Uncovering precariosity using a circle conversation with counselling practitioners: The institutions are training the people but where is the work for them?

Abstract

Ethics approval was obtained to audio-record an adapted form of circle conversation involving a group of counselling practitioners who attended a professional development workshop in 2015. The goal of the study was to examine what emerges when participants open themselves, through structured conversations, to affecting and being affected by others. The participants chose to focus on their working conditions, and what emerged in these discussions became the focus of this paper. The participants’ stories provide rich insight into how a group of practitioners have become caught up in precarious circumstances in their professional lives. This article includes four narrative accounts that derive from this guided conversation. Through the process, new lines of thought for consideration and new ways of analysing what action might make a difference to their current situations emerged. These are briefly summarised in two further narratives. The article ends with a call to all professionals to provide a critique of the implications of precariosity in their own work, and to begin to explore possibilities for developing new ways of being and doing within the constraints of an uncertain labour market.