Report #2 Models and Frameworks for Coordinating Community Responses During COVID-19
The MoVE project is a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield, Hull and Leeds. Over the course of 18 months, the research examines how to understand, scale and maximise the effectiveness of volunteer responses to COVID-19. This is the second in a set of 3 reports on the first stage of research and examines the findings from 49 semi- structured interviews with a range of stakeholders from England, Scotland and Wales, about their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
New, innovative models of cross-sectoral collaboration emerged to respond to the unprecedented challenges facing local authorities (LAs) and their community partners during the first national lockdown. By analysing the development and impact of these different response models, it is possible to identify key areas that shape what post-lockdown models of social action and community partnership could look like.
Flattened structures and greater decentralisation: • A key dimension has been a transformation in cross-sectoral engagement which emphasises a sharing of decision-making, greater collaboration, and more subsidiarity that devolves action to the most appropriate localised level.
The importance of established local infrastructure organisations: • The availability (or absence) of strong infrastructure organisations has been key to influencing the types of models adopted during the pandemic. • Where utilised, infrastructure organisations enabled a fast and coordinated response, often providing a vital bridge between LA staff and services and community organisations and volunteers.
Building on co-production models: • Support frameworks often built upon pre-existing LA commitments to undertake collaborative working with local communities, building stronger connections between LAs and their partners. • This enabled LAs to draw upon the support of a broad network of organisations and citizens.
Enhanced role for community hubs: • Across all of the models, different forms of community hubs played important roles in distributing resources and providing connections between communities and organisations.
The role of informal volunteering and mutual aid: • Relationships with informal groups, like mutual aid, varied significantly across locations. • We identify three LA responses to these groups: integrating them into the strategic response; establishing a relationship and offering support; and an arm’s length relationship.
