TY - JOUR AU - Masocha,, Shepard AB - Abstract The landscape for social work is continually changing and working with asylum seekers remains a highly charged and contested area of practice. This paper compares the role of social workers working with asylum seekers in statutory and voluntary-sector settings in the UK. Institutional practices suggest a divide between statutory settings and charitable organisations. However, based on empirical qualitative research and in-depth interviews with thirty-four social workers in Scotland and the south-east of England that explored dominant discourses influencing their practice, we suggest considerable similarities in the different sectors. Austerity measures for local authorities (LA) and voluntary agencies have resulted in the closure of specialist teams and reduced funding for social workers. Findings highlight politicised dominant narratives when working with asylum seekers and we argue for alternatives that promote a more nuanced perspective of entitlement and human rights. Social work, asylum seekers, voluntary sector, statutory sector, human rights Introduction The unfolding refugee crisis represents the worst post-Second-World-War humanitarian crisis and largest movement of asylum seekers. The Global Trends data show 65.3 million forcibly displaced persons in 2015, with 3.2 million asylum seekers and 98,400 unaccompanied or separated children (UNHCR, 2016). In Europe, over one million arrived by boat—a four-fold increase compared with the year before. Western governments’ responses to the increased presence of asylum seekers range from Germany’s ‘open door’ policy of welcoming the new arrivals to Hungary’s frosty reception evidenced by the erection of the controversial razor-wire fence along the Hungarian–Serbian border, which evokes memories of the Iron Curtain. The issue of migrants seeking asylum within the UK continues to be the subject of heated debates within media and parliament and a central argument of the ‘Brexit’ campaign currently dividing the country. The fluctuating numbers of asylum seekers in the last three decades have meant that social workers are increasingly coming into contact with a culturally diverse service user group that government policy implicitly and explicitly seeks to marginalise. In this paper, we contrast two different sites of social work—a local authority in Scotland and voluntary organisations in England—to examine the lived experience of the work with service users facing forced migration. Unlike most of the existing studies (Barclay and Ferguson, 2002; Wren, 2004, 2007; Sim and Bowes, 2007; Piacentini, 2015) on social work practice with asylum seekers in Scotland, the first study examined a Scottish local authority that does not have a formal arrangement with the Asylum Support Service to provide services for asylum-seeking service users (Masocha, 2012). The second study explored the different meanings of front line workers’ roles in not-for-profit, voluntary non-government organisations (NGOs) and how they navigated the systems of immigration, health and social care to provide services to refugees and asylum seekers (Robinson, 2011). NGOs are increasingly being contracted by central government departments to meet complex demands and challenges of different types of forced migration. Whilst this paper highlights the different contexts of the two research studies it is based on, it also brings into focus significant commonalities in practice. In spite of the tensions, social workers are finding creative ways to navigate complex problems. This paper illustrates social workers’ strong commitment to social justice and provides evidence that social workers locate the dilemmas they encounter in the organisational and legislative structures that regulate their practice (Masocha, 2014). Our analysis further supports Ravi Kohli’s (2007, p. xxi) view of social work practice with asylum seekers as ‘varied and rich in meaning for practitioners themselves, not as a deficit-laden activity’. Social work and immigration: does sector matter? Research with those who work with asylum seekers is a relatively new and emerging area of social work research. The post-2000 period has witnessed an emerging body of social work research relating to working with asylum seekers which has significantly contributed to an in-depth and critical understanding of policies that regulate the asylum system (Sales, 2002; Cohen, 2002a, 2002b; Humphries, 2004a, 2004b; Castles and Miller, 2009; Hayes, 2009, 2013; Crawley, 2010, Crawley et al., 2011; Williams and Graham, 2014). This emerging body of knowledge has also contributed significantly towards enhanced practice with asylum seekers in various practice contexts including asylum-seeking children (Kohli, 2006a, 2006b; Kohli and Mitchell, 2007; Dixon and Wade, 2007), mental health (Watters and Ingleby, 2004; Masocha and Simpson, 2012; Kohli and Mather, 2003; Chantler, 2011), disability (Roberts, 2000; Roberts and Harris, 2002; Ottosdottir and Evans, 2014), the deportation and return of appeal-rights-exhausted care leavers (Carr, 2014; Robinson and Williams, 2015) and a critical social work perspective for understanding the pertinent issues of race, racism, culture and diversity (Allan et al., 2009; Masocha and Simpson, 2011; Williams, 2014). In addition, the research has also focused on the demands facing social workers themselves and how they mitigate against these tensions (Dunkerley et al., 2005; Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani, 2011; Robinson, 2013a, 2013b). However, currently, there is very limited research that provides a comparative perspective of social work practice with asylum seekers in voluntary and statutory practice settings. The available research gives the impression of the existence of significant disparities in the experiences of practitioners in these two practice settings. On the one hand, statutory social work is often presented in research as largely constrained by and subservient to the dictates of government legislation and policies (Cemlyn and Briskman, 2003; Briskman, 2013; Carey, 2014). Early work by Jones (2001) argues that the most pressing imperative for statutory social work is finding the best ways to manage the central government’s legislation and policies relating to asylum seekers rather than challenging the very basis of such dictates. Cohen (2002b), Hayes (2004), Humphries (2004b) and Collett (2004) have cogently argued that social work has been co-opted into the surveillance and control of asylum seekers and, in so doing, is implementing racist policies. On the other hand, voluntary organisations are portrayed as largely flexible and responsive to the needs of asylum seekers (Clevenger et al., 2014). They are seen as organisations that are independent of direct government control even though the issue of government funding is raised as potentially compromising their autonomy and a source of practice and ethical dilemmas (Bendell, 2006; Cohen, 2002a). Fell and Fell (2014, p. 5) emphatically claim that, in most cases, the ‘independent sector, most definitely, does not collude or collaborate with immigration controls’. Thus, the tendency has been to view voluntary sectors as having the space to practise creatively, resulting in relatively better outcomes for asylum seekers despite the sector being identified as severely constrained by limited resources for decades (Zetter and Pearl, 2000). The voluntary sector is also credited for being unambiguous and more vocal in its advocacy and defence of the rights of asylum seekers. According to Cemlyn and Briskman (2003, p. 12), voluntary organisations are largely involved in ‘a sustained lobbying action and research campaign’ against the maltreatment of asylum seekers. Therefore, the work of voluntary organisations is presented as more congruent with social work’s value base and the social justice agenda. Thus, the picture that emerges is one characterised by divergent practices between the two practice settings. In the absence of substantive comparative research evidence, the general tendency has been to assume the existence of significant differences in the experiences of social workers as well as significant disparities in available resources and spaces for creative practice in these two contexts. However, this paper provides a comparative perspective, which challenges the very existence of such a binary relationship. Method The two studies that this paper is based on used qualitative methodological approaches to provide an understanding of the narratives of the front line workers. The ethical considerations of the impact of the research on those involved were considered in the choice of methods, and required a considered approach to recruitment and interviewing the participants. The authors’ universities’ Research Ethics Committees granted ethics approval for conducting interviews. The first study (Study A) used discourse analysis (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell et al., 2001), whilst the second study (Study B) utilised feminist methodology and grounded theory (Oakley, 2000; Plummer, 2001; Strauss and Corbin, 1997) in their analyses. As such, both studies adopted research methodologies, which enabled the researcher to question taken-for-granted assumptions, to explore the data with a fresh and open perspective, to check back with participants to confirm the interpretations and to develop a nuanced understanding of the issues. In Study A, a total of twenty-five face-to-face interviews were conducted with social workers in statutory services, whilst, in Study B, nine social workers from the voluntary sector working with asylum seekers were interviewed. The social workers came from a variety of statutory and voluntary social work teams. In both studies, interviews were semi-structured and centred on the individual respondents’ experiences of working with asylum-seeking service users. The interviewees ranged from newly qualified to experienced social workers and, in study A, included senior practitioners, team managers and service managers. In both studies, the interviewees were encouraged to talk about their views on asylum seeking, the roles of media and politicians in constituting knowledge about asylum seekers, their individual experiences of working with asylum seekers, and what they thought of existing service provisions, perceived barriers and ways of enhancing practice. The intention in the statutory service interviews was to acquire an in-depth understanding of the social workers’ discourses and, in particular, how the social workers’ narratives were argumentatively oriented to macro discourses such as those emanating from politicians, media, social policies and the wider society. In the study that focuses on the voluntary-sector services, the aim was to identify how the policy changes had impacted on social workers over time, and whether this highlighted any opportunities or dilemmas in their practice. This paper presents a secondary comparative thematic analysis of data collected in both studies. Findings The comparative analysis of the social workers’ narratives revealed key themes that permeated through the two data-sets. The analysis of the data highlighted that, irrespective of where practitioners were located organisationally, there were significant similarities in the ways social workers positioned themselves in relation to asylum-seeking service users, the dilemmas they encountered in their day-to-day practice, how they made sense of these dilemmas and their responses to them. Social workers’ views of asylum seekers In both practice contexts, practitioners provided narratives in which they were predominantly sympathetic towards asylum-seeking service users. Social workers in NGOs and local authorities (LA) reflected on what they had heard of people’s experiences in refugee camps, experiences of corruption, physical violence, child abuse and sexual assault, and how people had to survive in difficult circumstances. One of the social workers who worked in a child protection team noted that some service users had ‘unbearable stories to tell and, you know, would put you into tears to just sit and listen to people sometimes’ (Social Worker 4). In both practice settings, the social workers demonstrated an in-depth and critical awareness of the complexities and challenges of responding appropriately and effectively to this service user group’s needs. Emerging social work literature (Kohli, 2007; Marlowe, 2009; Masocha and Simpson, 2011) critiques the preponderance of deficit-laden narratives, which often construct refugees and asylum seekers as victims who are in need of support and care. Within such deficit-laden narratives, asylum seekers are often ascribed essentialised victim identities that are characterised by the omnipresence of trauma. Marlowe (2009) argues that there is a need to move beyond trauma-dominated conceptualisations of asylum seekers’ lives. This is because not all asylum seekers present with highly complex needs and in fact many are very resilient (Pittaway et al., 2009; Marlowe, 2010; Correa-Velez et al., 2009, 2011). Many of the front line workers across the two sectors raised the issue of resilience and how this was key to their practice when working with asylum seekers. Informants in the two sectors frequently made reference to the importance of acknowledging asylum seekers’ resilience: We always talk about the negative side of migration, and there are a lot, but also there are some very very positive experiences of people who have come from unbelievable atrocities, and survived unbelievable things and things most people couldn’t even imagine, … and they have used this experience and gone on and used that to their advantage and have done very well (Drew, Wellbeing, UK) (Vol Setting). Similarly, a child protection social worker used a similar frame when she noted how she was ‘amazed by people who would have come from very difficult situations at home and quite often have experienced situations of violence and trauma, and how well they manage. I am amazed how resilient they are’ (Social Worker 7). The social workers discussed how their work practices sought to empower asylum seekers to be self-reliant and build resilience. Research studies illustrate how the identification and strengthening of individual and environmental resilience factors are fundamental to an understanding as well as promotion of asylum seekers’ and refugees’ well-being (Kohli and Manther, 2003; Jeppson and Hjern, 2005; Sossou et al., 2008; Chase, 2013). Studies have illustrated how, in their attempts a start a new life in Australia, Sudanese refugees have used a diverse range of coping strategies such as relying on social supports, religion, cognitive reframing of traumatic experiences and inner strength, and focusing on future aspirations (Schweitzer et al., 2007; Khawaji et al., 2008; Marlowe, 2010). Similar research of unaccompanied asylum-seeking adolescents in the UK revealed the use of similar coping strategies (Groark et al., 2010; Chase, 2013). These research studies illustrate how supporting such strategies can mitigate the negative impacts of having experienced harrowing traumatic experiences associated with war and forced migration such as acts of violence, physical and psychological torture, rape as an instrument of war, displacement, loss and grief. Whilst the social workers from the voluntary and statutory sectors raised the importance of recognising asylum seekers’ resilience, they were also clear that, as a service user group, asylum seekers faced a unique set of challenges associated with being in a new host country. Some of these challenges include settlement issues such as unemployment, language barriers, loneliness, culture shock, shifting gender roles, inter-generational conflict and racism. Irrespective of the organisational context within which their practice was located, the social workers saw their practice with asylum seekers as a balancing act, requiring high levels of skill and sensitivity. They saw their success in working with asylum seekers and refugees as predicated on the recognition of the complexity of people and seeing them not as victims, but as unique individuals. In both practice contexts, this resulted in a holistic approach for understanding and responding to the circumstances and needs of asylum seekers and refugees they worked with. A common thread that permeated through the practitioners’ narratives related to the dilemmas and challenges of everyday practice. Insights from research indicate that the politics of asylum have resulted in asylum seekers becoming generally circumspect in developing relationships with those they perceive as authority figures (Hynes, 2009; Groark et al., 2010; Raghallaigh, 2013). The practitioners’ narratives illustrate the significant challenges of building trust when working with asylum-seeking service users. In both practice contexts, practitioners were conscious of how the politics of asylum, asylum seekers’ difficult life stories and traumatic backgrounds impacted on their efforts to develop an effective working relationship. For example, the practitioners described the difficulties they encountered when working with limited amounts of information and how at times this made practitioners to feel suspicious and distrustful towards asylum seeking: I mean my personal view is I defy anybody in any of the professions to say that they don’t ever have their own doubts or issues about who is deserving or undeserving or play favourites, to have a better rapport with one client and that affects your work (George, Assist, UK) (Vol Setting). In a similar way, a statutory social worker who worked with unaccompanied asylum seekers noted that, despite spending a lot of time building relationships with the young people, ‘they don’t tell me the truth. My clients don’t tell me the truth. In fact, they very rarely do’ (Social Worker 12). Another statutory social worker noted: We don’t know if her story is correct as she came with her mother and her mother has abandoned her. There is a whole lot we don’t know umm if she has been coached or this is a proper story she has been told to say. And she doesn’t give much information away and I feel like we building this giant jigsaw of this girl’s life (Social Worker 13). These social workers’ narratives reflect the important observation made by Kohli (2006b, p. 713) that silence is one of the main challenges encountered by practitioners, as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (and adults) often possess ‘a sense of mystery about their origins, within which only fragments of the everyday lives left behind’ can ever be known to practitioners. One way of dealing with silence is by investing in relationship building, but such efforts are significantly undermined by the managerialist emphasis on targets as well as the heavy caseloads, which many participants noted as further restricting what they could potentially do with asylum seekers. The social work role in organisations In both practice contexts, social workers expressed a disconnection between their desires and actual practices when working with asylum-seeking service users. Masocha (2014) illustrates how social work practitioners encounter ethical dilemmas in their practice with asylum seekers and are clear in their understanding that these dilemmas originate from organisational structures, legislative frameworks and policy provisions, which regulate their practice. He also noted how these impediments were ‘distinctly at odds with the practitioners’ personal [and professional] beliefs of how asylum seekers should be treated as well as social work’s orientation towards the social justice agenda’ (Masocha, 2014, pp. 1632–3). The social workers’ narratives confirm the concerns being raised in research regarding the narrowing of the social work role when working with this service user group. For instance, the social workers described a constrictive practice environment across the sectors and how this negatively impacted on both the service users and workers. In particular, the social workers shared a common view regarding the ways in which bureaucratic service needs often conflicted with, and in many cases took priority over, the needs of asylum seekers. For example, practitioners in the NGO and voluntary sectors discussed how asylum seekers and refugees frequently underwent multiple assessments and had to repeat their story over and over. In some cases, service users became angry or disengaged, or refused to provide information. Many informants acknowledged how powerless asylum seekers felt and that, in many instances, resistance (e.g. silence and low levels of engagement) was the only way asylum seekers could exercise agency and that this impacted on them as workers, as illustrated above. Overall, social workers in both sectors expressed their frustration with the restrictions that legislation placed on the work that they could do with clients. This view was aptly captured in the following extract from a voluntary-sector social worker’s narrative: ‘But my constraint is just that I have no power. It’s difficult when your clients think that you’ve got power because you can phone people up’ (Leonie, Assist Team 4, UK) (Vol Setting). A similar level of frustration was expressed by a statutory social worker who described how one young person she was working with could not access health and education services because UK Visas and Immigration suspected that the young person was an accompanied minor and insisted that the social worker and police should first track down her parents before they could issue the young person with a Home Office reference number, which is a key requirement for accessing health and social care services. The social worker described her practice as: … so frustrating in many respects because I feel I am fighting the system for this young person …. So I am having a terrible time trying to meet this young person’s basic needs and I feel every couple of days I am on the phone arguing with somebody or I am trying to fight this person’s corner (Social Worker 13). Many of the informants in both sectors described their frustration with the limited sessions and support they provided simply because asylum seekers were defined as ‘ineligible’ or ‘failed’. Crawley et al. (2011) have illustrated how successive asylum legislation and policies have limited asylum seekers’ access to welfare provisions resulting in increased levels of destitution. Many of the social workers that participated in both studies were dissatisfied with the ways in which these policies operated. As street-level bureaucrats involved in the day-to-day implementation of government policy (Lipsky, 2010), the social workers described how they were able to exercise discretion rather strictly, adhering to protocols and eligibility criteria for service provision. Here, the potential effect of the discretionary power that social workers can exercise in the interpretation and implementation of policy and procedures relating to asylum seekers can be seen. Through engaging in ‘these little acts of sabotage and subversion … [and] opening up spaces of discretion on a daily basis in navigating the conflicts, ambivalence and contested purposes of public service delivery’ (Williams and Briskman, 2015, p. 4), these practitioners were able to provide services which otherwise would have been denied. In doing so, the social workers were able make significant steps towards realising their desire to achieve social justice for asylum seekers. These social workers’ views and practices provide a more positive view of social work practice with asylum seekers contrary to earlier research, which has focused on social work’s complicity in oppressive practices. In both practice contexts, social workers argued that there was a level of ambivalence about the value of their professional skills and reports. On the one hand, they felt their professional opinion was valued by other services and agencies, and many of the informants suggested that there was an increased recognition of front line workers’ knowledge in the field. However, due to the rapid policy and legislative changes, their expertise was frequently challenged and called into question. Some social workers described a tension working with other NGOs and government departments in relation to having expertise overall. Some believed that their expertise was frequently challenged and ignored during the process of both applying for asylum and appealing negative decisions made by the Home Office. Despite this, front line workers reflected on how their agencies frequently supported their often long-term work with service users, hence valuing their decision-making capacity and professional expertise. This substantiated claims about the validity of the work and highlighted yet again for those working in both the NGOs and statutory sectors how their perspectives were at odds with that of immigration services. Discussion This paper highlights overarching similarities in institutional practices despite a widespread belief in differences of approach between statutory and voluntary sectors in relation to their responses to asylum seekers. A key aspect that transcends the different practice contexts within which such services are provided in the UK relates to the tensions and structural challenges associated with practitioners operating within parallel and often conflicting pieces of legislation and policy. Irrespective of practice contexts, practitioners work with service users that government, through its policies of deterrence, are implicitly or actively seeking to exclude and marginalise from mainstream services and society at large (Masocha, 2015). The global economic crisis and austerity measures provide a wider context for understanding the increasing similarities in practices across the sectors. The austerity policies introduced by the Coalition government in 2010 are characterised by cuts in public spending targeted at social security and local government spending. In 2010, the Comprehensive Spending Review proposed a 27 per cent cut to local government budgets along with other cuts to services (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013). The 2013 Comprehensive Spending Review introduced a further 10 per cent cut in the local government resource budget as well as a cap on welfare spending (HM Treasury, 2013). Currently, there is a cross-party consensus on the necessity of the austerity measures, with only minor divergences of opinion on the scale, pace and intended targets of the cuts. This political acceptance of the necessity for welfare cuts exists in sharp contrast to growing evidence of their negative social impacts (Slay and Penny, 2013), ineffectiveness in reducing public debt (Office for Budget Responsibility, 2014) and inability to effect and sustain economic recovery and growth. Both statutory and non-governmental organisations working with asylum seekers have been significantly affected by the cuts. Cuts in local government spending have seen statutory social work teams being reorganised. There have been dramatic reductions in services and specific closures of specialist asylum social work teams (personal contact, 2015). Cuts in public spending have resulted in a significant reduction in the amounts of government grants available to NGOs. For instance, two of the UK’s largest immigration advice charities, the Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) and the Immigration Advisory Service (IAS), collapsed in 2010 and 2011, respectively. The IAS cited the £350 million cuts in the legal aid system as the reason behind its decision to enter into financial administration (Medley, 2011). As such, the negative impacts of the austerity measures on service provision for asylum seekers permeate through both the statutory and non-statutory sectors. The existing neo-liberal environment poses significant challenges for both the statutory and NGO sectors and the provision of social justice for asylum seekers. With the UK government ‘outsourcing’ specific local authority duties, funding to NGOs to provide direct service work has been severely limited and, in some cases, such as the Refugee Council and the Choices programme, totally withdrawn (Refugee Council, 2014; Refugee Action, personal contact, October 2015). Previous research in this area already highlighted how this has compromised some services, confirming fears that the role of NGOs in challenging government policy has been diminished (Bendell, 2006; Sales, 2007; Zetter, 2007). Indeed, scholars are concerned about the ways in which pressures on NGOs and third-sector agencies to provide more direct services restrict their critical political role (Alcock and Craig, 2009). The neo-liberal context is also important in understanding the government’s willingness to ‘cede’ control of asylum seekers from LA to NGO’s through privatisation, deregulation and contracting of services, as it has in other key areas of social welfare service provision (Harris, 2014). This is happening at a time when control of both internal and external borders is being tightened by government with its current emphasis on strong borders and securitisation of immigration (Weber and Pickering, 2011) and the uncertain process of exit from the EU. Therefore, we argue that both the legislative provisions and the current austerity measures restrict the empowering role of social workers with service users and minimise the political nature of the social work role in both the statutory and non-governmental practice contexts. Scholars have argued against neo-liberal social work given the prominence of privatisation and target-driven cultures, which are antithetical to the interests of service users (Harris, 2014). They have also critiqued the rise of cynicism among social workers that reflects significant changes in organisations and the prevalence of ‘reifying’ rhetoric which does not meet the reality of what is on offer to service users (Carey, 2014). We argue that the current austerity measures have significantly curtailed the capacity of social workers to empower asylum-seeking service users and have minimised the political nature of the social work role in both statutory and voluntary settings. Williams and Briskman (2015, p. 6) argue this is further evidenced by the removal of ‘discontent and outrage from the streets’ and that this is channelled into limited specific spaces, co-opted by the neo-liberal project. Overall, we see evidence of the ethical dilemmas that are encountered by social workers in their day-to-day practice particularly in a culture of target-focused outcomes. In spite of these ethical dilemmas, social workers are creative in finding ways to navigate these problems. This paper illustrates social workers’ significant concerns for the welfare of asylum seekers and their strong commitment to social justice, and it provides evidence that social workers locate the dilemmas they encounter in the organisational and legislative structures that regulate their practice. Conclusion Social work has a key role to further develop the focus and activities of working with refugees and asylum seekers. However, it must engage more fully with the political and policy aims of government in order to challenge the neo-liberal focus of limiting and restricting resources that contribute to resettlement. Social workers are highly motivated to working in this area. However, there is pressure to collude with agendas that prioritise reducing the cost of budget items, such as when working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The social workers in this paper describe rich work with an international focus, a respect for cultural diversity and a strong focus on human rights. While professionalism is contested territory (Fook, 2012), we argue that new professionalism in the context of human rights (Briskman, 2013) can support the generation of new knowledge in the context of critical social work. This requires organisational strategies to ensure that those working with refugees and asylum seekers are adequately supported, thus contributing to their well-being, retention and effectiveness overall. From this position, social workers can be actively involved in policy, research and direct practice to contribute to self-determination of asylum seekers. This is crucial when working in a sector with competing paradigms. Drawing on the international literature, social work needs to focus on refugee capacity and to engage with marginalised discourses identified in recent research, such as the difficult and the unruly processes of settlement (Sampson, 2016; Clevenger et al., 2014). It needs to be active in the development of strategies to resist neo-liberal practices that favour surveillance rather than participation, to promote active professional reflection and to maintain an emotional connection to lived experience (Bogen and Marlowe, 2015; Beddoe, 2010; Williams and Briskman, 2015) that can assist us to move away from the victim/survivor binary. We must continue to engage with mainstream versus specialist debates that clearly articulate organisational aims for refugees and asylum seekers, and not just support institutional survival in these competitive contexts. Forced migration is continuing to be one of the most challenging global issues facing social work, and we believe we have a key role in addressing it from a social justice perspective. Acknowledgements We would like to thank our colleagues at the University of Kent for initial comments. 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