Lisa McLean MAPS is a psychologist who has worked in the non-government organisation (NGO) sector for over 20 years and represents NGO psychologists on the APS Workforce Advisory Group. In this article, Lisa identifies some of the opportunities, trends and challenges for psychologists within the not-for-profit workforce, and discusses the valuable contribution psychologists who work in this sector make to clients, the community and to the profession more broadly.
Non-government organisations (NGOs) have a long history of providing a range of social and welfare services to the community both in Australia and internationally. NGOs are domestically more often referred to as not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) and the sector generally identified as the ‘third sector’, in order to distinguish it from government and private organisations (for the purposes of this article, the terms non-government organisation and not-for-profit organisation will be used interchangeably). Although once seen as the sole domain of religious institutions or international humanitarian organisations, today’s third sector is large and diverse, with the Productivity Commission (2010) identifying an estimated 600,000 NFPs in Australia alone, collectively accounting for 4.1 per cent of GDP (2006-2007).
Three factors have been identified to define organisations within the not-for-profit sector: (1) they exist primarily for a social purpose rather than profit; (2) they are independent of the state (even if funded by them); and (3) they reinvest financial surpluses into ongoing service delivery (Hudson, 2009). NFPs often provide support and services to some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged members of the community and across a wide range of biopsychosocial issues. These can include complex concerns such as child protection, disabilities, substance abuse, mental health, chronic illness, refugee support, unemployment and homelessness. NFPs within the health and community services sector in particular, aim to alleviate the suffering and distress of individuals, families and communities who experience these complex (and other) issues and assist them to achieve their fullest potential.
Professionalisation of the sector
NGOs have changed significantly over recent decades and their role within society in providing a broad range of services to vulnerable members of the community continues to grow. In doing so, many NGOs have recognised the need to employ staff with specialised skills and knowledge to effectively respond to the increasingly complex issues within their client groups. Even in contexts where volunteers and non-professional staff remain of critical value in providing support to clients, it is becoming increasingly common for professionally qualified staff to be working alongside them to provide support, training, supervision, clinical guidance and consultation.
Additionally, with many NGOs reliant on some level of government funding to provide service delivery, service agreements often stipulate a minimum requirement for qualifications of staff employed in roles funded by State or Federal Government departments. Similarly most Award structures provide limits to the role and capacity in which staff can be employed according to their qualifications and experience, meaning positions classified with high levels of responsibility and skill will have a minimum standard of professional requirements for staff employed in these roles.
Opportunities for psychologists
The growth and increased professionalisation of the NGO sector is facilitating significant career opportunities for psychologists. The Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council states “over the last decade, community services and health has been the fastest growing industry in the Australian workforce” (CS&HISC, 2013, p. 11). The Social Policy Research Centre (Hilferty et al.,2010) conducted a survey of approximately 2,500 workers from the community services sector in NSW (61.1% of whom had a university degree or higher), who perceived that the following opportunities were best experienced within NGOs (as compared to public sector).
- Opportunities to make a difference in the community
- Opportunities to achieve the best client outcomes
- Opportunities to build relationships with clients
- Flexible work arrangements
- Opportunities to use your own judgment
- Opportunities to work closely with staff
- Opportunities to collaborate across agencies
- Organisational climate that nurtures diversity
- Recognition for doing a good job
The breadth and depth of psychologists’ skills and knowledge are well matched to the needs and demands of NGOs, particularly within the community services sector. A number of trends will further allow psychologists to develop and utilise their specialised skills within NGOs, including an ageing population and an increase in ethnic diversity, as well as an increased focus on a range of specific issues such as disabilities, child protection, mental health, and access to services within rural and remote communities. Clients rarely present with discrete concerns and this is no less the case in NGOs. In fact the necessity to respond to a wide range of co-morbid issues may be even more likely in NGOs, which often have broader parameters in relation to the scope of their service delivery. This enables the development and utilisation of a wide range of knowledge and skills in professionals within the NGO sector.
Additionally, the range of tasks and duties often required of staff within NGOs fits well with the core competencies of the psychology profession, including assessment, case formulation, intervention, evaluation and follow-up, as well as engagement with clients across the age spectrum, and on an individual, family, group and/or community basis. NGOs can also offer opportunities for psychologists to provide professional supervision and clinical consultation both within the service and in collaborating with other key stakeholders and agency partners, as well as career paths into management and leadership positions. Psychologists’ training in evidence-based practice and analytical thinking is well suited to managerial and supervisory positions where there is a need to ensure performance outputs are met and service delivery is consistent with best practice standards. NGOs can also offer psychologists the opportunity to engage in research projects either independently or in partnership with universities.
The diversity of job roles and functions and the specialised focus in unique areas of psychology can also provide students and interns with valuable learning experiences, and introduce a career within NGOs as a viable option. It is important to consider ways to increase the capacity of NGOs to provide these diverse training opportunities to students and interns.
Psychologist representation in the NGO workforce
Given the congruency between the expertise and job focus of psychologists and the diverse scope of practice opportunities available within NGOs, a significant representation of psychologists in the NGO sector would be expected. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2013) identified psychologists as the least likely of the community services-related occupations (which included nurses, social workers and counsellors) to work within the NGO sector, and a 2008 national psychology workforce survey revealed that only six per cent of respondents worked in a not-for-profit service as their main job (Mathews et al., 2010).
The disparity between the opportunities for psychologists to apply their relevant and valuable skills and training to the NFP sector and the under-representation of the profession within such organisations gives cause for reflection. Whilst there may be many individual reasons why psychologists do not enter the NGO workforce, two of the commonly cited deterrents include the perceived lack of professional identity and the comparatively low remuneration offered by NGOs.
Issues of professional identity
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for psychologists working within NGOs is the capacity to maintain a professional identity within a predominantly generic professional environment. Whilst NGOs have become increasingly professionalised, many, if not most, do not recruit according to discipline-specific job roles. Even when psychologists are employed, therefore, they will not necessarily be employed as a ‘psychologist’ but more likely under a range of other generic titles such as counsellor, therapist, practitioner, clinician or clinical supervisor. This of course varies within the NGO sector and some organisations will intentionally recruit multidisciplinary teams (particularly in areas such as disabilities, chronic illness or community mental health). This trend is not unique to the NGO sector as public sector jobs are becoming increasingly generic and positions across a number of departments, including mental health, are being filled across disciplines.
However, the issue is broader than a job title or the extent to which psychologists feel valued and supported for the discipline-specific expertise they can bring to a job role. Psychologists working in NGOs can feel isolated from their own profession. They may be the only psychologist within a multidisciplinary team and therefore spend more time associating and collaborating with colleagues from other disciplines such as social work, occupational therapy or nursing. In some cases they may be the sole worker in a small NGO, particularly within rural or remote regions, or the sole ‘professional’ in organisations that rely almost exclusively on the generosity of volunteers. This reality can result in psychologists who work in NGOs feeling undervalued by their own peers and the profession more broadly, and lead to questioning around where they ‘fit’ in the perceived professional hierarchy.
Remuneration-related deterrents
Historically, NGOs operated with little or no government or philanthropic support and relied on their own fundraising efforts and/or donations from community members to provide support services. Whilst many of the 600,000 not-for-profit organisations in Australia (which include a diverse range of religious, sporting, cultural and welfare-based services) still function in this way, the NGO sector has changed significantly in terms of its funding, operations, workforce and economic contribution. In 2006-2007, the Australian Bureau of Statistics identified approximately 41,000 “economically significant” NFPs, collectively employing close to 890,000 people, almost a quarter of whom worked within the social services sector.
Government and philanthropic funding has also increased significantly along with more sophisticated, creative and professional approaches to marketing and fund-raising. Many NGOs within the social and community services sector have evolved to become economically savvy and viable organisations. This shift has meant less reliance on volunteers and an increased capacity to employ professional staff. Nevertheless it has remained a challenge for NGOs to compete with the remuneration offered by the government and private sector, and recruitment and retention of suitably qualified and experienced staff is an ongoing concern.
A major step forward in addressing this issue occurred in June 2012 when Fair Work Australia made an Equal Remuneration Order to increase the pay rates for workers employed under the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (SACS Modern Award). The decision was based on the inequity in wages for staff within the not-for-profit sector when compared to those doing comparable work in government or other industries and sectors, as well as recognition that the traditionally low pay rates are partly attributable to the female-dominated nature of the industry. Whilst this increase will occur gradually over a number of years, it is an important acknowledgement of the value of the work undertaken by those employed in the community sector and paves the way for NFPs to be considered a financially viable career alternative for allied health professionals.
The other important consideration in assessing the remuneration offered by NGOs is their capacity to significantly increase the amount of take-home pay for staff through fringe benefit allowances. If an NGO is endorsed and registered as a public benevolent institution, tax concessions apply which are usually more generous and flexible than those offered through salary sacrifice schemes in the public or private sector.
In short, it does need to be acknowledged that NGOs have struggled to provide their professional staff with remuneration comparable to the public and private sectors. However this is less of an issue than it has been historically, and as the value of NGOs in responding to the needs of the most vulnerable members of society continues to increase, so too does the recognition of the need to value staff accordingly.
Conclusion
Many of the barriers which may have previously prevented psychologists from working in NGOs have been (or are in the process of being) addressed through the increasing professionalisation of the sector creating further career opportunities, improving rates of pay, and the recognition of issues of professional identity. There will of course be other concerns unique to the sector and some common in any workplace, and individual experiences across the diversity of NGOs will be different.
Whilst the number of psychologists working in the sector is low compared to other allied health disciplines, there are positive indicators that the presence of psychologists within the NFP workforce is growing. Psychologists are making a significant contribution to the work being undertaken in the NGO sector and all who are doing so, as well as their psychologist peers and colleagues in other sectors, should be encouraged to recognise and value this as a significant contribution to the profession of psychology.
The Productivity Commission (2010) concluded that “the [NFP] sector makes valuable contributions in promoting social cohesion, providing cultural, environmental and other community benefits, and delivering human and other services” (p.54), and predicted that “demand for staff with higher level qualifications is expected to continue growing as clients present with more complex needs and community expectations of standards of care rise” (p.249). Psychologists are well placed to meet this demand and strengthen their role as a key profession within the NFP sector.
SUGGESTED STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE PSYCHOLOGISTS' SENSE OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY IN NGOs
- Be confident in your own professional skills and knowledge and the unique expertise you can bring to your role (regardless of job title).
- Find ways to communicate the contribution you can make as a psychologist to your employer and colleagues – identify what can you uniquely ‘value-add’ that will complement the work of the service and other disciplines.
- Maintain your APS membership and encourage other psychologists who work in NGOs to do the same. Professional bodies are there to represent the interests of their members, and the more members from the NGO sector the greater the capacity to identify and communicate issues and needs unique to this work context. This is particularly important for psychologists working in rural and remote NGOs.
- Consider being involved in APS Reference and Interest Groups in order to proactively identify and respond to challenges and opportunities relating to the NGO sector.
- Choose CPD events that allow contact with other psychologists and important networking opportunities.
- Attend your local APS Branch meetings and if your local Branch is under-represented by other psychologists who work in the NGO sector, talk to the Branch Chair about how this issue might be addressed.
The author can be contacted at [email protected]