Shame and burn out While many of the decisions mentioned above were taken in the higher management level of NGOs, NGO staff implemented these decisions on the ground on a daily basis, in a context with very limited initiative allowed and poor working conditions in a toxic, violent and uncertain setting, immigration detention centres. This context had a profound impact on the health and well-being of those who worked inside or outside the centres. Acknowledging that effective provision of aid can only be delivered in a safe and secure environment, which a detention setting cannot ensure, NGO staff had to come to terms with significant compromises in their work and concede their humanitarian principles, which led them to get involved in the first place. Α lawyer, who offers legal aid inside detention centres, shared the limits of her work and her feelings about it ‘When we go to a detention centre, we are able to see maximum 10 persons. Whether you like it or not, your work is based on criteria (vulnerability, nationality, who has called to ask for help) and you prioritise who you are going to see. In any case we cannot screen all the detained population to find out the ones most in need. Whatever we do, we feel it’s not enough. It’s a shame. That’s how I feel every time I leave’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). Others described more intense emotions. ‘I had no training so after four months of constant involvement with no boundaries I burned out. When after a shocking incident I started crying in front of the police officers, they told me I should change my profession. And perhaps I should have’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). Feelings of burnout, disillusionment and compassion fatigue, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are very common among humanitarian frontline workers, who face increasing demands they cannot resolve and work in distressing contexts, and a muchoverlooked issue in the profession, as the literature on practitioners and vicarious trauma cautions (Canning, 2021; McPherson & Burkle, 2021; see also Cardozo et al. 2012). NGO workers I interviewed expressed not being able to visit a detention centre or prison again or even experiencing difficulties in breathing when in closed environments. As a former practitioner put it ‘It leaves scars. It is stigmatising’ (Interview, Athens, 2018). Personally, I became more cynical, which, over time, affected my efficiency and productivity as a practitioner. As Victoria Canning (2021, p. 2) aptly puts it ‘if practitioners are increasingly negatively impacted by restrictions in policy and their ability to work well under changing 167