Yvonne Reinhardt argues that radically different, place-based approaches to public service delivery can help improve the resilience of local communities.
In recent months, our team at MV has had the pleasure of working with several place leaders across the country who are committed to rethinking how public services are designed and delivered through a Radical Place Leadership approach, which puts people and their communities at the heart of public service delivery.
A recurring theme in these conversations is the importance of effective and early mental health support. Rather than focusing solely on addressing individual mental health crises when they occur, there is unanimous agreement that a more preventative approach is needed to support citizens and alleviate the pressure on already scarce resources. How can better collaboration and person-centred service delivery at the local level help? In this context, we often speak about the need to strengthen community resilience.
What is community resilience and how can it be strengthened?
The term ‘community resilience’ is widely used in the context of emergency planning and may have become more familiar to many during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government’s Community Resilience Development Framework states that community resilience:
“is enabled when the public are empowered to harness local resources and expertise to
help themselves and their communities to […] prepare, respond and recover from disruptive challenges, […] [and] plan and adapt to long term social and environmental changes to ensure their future prosperity and resilience”.
In the context of mental health, Together Through Tough Times, a 2021 report that was
produced by Mind, SAMH and Inspire Together, highlighted a number of factors that are central to the development of community resilience. These include community hubs and a strong Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector, as well as the significance of community identities and belonging. Their comprehensive set of recommendations points to the need for collaboration between local partners, including a call for support to be asset-based, local, without the need for referrals and “tailored to the needs of both the individual and local community, especially disadvantaged communities”.
Developing Holistic Approaches to Public Service Delivery to pave the way for community resilience
Asset-based, collaborative approaches to improving outcomes for local communities are also at the heart of MV’s approach to Radical Place Leadership. We encourage local leaders to move away from service-centred delivery models and instead empower front-line staff to collaborate across agencies at the local level. Via genuinely integrated neighbourhood teams, we can bring professionals from a variety of public services together with community leaders and VCSE organisations to develop a better understanding of the communities they serve. This model puts front-line staff in a position to provide tailored, wrap-around support to individuals and families before they reach crisis point, this strengthening resilience in local communities.
Yet prevention cannot solely be about earlier mental health support; for communities to become truly resilient, place leaders need to create the conditions them to thrive. Factors that undermine individual mental health and community resilience will be specific to each place, but are often linked to the wider determinants of health and systemic issues, such as discrimination, limited access to education, meaningful, high-value, and secure employment, poverty, and housing deprivation, to name just a few (see Compton and Shim, 2015).
Addressing such deep-rooted systemic issues is a significant challenge for local public services, which are already financially stretched and will require innovative ways of working.
If you are interested in exploring what this could look like in your area, then please drop MV’s Chief Executive Andrew Laird a line at andrew@mutualventures.co.uk.
References
Compton M.T. and Shim R.S. 2015. The Social Determinants of Mental Health. Focus, 13(4), pp.419-425.
Hall D. 2024. Radical Place Leadership - How We Can Change Public Services for the Better.
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