Covid-19 and mutual aid: Prefigurative approaches to caring?

2021 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-91
Author(s):  
Marjorie Mayo

With over 2,000 support groups listed in Britain at the time of writing at the beginning of 2021, the growth of mutual aid has been among the more positive outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic. So much for the neoliberal view of humans as rational individuals focused on the pursuit of their own self-interests, whatever the needs of others. For Marxists, though, the recent growth of mutual aid groups needs to be set within the framework of critical understandings about civil society, the respective roles of civil society, the market and the state, and the potential for building alternatives within capitalist societies. The Covid-19 pandemic has been highlighting the failures of market-led approaches to meeting people’s needs, demonstrating the need for more rather than less public provision, including the need for a national care service. Meanwhile, the voluntary and community sectors have been struggling to fill the gaps between shrinking public services on the one hand and growing social needs on the other. This has been the context for the emergence of the mutual aid groups that are the focus of the final section of this article, exploring their potential contributions, promoting values of mutuality, cooperation and care within these contemporary constraints. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of such prefigurative community-based initiatives more generally, their contributions as well as their inherent limitations as component parts of social justice movements.

Author(s):  
Marjorie Mayo

The rise of Far Right populism poses major challenges for communities, exacerbating divisions, hate speech and hate crime. This book shows how communities and social justice movements can effectively tackle these issues, working together to mitigate their underlying causes and more immediate manifestations. Showing that community-based learning is integral to the development of strategies to promote more hopeful rather than more hateful futures, Mayo demonstrates how, through popular education and participatory action research, communities can develop their own understandings of their problems. Using case studies that illustrate education approaches in practice, she shows how communities can engineer democratic forms of social change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Heather Howard ◽  
Katie Clark ◽  
Mary Piltch

BackgroundThe number of American children with a mother who is incarcerated increased by 131% between 1991 and 2007, impacting more than one million children. Because of increased focus on the problems surrounding parents in prison, there has been a growing recognition of how incarceration negatively impacts children and that repairing these relationships is critical to improving family functioning.ObjectiveThe focus of this article is to present a community-based participatory study that measured the impact of a support group provided to mothers during incarceration.MethodsIn this pilot study we used a nonexperimental design for an 8-week support group assessed at baseline and post intervention.FindingsThis study demonstrated favorable results in forming social connections and promoting positive communication between group members.ConclusionCommunity-based organizations, which offer support to parents, grandparents, and children impacted by incarceration, need continual funding.


Healthcare ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 643
Author(s):  
Jiangang Shi ◽  
Wenwen Hua ◽  
Daizhong Tang ◽  
Ke Xu ◽  
Quanwei Xu

Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and customer satisfaction theory, we constructed a satisfaction model for supply–demand satisfaction for community-based senior care (SSCSC) combined with the psychological perspective of the elderly, and four dimensions of basic living needs (BLNs), living environment (LE), personal traits (PTs), and livability for the aged (LA) were selected to construct the model. The data were obtained from 296 questionnaires from seniors over 50 years old (or completed by relatives on their behalf, according to their actual situation). Twenty-two observed variables were selected for the five latent variables, and their interactions were explored using structural equation modeling. The results showed that LA was the most significant factor influencing SSCSC, and it was followed by BLNs and LE. PTs did not show a direct effect on LA, but they could have an indirect effect on SSCSC through influencing BLNs and LE. Based on the current state of community aging satisfaction, we propose to establish a community elderly care service system based on the basic needs of the elderly population, providing differentiated and refined elderly care services and improving the level of aging-friendly communities. This study provides references for the government to formulate relevant policies and other supply entities to make strategic decisions and has important implications for further enhancing community elderly services to become an important part of the social security system for the elderly.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 215013272110243
Author(s):  
Tyler Lian ◽  
Kate Kutzer ◽  
Diwas Gautam ◽  
Howard Eisenson ◽  
Jane C. Crowder ◽  
...  

Introduction: In an effort to improve health outcomes and promote health equity, healthcare systems have increasingly begun to screen patients for unmet social needs and refer them to relevant social services and community-based organizations. This study aimed to identify factors associated with the successful connection (ie, services started) to social needs resources, as well as factors associated with an attempt to connect as a secondary, intermediate outcome. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients who had been screened, referred, and subsequently reached for follow-up navigation from March 2019 to December 2020, as part of a social needs intervention at a federally qualified health center (FQHC). Measures included demographic and social needs covariates collected during screening, as well as resource-related covariates that characterized the referred resources, including service domain (area of need addressed), service site (integration relative to the FQHC), and access modality (means of accessing services). Results: Of the 501 patients in the analytic sample, 32.7% had started services with 1 or more of their referred resources within 4 weeks of the initial referral, and 63.3% had at least attempted to contact 1 referred resource, whether or not they were able to start services. Receiving a referral to resources that patients could access via phone call or drop-in visit, as opposed to resources that required additional appointments or applications prior to accessing services, was associated with increased odds (aOR 1.95, 95% CI 1.05, 3.61) of connection success, after adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity, education, number of social needs, and resource-related characteristics. This study did not find statistically significant associations between connection attempt and any variable included in adjusted analyses. Conclusion: These findings suggest that referral pathways may influence the success of patients’ connection to social needs resources, highlighting opportunities for more accessible solutions to addressing patients’ unmet social needs.


1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan K. Jacohson ◽  
John J. Arana ◽  
Mallory D. McDuff

The increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States should challenge environmental interpreters to offer programs that attract a variety of audiences. This study investigated minority involvement at Florida's nature centers through a census of 77 nature center directors throughout Florida as well as a survey of 21 minority staff working at these educational facilities. School programs at the nature centers are the primary method for reaching minorities; few programs involve minority adults from the community. The focus of the one-day visits for students is primarily nature awareness, with little emphasis on influencing knowledge or attitudes about local issues, human-environment relationships, or actions to reduce environmental problems. The results indicate the need for nature centers to expand their programs to offer long-term, community-based environmental interpretation for a diverse public.


2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110353
Author(s):  
Peter Scaramuzzo ◽  
Michael Bartone ◽  
Jemimah L. Young

Allyship is a complicated idea laden with multiple, layered assumptions. One should not presume that allyship conceptually permeates all social justice movements. One should not presume that allyships develop to combat or dismantle a predefined socially constructed ism. A critical interrogation of allyship and allyship constructions necessitates recognition of broader, universal tenets of allyships anywhere. This must go further to embrace the nuanced, situated, dynamic, critically problematic, and complex dimensions rooted in individual lived experiences intersecting multiple marginalizations which contribute as praxis toward an actualizing of individual allyships. Although we will blur constructed distinctions as we progress, here, we endeavor to surface and deliberate upon the derivations and functions and shapes of allyships between two demographic categories, made arbitrarily distinct here for the purposes of engaging in discursive analysis: cisgender heterosexual Black women and cisgender gay White men. In short, we are proposing a way to view this allyship as bidirectional allyships, grounded in social justice frames of existing: a way to see each respective group as traveling within their own lane down a collectively traveled highway. Each traverses the space along their own course, traveling down “their own road.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joy Brooke Fairfield ◽  
Krista Knight ◽  
Barry Brinegar

In the first autumn of the COVID-19 pandemic, long-time theatre collaborators in two different cities in the US South discuss the future of an art form that has currently gone dark. Influenced by punk culture, twenty-first-century internet aesthetics, social justice movements and their pets, this decade-strong creative team reflects in a multimedia format on their past work and enumerates their priorities for the future of musical theatre: cheap, remote, inexperienced, local, radical and full of women and sexual/gender minorities.


Author(s):  
Ann Goldberg

This article is about the power of a norm and its mutation over time: the gender role division of the private nuclear family composed of a male provider and protector, and his dependent children and homemaker wife. Those roles corresponded to rigid distinctions that were made between a male public world of work, money, and politics, on the one hand, and a female private sphere of reproduction and nurturance, on the other. These were prescribed ideals of gender. However, as such, the ideals have had tremendous power, shaping personal identity and the daily lives of men and women, as well as influencing the development of the state, civil society, politics, and the economy, according to a vast and growing scholarship. This article highlights the powerful role played by the norm of separate spheres over two centuries of German history along with the development of civil society and the welfare state.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document