in 2009. A growing literature has focused on agencies’ experiences of contracting, including changes over time (Bennett, 2017; Cowling and Mitchell, 2003; Finn, 2011; Carter and Whitworth, 2015). There is also a relatively large literature on on how the unemployed are constructed as target groups within these contracted agencies (Jordon, forthcoming; Fuertes and Lindsay, 2016; Ulmestig and Marston, 2015). However, what is largely missing from the existing literature is an analysis of how contract conditions together with individuals’ activation obligations shape how they are targeted at the street level. Such an analysis is critical because it is clear that the contracts that govern these quasimarkets shape how groups are activated, as they financially reward certain kinds of targeting and make others less profitable or financially viable. The aim of this paper is to understand how technologies that are used to govern the Australian quasi-market for welfare-to-work programs operate together with single parents’ activation requirements to shape how they are targeted at the street level. Our analytical approach involves seeking to understand how staff in the network of agencies contracted by the Australian Government to deliver welfare-to-work programs critically reflect on the official policies and technologies they use to target and activate single parents. This approach resonates with, but also extends, the work of social policy scholars working in critical and poststructuralist traditions who have sought to understand how individuals become, and are governed as, targets of public policy (Brady, 2011a; Henman, 2004; Whitworth, 2016). Informed by a growing body of work that uses ethnographic and quasi-ethnographic methods to understand the experience of governmentalities in everyday life and how situated actors critically “reflect on, account for, and represent existing practices of government of which they are a part” (Author, 2016, p.273), we seek to understand how Australian single parents were ‘made up’ and governed as target groups at the street level 2 in the quasi-market for welfare-to-work programs (henceforth referred to as Jobs, Services Australia/Job Network (JSA/JN). We seek to understand: 1) how staff in JSA/JN critically reflect on the governmental rationalities that underpin their actions; 2) how governmental technologies shape the actions JSA/JN staff take; and 3) the forms of subjectification that have occurred as part of JSA/JN agencies’ efforts to shape single parents’ conduct. Our paper draws on longitudinal qualitative interviews conducted with staff working in JSA/JN. This longitudinal design, together with the timing of the first interviews, allowed us to examine how the governance of a new target group changed over time. We first interviewed JSA/JN staff in 2007, shortly after the Australian Government had introduced new activation requirements targeting parents and had made the decision to move employment programs for primary carer parents into JN/JSA. While Australia is recognised as a leader in developing quasi-markets for the delivery of welfare-to-work programs, prior to 2006 employment programs for primary carer parents were delivered within the public welfare agency (Centrelink) and programs offered within JN/JSA were largely designed to assist people in receipt of unemployment payments who did not have primary carer responsibilities. The second tranche of interviews occurred six to eight and a half years later (late 2013 to early 2015). Over this period the government made major changes to the system, owing to concerns that providers were ‘parking’ difficult to place clients while focusing on easiest to place (‘creaming’) (Cowling and Mitchell, 2003; Finn, 2011; Carter and Whitworth, 2015). The paper begins by locating our conceptualisation of activation-as-targeting within a synthesis of the literature on social policy and targeting. We then outline the structure and evolution of Australia’s quasi-market for welfare-to-work programs, placing these reforms in an international context before describing the activation and targeting of Australian single parents and the study design. We then present our two key findings on the targeting and governance of Australian single mothers in JN/JSA: 1) there was a shift over time away from constructing single mothers as a distinct, vulnerable target group; and 2) the role of the staff-client encounters shifted away from seeking to develop deep relationships with clients– so as to transform their ‘welfare dependent’ mindsets– to instead seeking to move clients rapidly into paid work through any possible means. Conceptualising targeting in social policy 3 Activation entails a process of constructing some individuals as suitable targets for activation policy, and developing tools or technologies that enable them to be targeted. Targeting – singling out persons or groups of persons for distinctive treatment – has a long history in the liberal democratic state (Henman, 2004). Existing critical and post-structuralist research has developed three key conclusions: firstly, target publics are not fixed or pre-existing but are actively constructed; secondly, the nature and impact of targeting is shaped by the moral politics surrounding the specific groups; and finally, targeting is being extended and transformed by new technologies and discourses that emphasise and enable individualised, risk-based governance of subjects. We provide a synthesis of these ideas here and in the process outline our conceptualisation of targeting. Firstly, these scholars have concluded that targeting is a process of subjectification whereby a series of discourses, rationalities and technologies coalesce to render certain individuals appropriate targets of state interventions. A key technology is classification: the development of matrices of categories and definitions and the fitment of persons into those categories (Henman, 2004). A process of subjectification then occurs whereby people are “made up” into category members (Hacking, 1999), and these categories become the “socially reinforced conceptualisation of self that informs action” (Korteweg, 2003: 447). Genealogical analysis of Australia’s system of income support, for example, reveals the significant work that went into creating single parents as a self-evident target group and replacing older target publics, such as widows (Brady, 2011b). This literature tends to discuss the construction of target publics as a top-down process involving policy and program designers’ schemes and imaginings. Korteweg (2003) noted 15 years ago that less attention has been paid to how frontline staff are actively involved in subjectification, including how they reflect on and represent practices of government, and this continues to be the case (Lipper and Brady, 2016; Blaxland, 2013). Secondly, some of these scholars have concluded that the tactical politics around the decision to target particular groups is shaped by their moral status (Altreiter and Leibetseder, 2015; Ingram and Schneider 2015; Schneider and Ingram, 1993). Ingram and Schneider (1993, 2015) conclude that a range of factors (including the moral-political status of the target population and the electoral implications of targeting them) drive policymakers’ targeting decisions, including the policy instruments they use. Welfare 4 recipients often have a poor moral political status and are framed as "undeserving," "stupid," "dishonest," and "selfish" (Schneider and Ingram, 1993). However, some target groups, such as mothers and children, may have weak political power but positive social constructions, leading to complex and variable targeting processes for such ambiguously positioned subjects (Schneider and Ingram, 1993: 336). In recent years welfare policies have become increasingly paternalistic and procedures for monitoring and documenting recipients’ behavior more intense (Ingram and Schneier, 2015). Schneider and Ingram (1993) concede that the way policy is actually enacted will depend on the degree to which street-level actors agree with how a group is targeted, and recent literature (Altreiter and Leibetseder, 2015) has applied their framework to analyse how assumptions about moral un/deservingness are constructed through a street-level organisation’s structures and practices. Such an approach is consistent with Brodkin’s (2013) argument that street-level organisations as mediators of welfare state politics and processes, and offers a critical examination of how ‘mediation’ unfolds in practice. Thirdly, targeting has been transformed and extended in recent decades via the introduction of new technologies which increasingly facilitate individualised, risk-based governance (Henman 2004; Henman and Dean, 2010) in part through the embedding of authority in computer algorithms (Aneesh, 2006). In the context of unemployment services new computerised assessment systems with complex algorithms, which are designed to weigh multifarious potential risk factors and produce an aggregate profile of disadvantage, guide service providers’ decisions about the allocation of assistance resources. When considered in relation to clients of employment services, such categorised individuals are less likely to receive homogenous service packages or activation requirements but more likely to be targeted as bearers of socially-defined risks, not as unique persons (Henman, 2004). Street level research on welfare bureaucracies (Dubois, 2010) contends that such tools also function as mechanisms of coercion. The expansion of computerised assessment may also shape street-level bureaucrats’ engagement with clients by displacing technical expertise and discretionary judgement at the street level, as these bureaucrats have little input into the administrative systems and the judgements they generate (Henman and Dean, 2010). Bureaucrats’ engagement with clients may become less personalised as these systems do not capture detailed client information that is unamenable to quantitative categorisation (Henman and Dean, 2010). 5 Research thus finds that while targeting has long been core to welfare policies and practices, it is also evolving and intensifying in the context of post-welfarism. However, while there is a growing body of work on the new quasi-markets for delivering welfare programs; research has not explicitly examined how the technologies for managing these quasi-markets, including contracts and complex algorithms, shapes how clients are targeted and governed at the street level. Activation and targeting of Australian single parents Targeting of Australian single parents within the JN is shaped by the activation polices they are subject to. Following a broader international trend Australian single parents in receipt of income support have been the target of activation programs since the 1980s with the introduction of the Jobs, Education and Training (JET) program in 1989 to assist single parents to voluntarily re-enter work through the provision of specialist advisors and childcare supports (Brady, 2011a). As in the UK, US, Canada and elsewhere in the late 1990s, activation policies shifted from supporting voluntary participation in paid work to emphasising the problem of welfare dependency. As in the UK, while the Australian government stressed that ‘dependency’ was a problem for all welfare beneficiaries, they characterised the ‘dependency’ of parents as particularly urgent because of the alleged dangers of bequeathing a ‘dependency mentality’ to their children (Brady, 2011a; Lewis, 1997). Income support recipients were characterised as having maladaptive psychologies, evident in a supposed lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, and unrealistic expectations about the kinds of work they could gain (Brady, 2011a). In 2003 JET was supplemented with the new compulsory Centrelink Personal Adviser (PA) program which employed proto-professional advisors to assist clients with problems associated with ‘maladaptive psychologies’ by providing a sympathetic ear and encouragement to plan for the future (Brady, 2011a). Similar to the 2001 UK PA program, this program positioned single parents as dependent and vulnerable (Haux, 2012) and chained to a system that encouraged “passive dependency” rather than realising their full potential (Department of Social Security 1998, 2, 9, 19). Dependency discourse is complex and multifaceted, enabling it to be linked to diverse policy solutions. While one face of dependency discourse is linked with discourses of pastoral care and positions single mothers in receipt of income support as vulnerable, another is linked to non-liberal discourses and positions them as having maladaptive 6 dispositions that ultimately pose a threat to the social fabric (Lewis, 1997). The latter face of dependency discourse promotes a ‘tough love’ approach to activation involving compulsory paid work and/or training/education obligations and cuts to payment levels. Corresponding with the shift internationally towards more punitive activation programs this ‘tough love’ variant motivated Australia’s 2005 Welfare to Work budget measures. It introduced stringent new requirements for parents with school-age children to engage in part-time (average 30 hours per fortnight) paid work and the movement of parents with school-age children who claimed income support after 2006 to the lower-rate Newstart payment. 1 Paralleling the international shift towards cutting enabling activation programs (skills training, childcare provision), the JET and PA programs 2 were dismantled (Raffass, 2017) and primary carer parents were henceforth referred to the JN/JSA which previously had overwhelmingly only assisted the unemployed who were not primary carers. Overview of Australia’s contractualised employment system It is to the structure and evolution of Australia’s JN/JSA that we now turn. Much has been made in the international literature of Australia’s pioneering initiative in creating the JN and outsourcing the provision of government-funded employment assistance for the unemployed to it (Struyven and Steurs, 2005; McDonald and Marston, 2008). The JN was inspired by new public management principles of devolving decision making to the frontline, while holding service agencies accountable for outcomes (Cowling and Mitchell, 2003; Eardley, 2003). Using arguments that would later be used to justify reforms in the UK, the Australian government promoted the quasi-market on the grounds that increased front-line discretion and market incentives would increase service delivery innovation and creativity, resulting in activation programs more appropriately targeting individuals’ needs (Struyven and Steurs, 2005; McDonald and Marston, 2008; Bennett, 2017; Jordon, forthcoming). To create the quasi-market the Government removed the separation between the benefits office (Department of Social Security - DSS) and the labour exchange (Commonwealth Employment Service - CES) and merged them into one organisation called Centrelink. The employment assistance and job matching services 1 Eight years later the “grandfather” clause was removed and the work requirements were extended to those who claimed payment prior to 2006 (an additional 65,000 single parents). 2 Jobs, Education and Training advisors and Personal Advisors. 7 delivered by the CES were contracted out to the new JN. The JN offered different levels of assistance, ranging from finding job vacancies to job training to more customised assistance. To determine the level of service an individual would receive, the government adopted a combination of risk and duration-based targeting. The risk-based approach was implemented by having Centrelink staff assess individuals using a computerised, algorithmic Job Seeker Classification Instrument (JSCI) designed to distinguish between ‘work ready’ and ‘disadvantaged’ jobseekers (DEWR, 2002: 27–8). Duration was determined by duration of payment receipt. The UK government followed the Australian reforms a few years later (in 2001) by creating Jobcentre Plus, which combined the employment office and benefits agency, and a new central government department called Department for Work and Pensions to manage contracts with the new Jobs Centre Plus and non-state organisations who would deliver welfare-to-work programs and services (Bennett, 2017). However, the UK has taken a different approach to determining disadvantage by using payment claimed, rather than individual risk (Carter and Whitworth, 2015). Underscoring Bennett’s (2017: 133) recent argument that quasi-markets for employment services are not static, it is essential to point out that the government has repeatedly reformed the JN since the first Employment Services Contract 1 (ESC1, May 1998 to February 2000). Subsequent contract rounds have been as follows: ESC2 contracts were operational from February 2000 until June 2003 (Considine, Lewis and O’Sullivan, 2011); ESC3 – Stage One was operational from mid-2003 to mid-2006; ESC3 – Stage Two was operational mid-2006 to mid-2009; and Jobs Services Australia (JSA) was operational mid-2009 to mid-2015 (covering two deeds JS Deed 2009-2012 and JS Deed 2012-2015). Similar to the experience in the UK (Bennett, 2017) over the period 1998-2009 there was a dramatic consolidation of providers with the number of core providers falling from 306 to 99 and very few new providers entering the system (Finn, 2011). However, many providers did not have to compete for renewal of their contracts but instead had their contracts rolled over based on prior performance. Performance was assessed via a star ratings system which the government introduced in 1999 to help jobseekers choose the best provider. For ESC3 – Stage One, 60% of providers with ESC2 contracts were rolled over based on their star rating (Finn, 2011) and this also occurred for ESC2 – Stage Two (Considine, Lewis and O’Sullivan, 2011). Commentators argued that the substantial commencement fee that agencies were given under the first two contracts (ESC1 and 2) encouraged them 8 to “park ” the hard to help while using the resources saved to “cream” by assisting the easy to help. Official evaluations confirmed creaming and parking was occurring (Thomas, 2007). As occurred internationally (Struyven and Steurs, 2005; Carter and Whitworth, 2015), a key aim of subsequent contract reform was to discourage this behavior (DEEWR, 2007). Thus, under ESC3 – Stage one (1998-2000), commencement fees were dropped to discourage ‘creaming’, as also occurred with the UK work program in 2014 (Carter and Whitworth, 2015). To discourage ‘parking’, outcome fees for disadvantaged jobseekers were increased and providers were given new Employment Pathways Funds, which they could use to purchase goods and services to assist jobseekers to gain employment but could not retain as profit (DEWR, 2007). Given the timing of our fieldwork (2007 and 2013/15) the remainder of our review of the JN/JSA systems focuses on ESC3 (Stage Two) and JSA (particularly JS Deed 20122015). ESC3 Stage 2 (2006-2009) (see Figure 1) coincided with the introduction of new activation measures targeted at primary carer parents, described in more detail in the following section. The introduction of primary carer parents into the JN coincided with a complex funding shift for employment service agencies. On the one hand, the government provided significant new funds ($227 million) for the expected 84,000 new parent places; including $266 million for additional childcare places to support parents required to work, and an allocation of $47 million for an Employment Preparation Program, intended to provide parents, and other disadvantaged groups, with ‘flexible’ and ‘individually tailored’ pre-employment services (Australian Government, 2005). On the other hand, the government cut around half a billion AUD from the JN on the grounds that labour market conditions were improving. This mismatch between a small injection of funds for new clients but less general funding generated substantial criticism from JN providers (Thomas, 2007). Despite the radical nature of this shift there is little research on how JN/JSA providers have targeted their single parent clients. Two recent studies, (Grahame and Marston (2012) McArthur et al.’s (2013) working in the tradition of presenting income support claimant’s accounts of service encounters report on single mothers’ experiences of the overall welfare service delivery system (JN and Centrelink) thought do not systematically analyse interactions with the JN/JSA. Their analysis of single mothers’ accounts suggests 9 a system where mothers are expected to adhere to the reforms as written in legislation (a ‘one size fits all’ approach (Grahame and Marston 2012:80, McArthur et al. 2013:163-5)), where positive identities including “mothers, paid workers, and competent decision makers” were marginalized, and their own goals in relation to paid work were commonly discounted (McArthur et al. 2013; Grahame and Marston 2012). While providing some general insights into how from parents’ perspectives they are made targets of activation they reveal little about how providers’ contracts with the Australian government shaped how they sought to target single parents including the dynamics of this over time. Findings from the tranche one interviews for this study (Brady, 2011b), suggested that while some providers embraced the ‘tough love’ approach to activation, most embraced a pastoral care variant of dependency discourse and sought to provide caring support. Figure 1: Job seeker engagement pathway under the ESC3 contracts Centrelink Registration JSCI / JSCI Supplementary Assessment1 JN Provider chosen Preparing for Work If applicable: Obligation Agreement Mutual activity nominated Contact with Job Network Provider Work ready job seekers Highly Disadvantaged 0 – 3 months Job Search Support Services Intensive Support Customised Assistance -registration for JN services (ISCA) -job search advice -Develop a Job Search Plan -access to job search facilities -Commence job search training -lodgement of resume in JobSearch -Purchase of goods, services to “overcome employment barriers” -Access Services2 10 to Employment Preparation 4 – 6 months Intensive Support (IS) ISCA continues -Develop a Job Search Plan -Commence job search training -Access to Employment Preparation Services 7 – 12 months Mutual Obligation activity or Work for the Dole commences. Job search support, IS, ISCA continues as relevant for each group 13 – 18 months ISCA commences ISCA continues -Detailed review of Job Search Plan and -Activities: tailored training, subsidised employment, work experience, career counselling, other programs 19 – 24 months Second Mutual Obligation activity commences. Bi monthly contact with JN provider. After 24 months, second period of ISCA begins. Job Seekers cycle through ISCA and mutual obligation activities from 25 months on, spending six months in each 1 Completed by seekers with “severe or multiple employment barriers”. May be referred to support services outside of the JN 2 Tailored services for parents, carers, mature aged jobseekers Note: Drawn from DEEWR, 2009; ANAO, 2005 pp.35-37; Commonwealth of Australia, 2005, p. 142 The Rudd Labor government, elected in 2007 took up criticisms of the JN replacing the JN with JSA in mid-2009. The JSA aimed to strengthen targeting of the most disadvantaged and widen the range of employment assistance sub-programs. It continued the dramatic consolidation of providers but also heralded new disruption. With the new JSA, even providers who retained their contracts experienced massive disruption, with approximately half the total JN case load having to move geographically or change service 11 provider; and even providers who retained a similar business share estimated the transition to JSA cost them millions (Finn, 2011:17). A review into the JSA contracting process raised many criticisms, arguing insufficient weight was given to prior performance, resulting in successful JN performers not having their contracts renewed (Senate, 2009: 14) and many new agencies struggling to remain viable (Finn, 2011). The JSA contract retained the use of different levels of fees according the jobseekers’ disadvantage level and length of unemployment, with funds in the Employment Pathways Fund amounts, Service Fees and various Outcome/Placement fees generally increasing across the Streams. However, the JSA contract shifted away from the assumption that jobseekers’ needs were positively correlated with duration on payment. Instead of moving clients to the middle level of service (Intensive Support) after three months and the highest level (Intensive Support Customised Assistance) after 12 (see Figure 1); the JSA model used the initial JSCI assessment to place a client for a full 12 months and with reassessments occurring after this period had elapsed (see Figure 2) (DEEWR 2009:67). 3 The JN’s three levels were replaced with four “streams” from ‘work ready’ (Stream One) to various levels of disadvantaged (Streams Two through Four) (see Figure 2). 3 However, reflecting the higher disadvantage of Stream 4 clients, they can remain in S4 for 18 months. 12 Figure 2: Job seeker engagement pathway with JSA 2012 – 2015 Centrelink Registration JSCI / Job Capacity Assessment JSA Provider Employment Pathway Plan Productivity Places Program Stream (limited) Work Ready 1 Stream 1 Stream 2 Disadvantaged Stream 3 Stream 4 Initial interview Provide list of vacancies; discuss: Must devise Employment Pathway Plan; discuss Jobsearch Facilities; search required interventions (e.g. training) strategy; skills shortage information Resume Preparation In initial interview In first 13 weeks In first weeks 52 Contact Initial interview 1 contact /month Month 4: review; skills assessment 1 contact /month 1 commencement interview for new stream if transition needed When deemed ready, service provider must provide job seeker with information (vacancies, search facilities) Stream 1 seekers receive in initial interview Note: Adapted from DEEWR, 2009; DEEWR, 2012 As we will illustrate below these changing contract conditions have shaped how single parents are targeted at the street level. The Study To study understand how JN/JSA providers target single parents, we carried out two tranches of semi-structured interviews with agency staff working in Perth, Western Australia. The Perth labour market poses challenges for women with children as it is dominated by the mining industry and less of the service sector employment where 13 parents are typically employed. The first tranche of interviews was carried out in 2007, under the ESC3 Stage 2 (2006-2009) contract and just following the reforms that moved primary carer parents into the JN. Agencies were contacted directly using the Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) list of providers and 19 JN staff across 11 agencies agreed to participate. Interview questions for both tranches addressed agencies’ caseloads, what their programs aimed to achieve for parents (including use of special programs for this target group), their assumptions about parenting clients, and how they sought to use service encounters and training to assist this group. In late 2013, we attempted to conduct follow-up interviews with the same agencies, but as outlined earlier in the paper, there had been dramatic upheaval following the mid-2009 commencement of JSA and only two of the 11 agencies had gained JSA contracts. Recruitment of seven new agencies lengthened the time period for the second tranche, and these interviews were completed shortly before the end of the JSA Deed 2012-2015. All interviews were transcribed professionally and imported into NVivo for systematic coding. Our concern was with understanding how the Australian Government’s target group of single parents with a school age child were ‘made up’ as category members at the street level, and how this changed across the two tranches of interviews. More specifically, this involved attention to: 1) how staff critically reflected on the governmental rationalities that underpinned their actions; 2) their accounts of how governmental technologies shaped their actions; and 3) the forms of subjectification that occurred as part of agencies’ efforts to shape single parents’ conduct. Targeting and Governance of Single Mothers in Australia’s Contractualised Employment System We argue that changing JSA contract conditions shaped how single mothers were made up as category members and governed at the street level. In what follows we argue that two key shifts occurred. Firstly, staff shifted from overwhelmingly viewing single mothers as being part of a vulnerable group to describing them in terms of their official risk profile or “stream”. Secondly, service encounters were repurposed to align with this shifting understanding of the target group. From vulnerable mothers to risky individuals in the targeting process The 2005 Welfare to Work reforms sought to make single mothers into new category members. In this policy discourse they were inscribed as either welfare dependent or at 14 risk of being so. Depending on the age of their child, they were further categorised as required to seek paid work or not required to do so. Those who were categorised as required to work, but failed to engage in at least 30 hours per fortnight of employment, were referred to the JN. As Korteweg (2003: 453) has argued, the discourses of those charged with implementing policy are “proscribed but not completely determined by the policies they implement”. This was particularly the case with the Welfare to Work reforms, where the process flexibility granted to JN agencies meant program and training content was not dictated by the Australian Government (cf. Lipsky 1980). The Welfare to Work legislation sought to increase single parents’ engagement in paid work, through acting on their desire to maintain access to income support and avoid the stigma of being viewed as welfare dependent. However, when we look at the practices of JN staff charged with assisting parents, we find that the interactions were shaped by somewhat different discourses. In our first tranche of interviews we began by asking JSA staff if their agency had devised specific programs for single parent clients – nine of the 11 agencies had not – and what their programs aimed to achieve for their single parent clients. Few agencies had embraced the government’s tough love, punitive rhetoric. Those that did largely ignored the barriers to labour force participation faced by primary carer parents and asserted that, in the words of a program manager Amy, if they were “in receipt of government benefits that they should be contributing in some way to the community”. Most agencies however rejected the official tough love, punitive discourse by asserting that single parents were psychologically vulnerable. They described their role as caring confidants and mentors, a discursive position that placed them closer to the discourses around the earlier Personal Adviser program than to Welfare to Work. The subjectivity of the adviser-as-caring-mentor role was particularly evident in the two agencies with dedicated programs for single parent clients. These programs included special days with group sessions that provided these clients with opportunities to share their fears about returning to the workforce and receive moral support. At one of these agencies, the manager Rose explained their programs sought to provide thoughtful caring support given parents’ psychological vulnerability: What we find though, a lot of these people come in with a lot of anxiety, issues of anxiety, self-esteem, lacking confidence. Those are the major areas. So what we 15 have done, we have organised a workshop for them. Initially anybody who comes in as a single mother we put them in this workshop. It is a three-day workshop, we tailor it to time it for after they have sent the kids to school. Roughly for 10 o’clock in the morning to about 1:30. We make them feel valued, we put on a nice morning tea for them… we make sure we go the extra mile. We put flowers and coffee, nice coffee and we put the [glasses out there], just to make them feel cared for and valued. Although this emphasis on personal, caring touches was unique to these two agencies, the nine agencies without dedicated programs for single parents similarly foregrounded the problem of psychological vulnerabilities. When asked to explain how their agency assisted their primary carer clients, one such manager Jane explained, “Well mainly our programs centre around confidence and motivation building,” elaborating they usually referred them to a program on goal setting, challenges and fears, which a psychologist was employed to deliver. Welfare to Work policy documentation articulated a discourse of welfare dependency (Raffass, 2017), characterising parents on income support as individuals who had become psychologically incapable of viewing themselves as workers, rather than as people without workforce skills or with other barriers. JN staff and agency training material frequently mentioned that single parents commonly feared that they lacked marketable skills. Staff told us that they countered these concerns by asking mothers to identify the skills, such as cook, cleaner or driver, that they had developed through their mothering role. As one Job Search Trainer in the JSA, Lilly, explained: Also identifying [workforce] skills that you have but you don’t necessarily think are work related. So it’s about changing their way of thinking, that you’ve been at home, so what are those technical skills that you have picked up from home that we could now move into a workplace scenario… it is just breaking down barriers when it comes to parents, more so than people who have just been out of work for a little while (emphasis added). The message was that as mothers who stayed home, they had learned skills that were easy to transfer to paid work if they simply changed their mindset. 16 JN staff sought to get single parent clients to embrace the mindset of, in the words of Rose, “successful single mothers who have made their transformation”. Rose explained that for her single parent program she sought to get women who had transformed themselves to come as guest speakers and to locate inspirational television programs about single parents who had transformed themselves. One recent speaker had gone from being on income support to the CEO of her own global company. Having this CEO share her experience with clients was powerful because “these parents identify with her. And it was such a wonderful experience to watch how these woman suddenly could see the hope in them, the empowerment in them”. In tranche two interviews, we again asked what providers’ programs sought to achieve for their single parent clients. Returning to the distinction drawn in section one between targeting that relies on normative discourses (which achieve their political and policy effect by relying on moral problematisation of sub-populations), and targeting that relies on riskbased technologies (which facilitate differentiated treatment on the basis of individualised risk profiles), there was a clear shift to targeting which relies on the latter. The intense financial pressures generated by reforms to the JN, together with stronger reliance on the JSCI in streaming clients, contributed to mothers being ‘made-up’ as a risk level or stream, rather than being positioned as vulnerable mothers. As described earlier, since its introduction in 1998, the JN has been governed through the use of complex contract arrangements; including sophisticated algorithms for assessing clients’ disadvantage and sorting them into different assistance pathways to encourage agencies to focus their efforts on the most disadvantaged and achieve sustainable employment outcomes for all clients. While such streaming has always played an important role in JN/JSA processes, including how clients are made up at the street level, over the course of the two tranches, it assumed a more prominent role. When we asked JSA staff in tranche two interviews about the programs they offered their single parent clients they began by describing the JSA streams and the financial incentives attached to them, rather than these clients’ psychological characteristics or needs. One manager, James, thus responded: [The program] is different per client I guess based on their stream of benefits so I’ll go into two categories here. So the lower the stream, generally they’re easier to place or they generally find their own work. So this would be a Stream 1 and 2 client. 17 Similarly, Julia, an agency manager who had worked in the JN/JSA for 12 years, initially told us that a client’s program was based on the JSCI score and the individual barriers the assessment had identified. She then corrected herself, arguing: it's individual based, if you ask me, or streams based. Like I said, we've got classifications for our job [seekers], A, B, C. Are they job ready? They're not job ready. One manager, Tim, reject the idea their agency had programs for clients, arguing: We don't have actually a program, we follow [the government’s] instructions and all the clients have to follow [Centrelink/ Department of Human Services, DHS] requirements because when you're on benefits … you have to meet your requirements... Having explained how the client’s activation obligations, and the service pathway, shaped the service they received, he quickly moved to explain how the agency’s contract requirements and the financial incentives embedded within them shaped their engagement with clients: Tim: We assist them to get employment...[all our activities] have to be towards employment. All our funding is towards employment. Are you familiar with the Stream Services? Interviewer: The one, two, three and four? Tim: Yes. Interviewer: Yeah, somewhat. The fourth is the most high-need. Tim: Yes and it's 40 per cent of our funding. [the government] pay more - we give more assistance to Stream 4 than Stream 1. If a single parent is in Stream 1 it will be less assistance to him. These accounts do not simply reveal how services are delivered to pre-existing groups, but more importantly how JN clients are categorised or “made up” as targets. Over the 18 course of our study, the category of vulnerable single parents that was so prominent in earlier interviews had largely disappeared, and in its place were new risk categories. Repurposing the service encounter: from targeted transformation to pragmatic service adaptation Meetings between clients and staff are a key point at which the latter are addressed as particular kinds of subjects and thus, made into policy targets. Within the research interviews we sought to understand how within these service encounters JSA staff addressed clients as subjects of activation. A reoccurring theme within much official welfare-to-work documentation is the idea that meetings between clients and street-level administrators can have a transformative effect on the lives of the former (Blaxland, 2013). Policy documentation from the earlier (2003-05) Personal Adviser program had implied that if advisers were able to elicit client’s confessions regarding their personal fears or weakness and to attend to these with warm, caring concern, they could transform vulnerable clients. In the absence of any publicly available documentation about the programs JN agencies offered, we sought to establish an understanding through accessing internal training material and staff accounts. We were particularly interested in the aims of their meetings with clients and the ideal role they envisaged for themselves and clients. In tranche one interviews, staff tended to view meetings as a crucial ingredient in supporting clients’ transformation. The development of a real connection with the clients, not simply superficial rapport, was viewed as an essential precursor to the client revealing their barriers, fears and ways of thinking, and consenting to being mentored by JN staff through a process of transformation. As the program manager, Amy, in tranche one explained; Amy: I think we are working with people to effect change and that we can’t force people to change, so I think that the consultant is really integral to the success of the client. And we do form a real connection with the client. Interviewer: So it is connection? // Amy: I always make a point of introducing myself to clients and trying to get to know what they are doing, what they want to do, how we are helping them….. I mean we know what our boundaries are but I think we have to form a relationship. 19 While the goal was always securing work for the client, the Job Search Trainer Lilly, who viewed herself as ideally playing a mentor role with her client, explained: If you don’t build that trust and you don’t build that rapport with your client you’re never going to get anywhere, they’re never going to open up to you. You’re never going to find out … if there are any barriers what they are and how you can address them together, and if you don’t get to know your clients you’re not going to get to know for one, what they want to do, for two ,what their lifestyles are, where their stressors are. As Lilly elaborated, the client came to her because they wanted to gain paid employment and her role was to be “somebody who is going to guide and mentor them to where they want to be…an honest open relationship will hopefully get us there”. This vision of changing clients’ attitudes through developing a genuine relationship based on an intimacy developed over time had largely disappeared by the time of the tranche two interviews. While JSA staff continued to assert the importance of the relationship, this was not the kind of deep mentoring relationship which many JSA staff described in the earlier interviews. Building immediate rapport was instead stressed as a critical task in order to quickly understand immediate barriers to an “employment outcome”. Transformation took a back seat to the need to rapidly get clients to mention pressing practical issues preventing them from gaining paid work, as articulated in the following exchange with the JSA agency manager James: Interviewer: Can you comment on how important the nature of the relationship is between the advisor and the client in your service? James: Well [the relationship is] very important. If there is no relationship or rapport between the two, then the clients aren’t going to open up about anything that’s impacting on them going for a [job] interview. You experience that so often. You just wish that the clients would open up …I do a little bit of that work too in sending off resumes to the employers on behalf of our clients. You send the resume with all good faith and the client has said yes…I’m happy to be referred for this job… then they don’t turn up. 20 While James agreed that a relationship and rapport was important, the relationship he referred to was not built upon an intimacy developed over time which then enabled staff to transform clients’ long-term attitudes. Building immediate rapport was instead stressed as a critical task in understanding the client’s immediate practical issues: Then you’re like, ‘why haven’t they turned up [to a job interview we arranged for them]?’ It’s because I didn’t have petrol this week, because my son had to go to the doctor and this and that. Again whose fault is it? It’s probably no one’s, but …it’s probably ours because we should have provided that support network prior to them going… Like hey, do you need fuel?...Or do you need - have you taken into account child care for that day for the interview or something like this. Over the course of the study the role of meetings changed in ways that largely paralleled the shifting categorisation of single parent clients at the street level. In this way service encounters served to reinforce particular ways of ‘making up’ single parent clients. Conclusion A significant and growing literature has identified how single parents became a legitimate target for activation policy across OECD countries. The social policy literature also recognises that the work of ‘making-up’ target groups also occurs at the street level. A considerable body of research has analysed how this occurs for the unemployed (Jordon, forthcoming; Altreiter and Leibetseder, 2015; Ulmestig and Marston, 2015; Brodkin, 2013; Lipsky, 1980) while a smaller body of research, particularly in the US, has focused on single parents (Korteweg, 2006, 2003; Brodkin, 1997). However, while this literature frequently recognises that the street level has become an even more important site for making policy and ‘making up’ target groups, due to the shift to using contracted agencies to deliver welfare to work programs, there has been little systematic analysis of the ways that quasi-market governance shapes the targeting of clients. 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