Exploring published literature of emerging practice as a response to challenges due to COVID-19
5 June 2020
The summaries below are of 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.
This week, featured articles include those regarding:
Overview
With the increasing maturity of responses to COVID-19, more partnerships are developing that go beyond hyper-local community groups working together. Furthermore, as community responses have become more stable, there is more of a focus on how to keep the momentum of positive action and political support.
Summaries
COVID-19 Community response services available for referrals
The Libertie Project Limited is a social enterprise that runs arts and craft activities for offenders, those at risk of offending, their families and victims of crime. They work closely with the Criminal and Community Justice system as well as running projects with prisons. However, they are beginning to reach out to different agencies and organisations to offer a referral service to a number of their services.
They are offering 'Digital Contact Boxes for Households in Hardship' through referrals from the Housing Team, Women’s Aid and community response groups. Similarly, they are offering arts and crafts materials, resource guides and lockdown friendly activities for families in hardship through referrals from CAHMS, residential children’s services other agencies.
Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland partners with the Fire Service
Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland has partnered with the Fire Service as a way of reaching out to those who might need their services. Recognising that people might not be able to, or might not feel they can get in touch with the charity for support due to self-isolating or travel restrictions, the Fire Service will be helping identify those who might benefit from support.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are working hard in communities across Scotland to protect people and ensure that they stay safe as they spend more time at home. They have been providing their Home Fire Safety Checklist to those who are more vulnerable and at higher risk. Through the partnership, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will be identifying people in the community who could benefit from the Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland's Kindness Project.
Housing Costs Calculator
This tool supports local authorities in making informed and quick decisions regarding the longer term accommodation of people put into temporary housing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to COVID-19, local authorities across the UK provided people experiencing homelessness temporary accommodation to support self-isolation – often in hotels no longer in use.
As restrictions ease, local authorities will need to find new accommodation to ensure that no-one returns to rough sleeping. To support this decision making, the Housing Costs Calculator can be used to work out rough estimates of the costs of moving people who are currently in hotels and in shared temporary accommodation to the private rented sector with appropriate levels of support.
A 'post COVID-19 solution' to housing
A report from the Chartered Institute of Housing that outlines experiences from the sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, an appraisal of policy responses and suggestions of how to build on this.
The report describes the impact of COVID-19 related restrictions on people living in the private rented sector – characterised by worries about rent and reliance on social security that falls below previous earnings. The situation is likely to become more precarious when the UK government furlough scheme is wound up. The report suggests solutions with the core aims of filling the gaps in current income protection schemes, minimising evictions and help build the sustainability of the private rental sector.
Solutions suggested include:
- reasonable payment plans to repay arrears
- ending of the five week wait for Universal Credit
- temporary suspension of the benefit cap and two-child limit
- one-year lifting of 'no recourse to public funds' and other restrictions on claiming benefits, and
- ensuring landlords pass on relief through mortgage holidays to tenants.
The report includes a detailed table of the key problems along with descriptions of measure currently being taken to address them, ways measures could be enhanced and how to further improve them 'post-COVID-19'.
Embedding and scaling COVID innovations: the mindset shifts behind the specifics
A blog from the Q Community on how to identify areas of COVID-19 related activity conducive to long-term, sustainable improvement, not through the practical things being done but by the culture shifts that enabled it.
There have been a huge number of new innovations at local, regional and national level in response to the challenges of COVID-19. This blog outlines a number of things to consider when looking at what to invest time and energy into supporting 'post-COVID'.
- Look for pre-COVID innovations that are coming to the fore:
- "The language of innovation can disguise the fact that many of the changes coming to the fore during COVID build on an established rationale and evidence base."
- Understand the enablers behind something new and identify where there is:
- willingness and ability to engage virtually
- acceptance of alternatives to receiving care in hospital
- willingness to change thresholds for treatment
- recognition of individuals’ role in self-management and communities in providing support
- focus on individual and public health
- greater recognition and discomfort with existing inequalities
- acceptance of experimentation and front line-led change
Where there have been positive changes in practice due to shifting mindsets, the blog poses a number of questions to ask at a macro-level, including:
What are the mindset shifts to pay attention to?
- When we talk about mindset shifts, what do we really mean and how might we sense and measure such shifts?
- Which voices are amplified and which are muted as we think about this?
- Where are new norms being formed now that traditional spaces are being replaced by online mechanisms for sense-making and debate?
- What might swing back when an exhausted workforce and population see an end to the current crisis phase of the pandemic?
- How do we attend to shifts that might be less positive, such as over-reliance on command and control, top-down leadership?