Thread: These figures illustrate significant well-being problems for everyone working in this industry.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think it would be helpful to present my experiences and feelings across a 20 year (wow, when did that happen?) career. https://twitter.com/ColinYeo1/status/1252932547895533571

My foray into the asylum and immigration world was working at an asylum accommodation provider. Included in my varied duties was to inspect asylum accommodation, manage complaints and find out the progress of residents’ asylum applications.

I moved to a law firm to work as an asylum and immigration caseworker. Within an hour of my first day I was taking instructions from a Sudanese national, by the end of the day we were discussing graphic details of torture and persecution effecting this person and their family.

This was the first time I ever heard details about persecution and torture practices. I had no casework training, and wellbeing training was not a thing at that time. I didn’t know what to feel, how to feel, and how to manage those feelings.

I somehow managed to do so while encouraging my client to relive instances of torture, revealing some of those experiences for the first time, with a complete stranger, in a different country. That day, I took it all home with me, carrying it throughout the night and beyond.

In time, I had to self-learn how to desensitise myself when working on similar cases as a matter of self-preservation. It was not just asylum applications, but applications separating families, human rights cases, detentions and deportations. Matters of life, family, and death.

This self-preservation didn’t work all of the time.

Sometimes clients would completely breakdown; be unable to continue; get angry or frustrated with the system that I’m helping them through. But I had to ignore my feelings. I felt like I had to learn how to be a social worker. I'm sure this led to instances of vicarious trauma.

The workload was heavy and continued to increase. It was daunting and stressful. The priority was to maximise billing and therefore income. For my employer, stress wasn’t a factor to be concerned with and mental health concerns in the workplace were unheard of at that time.

But I was young. My ethnic background and upbringing taught me resilience, taught me that I had to simply work harder than anyone else in order to succeed. These factors helped, I just pushed through it, not realising how work was impacting on my well-being.

Soon I was managing a team of lawyers working through similar cases and similar personal issues. Mental health and wellbeing wasn’t something that was discussed in the workplace at the time, so I wouldn't receive training on how to look after myself and the health of my team.

I carried a lot of guilt, feeling that I could not look after my team better. The industry consensus was about surviving, a good lawyer manages ever greater workloads and demands, and to become more resilient. This masked the consequences of working beyond peak performance.

Pressures are immense; from clients and employers. We had to fight the legal aid agency for funding; communicate with a dysfunctional and aggressive Home Office; work towards meetng tribunal directions that take no interest if you have competing deadlines.

All the while clock-watching knowing your family and friends are waiting on you to finish, and when you did, you needed to find the energy from somewhere deep down to continue to add value to their lives.

But, so long as my clients’ applications to stay in the UK were successful, I thought I could cope with all of it. The joy, reward, and pleasure of obtaining refugee protection or a family visa gave brief respite to the problems. I’d changed the life of an individual forever.

But it was only a brief respite.

The feelings were unavoidable when an application failed. Telling a person there’s nothing can be done to help. Shame, unhappiness, and worthlessness sets in. Despite every sacrifice, I couldn’t save this person. I'd shoulder guilt, and I have never forgotten the lost cases.

And let’s face it, we represent a group of human beings who aren’t so enamoured by segments of the general public. I used to get upset when my answer to the question "So what do you do?" was met with a complete change of attitude, negativity, disgust, and sometimes hostility.

A time ago I accepted an award from a high profile member of the British Royal Family. This person didn't respond well to the answer: ‘I’m an immigration and asylum lawyer’.

The reaction that you’re ‘a problem’ by helping 'them' to stay did not support positive well-being.

Recent years have witnessed a growing awareness of well-being and mental health, and many organisations like @ilpaimmigration are doing amazing work to support lawyers in this field. It’s becoming easier to be more self-aware to good mental health and how to prevent issues.

I’m no health expert, but I don’t think managing oneself is enough. Well-being needs to be embedded into everything we do. Not just within businesses, but externally too. The legal aid system needs to be better funded and managed. Systems needn’t be adversarial but co-operative.

Charities need better funding. The immigration system needs to be more humane. And now that there’s greater awareness of who are our vital key workers, I hope that the public discourse on immigration will improve in order to help and motivate an extremely important industry.

Above all else, it’s good to talk. Talk to your family after work and explain why you’re not happy. Talk to a therapist. Talk to your friends about your day. Don’t carry it. Don’t bury it. Don’t become more resilient. We’re ok so long as we look after each other.

END.