Working from home can be hard when your work involves murder, violence and abuse – Karyn McCluskey

Stories of women killed by partners and ex-partners that have been shared recently on Twitter have brought back memories of a murder from five years ago.

Those whose jobs involve dealing with the worst of human behaviour may find it difficult to maintain boundaries between work and home life if they are working from home (Picture: Scott Merrylees)

The posts are linked to the 16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence campaign and reminded me of a young woman murdered in 2015 whose face I will never forget.

It led to a conversation with an old colleague a few days ago, about the cases that come unbidden to us, into our memories. There are photographs of crime scenes, interview transcripts, forensic reports and appeals by families for information that for reasons unknown stay with us. I have a few that haunt me, some for decades and not anything I would want to write about in a newspaper column.

There is often no rhyme nor reason to which terrible event lingers in our memories. When Marcel Proust wrote about the psychology of memory in the 1920s he wrote about how the taste of a small cake, a madeleine, brought back memories of his childhood.

So it is with music, phrases and myriad media headlines but also those traumatic cases that resurrect memories of a person who had experienced a violent death or survived the worst of human behaviour.

Each of us finds their own way of dealing with these uninvited memories. During my two decades working in the police, I always felt catharsis in speaking to people who had experienced the same case and talking through what we felt. It was never more important to keep our work separate from our loved ones at home.

Now that separation is gone between work and home due to the pandemic. Colleagues are reading disturbing material and speaking to people by phone and video call about their behaviours from their kitchen or bedroom, bringing sadness into their homes. The background noise of their own children and partners, makes this ever-more challenging. Although members of Parole Board Scotland have done so for many years, this is a new experience for so many including judges, sheriffs, social workers, police… the list goes on.

My colleagues at the Caledonian team deliver training for those working with men who commit domestic abuse to reduce offending. They recommend not switching on the camera if they are speaking to someone being supervised from their own homes to reduce the vicarious trauma involved in this work. The opportunity to chat to colleagues in similar circumstances – those water-cooler moments, are no longer options for sharing and release.

How we work and live is about balance without judgement. The balance is not about having better time management or any of those empty buzz-words, it’s about boundary management and how we protect what’s precious to us.

Avoiding judgement is a matter for the rest of us out there. We must seek to support how we can, when we can and in ways that will help our friends and colleagues continue to do their difficult, complex and demanding work.

Separation of work and home isn’t possible just now – and in the interests of public health and safety, it must remain so. It is testament to the professionalism and dedication of those doing this work that they continue, for they must as they keep us all safe.

Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland

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