Melissa Fisher believed her jobseeker payments would be cut off if she didn’t complete a resilience training course.
So the South Australian-based artist, who has a disability and has been on income support for several years, signed up. She found herself being asked to rate her friends and family, whether God played an important role in her life and if she felt grateful she had enough to eat.
At one point in the four-day course, she was shown pictures of Brad Pitt in a chicken suit to illustrate how people can go from “nothing to something”.
“I found all of it so condescending,” Fisher says of the resilience training run by WISE employment in South Australia.
“They said that who we have in our life is important and surrounding ourselves with successful people will make us successful. If we surround ourselves with unsuccessful people we will be unsuccessful.”
Fisher says she believed the course was part of her mutual obligations which jobseekers are required to undertake otherwise their payments can be suspended. Fisher says she was never told she could choose not to do the course – and other jobseekers across Australia say they also thought the same.
WISE says the course was designed by Esher House, which claims it uses “behavioural science” to help jobseekers find work. WISE has defended the course, saying it is helpful for many jobseekers, is not compulsory and is not a mutual obligation.
But welfare advocates say such courses are “social eugenics” which “promote isolating people in poverty from their families”, and don’t help them find suitable work.
‘I found all of it so condescending’
Each morning of the course, Fisher was told to complete a survey. She was asked a range of questions, including how much awe, wonder, guilt, fear, hate, distrust or happiness she had experienced in the past 24 hours.
“They also made us do a resilience survey, the questions on that were … ‘I’m grateful for the simple things, family, having enough to eat’,” and “spirituality or a belief in God plays an important role in my life.”
“I stated that when you’re disabled and not able to afford food, it’s hard being positive,” she says.
On the first day, participants were asked to introduce themselves and what they did on the weekend. The participants described watching movies at home, doing housework – “basically [stayed] at home because we don’t have money”.
“And the teacher turned around and said ‘I went out to the Adelaide Hills, we tried a new restaurant. And it was so much fun.’ Well, that’s OK if you can afford it. And the second day she was like ‘I am grateful because last night I went to the dentist.’ I was like you’re kidding? No one here can afford the dentist.
“They don’t get how different our lives are.”
In another activity, participants were asked to look at an optical illusion and think about trying different perspectives. They were also asked to come up with an idea for a movie where they were the lead character recovering from adversity.
Participants were shown a list of celebrities who were “failures” but became success stories.
“Brad Pitt was one, he was a failure because he once dressed in a chicken suit,” Fisher says. “Oprah Winfrey … the guy that owns Dyson … But most of the people had help.”
“I tried to say to them, ‘I am resilient, I have been through heaps of crap and I am still here,’” she says.
Another jobseeker in South Australia, Carrie, who asked that her surname not be published, says she felt put under pressure to do the course.
A message from WISE to Carrie before the workshop says: “please remember this is part of your mutual obligations and therefore non-attendance may impact your payments”.
“I did a survey, maybe a couple of days before going into WISE. It was quite an invasive survey, asking me if … I was loved enough as a child or felt supported growing up as a child,” Carrie says.
Before the course Carrie was also sent an email and told she would be asked to list the five people she spent the most time with, and rate them as negative or positive.
Carrie’s mother – who asked not to be named – says her daughter has an intellectual disability and they were “the sort of questions if you were being asked by a medical professional, that’s one thing, but in a survey that goes to the consultants, it’ll be on your file”.
“To do it without any follow-up or choice, to me seems it’s not at all helpful.”
‘Workers and shirkers’
Esher House markets itself as using the “same model of change as smoking cessation” to help jobseekers find work, though it does not elaborate on what this means.
The company’s website claims: “the Esher House model saw an uplift of 42% in employment outcomes of jobseekers from all age groups”.
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, the Department of Social Services Esher House and WISE did not respond to questions on how many people found work after taking the program.
In a 2021 YouTube video, Esher House founder, Darren Coppin, who no longer works with the company, said their “academically validated” three-minute survey showed only one-third of “long term un-employed” are “genuinely committed to re-entering the workforce”. The survey referred to in the video is a different survey from what jobseekers report filling out when taking the Esher House course.
“The other two-thirds are lacking the desire or the confidence to go back to work. We’ve got 25% pre-contemplaters [who] belligerently don’t want to enter the workforce.”
Coppin says the survey can “segment between workers and shirkers” and that it shows “jobseekers … reflect research from the late 60s on something called learned helplessness”.
Readytech – the parent company of Esher House – did not respond to a request for comment. The video is still up on Readytech’s website.
Jay Coonan, who works in policy development and research for the Antipoverty Centre, describes the courses as “social eugenics”.
“They promote isolating people in poverty from their family and friends. It distracts from the core issue of poverty, it’s an economically created situation – not a social one. People need money and opportunities to good jobs,” he says.
“We would never subject someone with an average income to such humiliation – so why do we do it to people in poverty?”
A Department of Social Services spokesperson says Esher House is not directly funded by the department to run training courses for DES participants.
“DES providers may choose to use a range of assessment, goal setting and intervention tools, such as Esher House, to assist jobseekers. Questions on individual tools, how they are administered and their underpinning evidence base are best directed to individual providers or the proponents of the tools.”
A spokesperson for WISE says it “offers resilience training to clients as a value-add service – over and above any statutory requirements – to help bridge the gap to employment” and says the resilience program was developed by clinical psychologists.
“The program can be challenging and encourages participants to self-reflect so they are better equipped to tackle the job market. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers as such.”
It said it “emphatically stands” by the program, which it believes provides positive results for “many, many” people who have “struggled with long-term unemployment”.
Do you know more? Email cait.kelly@theguardian.com
