Update from Nick Sinclair, Director of the Local Area
Coordination Network
This month our Network members have continued attending their weekly online gatherings. It has been inspiring to see Local Area Coordinators and managers from all over England and Wales coming together to connect, share and reflect with each other during what has been an immensely challenging and difficult time for them all. We are carefully documenting the information and insights shared in these gatherings alongside evidence from other sources including our new podcast series “Weathering the Storm”, blogs from our members, tweets and testimonies etc. Taking this approach has given us the opportunity to build an ongoing timeline which we are calling “The Covid Crisis Through a Local Area Coordination Lens”. Our hope is that this growing evidence base will support the opportunity for ongoing and future reflection around what has worked well and what hasn’t. Here are some of our very early observations from what we’ve heard over the last few weeks:
- Communities are highly responsive in a crisis – hyper local neighbourliness has been incredibly effective in neighbourhoods across our whole Network. In comparison, national volunteer programmes and some local government led ones don’t appear to have been quite as effective.
- Where there has been a genuine investment in supporting place and asset-based working and where there are good relations and trust between local government, voluntary institutions and communities, local areas have been able to work more collaboratively, playing to everyone’s strengths and achieving greater outcomes.
- For the most part, Local Area Coordinators have been deployed in the crisis response based on their connections, strengths and relationships. Their positioning has proved vital for ensuring community responses are at the heart of wider plans.
- There is a desire all round to sustain the new levels of social capital in communities.
- The mental health and confidence of many people in communities has be shaken and social anxiety, isolation and other personal challenges will be significant as we begin to unlock.
- The language of crisis and vulnerability has been persistent and likely to linger for a while. It could be a distraction from future work focussing on a citizen’s vision for a good life and their potential to make their contribution.
In general, throughout the last few weeks, we’ve been encouraged to hear so many stories of neighbours getting to know each other, communities helping each other out and genuine strengths-based proliferating in the service system. Equally though, we are starting to see the immense challenge that lies ahead for individuals, communities, councils and other statutory services as they begin to overcome one crisis and move in to another that may prove to be even more complex and prolonged.
It has been so apparent that there has never been a better time for Local Area Coordination as a complimentary strategy to support recovery and renewal at all levels both within our Network and in new areas. We are here and ready to have helpful conversations.
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