‘You Can Really See the Pain in Their Eyes’: Stressors and Supports Affecting the Well-being of Homelessness Services Staff in Ireland During COVID-19

Despite their crucial roles, the well-being narratives of those working in homelessness services have frequently been overlooked in research and policy. This paper addresses that gap, presenting qualitative evidence from interviews with homelessness service workers in Cork, Ireland, during 2021 and 2022. We explore the multidimensional, layered character of service staff members’ well-being narratives, showing they are intimately connected to relationships with their own families, commitment to service users, fears about COVID-19, and their motivation to the social mission of their work: to support vulnerable people with multiple, interlinking needs. Our data reveals that stressors encountered in pre-COVID times, relating to burnout, emotional labour, inter-agency working, and career progression, were exacerbated due to government restrictions and new challenges encountered by service users. We focus on the period covering pandemic-related lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, and the immediate aftermath, to consider how those delivering crucial services coped, the informal and formal support they accessed, and the value of this support in their lives. Significantly, our analysis reflects upon the longer-term implications of these findings, contextualised against the backdrop of the housing crisis in Ireland, changing demographics of persons accessing homelessness services, and increased systemic and social pressures.