About this report
Through 2020-21 the VCS Emergencies Partnership has supported a range of Local Infrastructure Organisations (LIOs) and others as Liaison Leads to reinforce COVID-19 emergency responses at local level. In June 2021 LIOs reported on the work they had been undertaking through engagement with VCS Emergencies Partnership. This report discusses the main findings and messages from an analysis of 170 ‘end of grant’ monitoring forms completed by LIOs.
Executive Summary
COVID-19 has dramatically altered the assumptions around emergency planning and responses. The Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership expanded its work considerably through 2020 and 2021, bringing national and local voluntary sector organisations together to construct a multi-tier framework of communication, intelligence and support. Drawing from accounts of VCS Emergencies Partnership supported work by 170 local infrastructure organisations, this report identifies five main findings.
Mobilising and supporting the sector. LIOs have been intensively involved in supporting the emergency frontline response to COVID-19. On the one hand this occurs through recruiting, training, organising and managing the flow of large bodies of volunteers locally to address the need for ‘people on the ground’. On the other it involves providing advice, guidance and support to help local VCS organisations navigate the uncertainties of the pandemic.
Coordination and joining up. LIOs have played a vital and often leading role in coordinating responses to COVID-19 and in joining up services and support. VCS Emergencies Partnership has played a part in this process, by providing capacity at local level for engagement, but also as part of a channel of communication from national to local levels and vice versa. The intensified work of LIOs in cross-sector partnerships has been a notable feature of the pandemic, but in addition, LIOs have established, facilitated and supported thematic networks of community groups, voluntary organisations or individual practitioners, for example on mental health, or equalities, or digital inclusion.
The role of the VCS Emergencies Partnership. VCS Emergencies Partnership was seen as an opportunity to better understand and act upon local intelligence, receive and provide invaluable peer support and to discuss the ‘best practices’ of other regions. It has brought together a diverse range of organisations working in different areas of the country to be able to learn from each other. By focussing upon a more integrated way of working between different levels of the VCS (hyper-local, local, regional, national) the VCS Emergencies Partnership, as reported by LIOs, has shown how local problems are intimately connected to national agendas.
The role and value of local infrastructure. There are four main ways in which LIOs suggest they have been impacted through COVID-19: moving their operations online and increased demand for services, funding challenges and opportunities, extending their reach by the development of new and stronger relationships with local communities, other organisations and statutory partners, and some sense of recognition of the value of local infrastructure and the sector as a whole, demonstrated by invitations to take on leadership roles in local strategic forums. The strength of local infrastructure appears to be seen, from the reports, in the resources it can mobilise and build, including facilitating networks within and across sectors, but also its coordinating potential and role.
Learning, challenges and implications. There are two main forms of learning throughout the reports: around the most pressing or surprising issues and needs facing communities as the pandemic has developed (on mental health in particular and also food insecurity); and around new understandings of how relationships, processes and systems can work for a more effective and joined up response. Some reports note frustration with existing resilience structures and duplication and confusion with some national response efforts.
Overall, the aims of the VCS Emergencies Partnership were realised in the activities of LIOs and their local partners described throughout the report, but it is important to note that activities tended to cut across a series of themes simultaneously. The range of VCS Emergencies Partnership processes discussed in the report should be thought of as working in and through each other as an integrated whole.
About the authors
Joe McMullan is a Research Associate for the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) and a final-year PhD student whose doctoral research focusses upon the formations of class, ‘race’ and nation underpinning EU referendum voting justifications within lower-income neighbourhoods in England. His research interests include the uneven effects of national social and economic policy; social and spatial immobilities; welfare reform; and labour market participation.
Rob Macmillan is a Principal Research Fellow at CRESR. He has over 20 years’ experience of researching different aspects of the third sector, voluntary and community action and community development in collaboration with other academics and researchers, policy makers and funders, and with key third sector organisations. His main research interests are around capacity building and third sector infrastructure, the long-term qualitative dynamics of voluntary action, and the relationships between markets and the third sector.