Exploring published literature of emerging practice as a response to challenges due to COVID-19
22 June 2020
The summary below includes articles that might help thinking about what has been learned from the COVID-19 experience so far, along with suggestions on how this might be used to support improvement in future.
Here we share insights into the response of communities to COVID-19.
During times of crises, local services can be overstretched and overloaded. At such times, the activities of ‘ordinary’ citizens and communities can become a particularly important, and visible, support for health and wellbeing which complements and enhances the work of frontline services.
We have seen this during the current pandemic. By the 30 March 2020, more than 21,000 people responded to the Scottish Government call for volunteers. As well as these volunteers, we are hearing of stories from across the country where people have come together to form community groups. They offer and respond to calls for help: help with shopping, collecting prescriptions, walking dogs or just for a friendly telephone chat to help combat the loneliness of isolation. These groups frequently operate via community Facebook and WhatsApp groups, sometimes coordinated by an existing body, such as the council, or by group members themselves.
Alongside these informal activities, there are also more formalised groups or organisations who have stepped in to meet local needs. For instance, Castlemilk Together is a Glasgow group that has been functioning for a number of years but has increased and adjusted its activities in order to respond to increased need, with support from the local football team, parish church and an increased number of volunteers.
In East Renfrewshire, the local council and a 3rd sector organisation Voluntary Action East Renfrewshire (VAER) joined together with the Health & Social Care Partnership to operate a Community Hub phone line. This helpline aims to coordinate the community response across East Renfrewshire by acting as a “one-stop shop” for those who volunteer by matching them with people who register as needing help.
This ability of a community to come together in time of stress and challenge is often referred to as the community’s resilience. Resilience generally refers to the ability of individuals, places and populations to withstand stress and serious challenge. The literature tells us that in communities which demonstrate resilience, there is a sense of trust, of belonging, of shared values and mutual concerns. Community cohesion, neighbourhood social capital (or the ties that bind people together) and integration have been highlighted as key features of resilient places and over the last few years, a lot of literature has been written on the subject. Social capital includes the resources available to individuals within the communities. However, research has also shown that social capital, while a necessary component for sustainable community development, by itself isn’t enough. Economic resources and people, in this case volunteers, are also necessary.
The fact that communities have pulled together at this time of need is inspiring and suggests that community resilience is potentially stronger than we may have thought. The evidence emerging is that this has formed an essential part of our society’s response to this emergency and presents us with an opportunity to consider whether and how we want to preserve this.
However, the challenge that communities, and by extension the health and social care systems which support these communities, are going to be faced with, is how to keep this upsurge in community resilience and strength, and this willingness to support each other for some time to come. We need to maintain this willingness to adapt quickly and with agility to new ideas and solutions going forward. It could be said that the task ahead is for us to provide the ‘conditions’ through which these networks can be created and sustained in times of ‘business as usual’ as well as times of crisis.
We can take lessons from research conducted after previous disasters. For instance, from New Zealand and how they responded to the devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Research there showed that having a sense of community and a sense of social connectedness helped community recovery.
Research done following earthquakes in Italy in 2009 concluded that being aware of the underlying community resilience and recognising and strengthening the capacities of local communities must play a part in addressing the negative social and economic impacts experienced during a crisis. While in Australia work has been done around the spontaneous volunteering which surfaces around times of crisis and how these volunteers can be best utilised.
In the UK, an example of a current community based approach can be seen within communities using the Community Led Support (CLS) approach. This is a place-based approach where organisations work collaboratively with communities to identify and build capacity of local assets and ensure services meet local needs. It does this by working with local people, the third sector, local businesses and the public sector to build place-specific solutions to local issues. Changes to local services and systems are shaped and refined in conjunction with the communities they serve. Community led support involves a set of core principals and practice but each area works differently depending on local needs, priorities and local resources. More information about this approach, including a report on CLS in Scotland from May 2020, can be found at the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) website. The ihub have partnered with NDTi to support the development of Community Led Support programmes in Scotland and more about this can be found on our website.
This pandemic has already highlighted existing structural disadvantage in many of our more deprived communities, as discussed by a report from Edinburgh Poverty Commission. These disadvantages are not new, but they have become more visible, to both those within and outwith the communities, uncovered by the growth of new community relationships. However, the pandemic has also highlighted existing skills, resources and community resilience. This presents us with the potential opportunity to harness and nurture that resilience and use it to change and improve local conditions. It might be useful to view these insights through the lens of good strategic planning. Health and social care partnerships may wish to build on the strength of relationships developed with the community during this time of Covid and consider how these can inform local commissioning practices.
If you would like us to explore this topic further or if you would like to know more about it then please contact us. Also get in touch if you have other ideas we could help you explore.
Sources:
https://www.gov.scot/news/tens-of-thousands-sign-up-to-help-during-coronavirus-outbreak/
https://sway.office.com/mBXkBXmDGhkOuISx?ref=Link
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5693357/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2479757
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2014.934846
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0743016716302261