Understanding the needs of local response groups.
Local communities up and down the country have stepped up to the challenge of supporting their neighbours, with Community Response groups, Mutual Aid and town/street WhatsApp groups. This localised aid means volunteers were able to be mobilised quickly as needs emerged with an understanding of community nuances.
Interviews throughout our discovery suggests that individuals feel these support channels were more accessible as they felt a greater level of trust and connection whether that be for regional, cultural or other personal reasons. For example, individuals in a pending asylum case prefer to reach out to Refugee specific organisations, where individuals from a specific cultural heritage and have a language barrier, prefer to interact with groups who they can communicate with in their native tongue.
So how can we support these communities?
These smaller organisations, whilst more agile and accessible, are also less resourced. If individuals are opting to reach out in these networks, how can we support the local initiatives with the experience and capability at British Red Cross.
Initial responses to date have been to offer ‘people power’ where volunteers are loaned to the organisation. Whilst in some instances this can be useful, an interview with a Community Response leader in Buckinghamshire indicated that one of the major hurdles they had to overcome was finding someone/an organisation to manage the accounting and book keeping as requests and donations were accrued. This highlights the importance of taking the time to ask what challenges are being faces at this local level, and assessing what skill set the Red Cross can offer to help overcome it.
Whilst lockdown measures start to change, the needs of people across the nation will too. People who initially signed up to be volunteers may no longer have time to spare as they return to work as the furlough scheme ends. This may unfortunately coincide with increased and more localised calls for support outside of the current requests we are experiencing. The challenge therefore is to anticipate these needs and meet these local communities with a united approach to ensure continued support to those who need it.
As designers we are continuously looking to understand our user and how to provide an impactful and relevant solution. It is clear that for the British Red Cross to continue to support people in crisis across the UK, we must listen to the needs of these community groups in order to create an effective collaboration.
Next steps
- As a well resourced organisation we should ask these smaller support networks what their needs are, and if there are ways we can provide support to their response.
- As we are preparing for a second wave, what are the continued needs of the community and how can we support these local partners as people start going back to work.
