Organisational resilience in local government is measured in different ways and we can see how important it is when we see the bankruptcy of councils or riots or other community cohesion issues. The examples of Newham’s work on resilience with The RSA or Hounslow’s community resilience index.
There are three situations when people’s resilience can decline:
- People who lose connections at particular transitions or shocks, such as losing partners, jobs, house, or their physical or mental ability
- Groups who are dependent on strong community ties due to a lack of ability to speak the language or integrate
- People who have just moved into a new neighbourhood
Local councils should use any of the touchpoints they have as risk factors to help people. What about when transitions and shocks don’t just happen to an individual but a wider community, like:
- Loss of loved ones during a disaster like Grenfell
- Loss of major employers in a town like in ex-mining towns
- The arrival of a higher proportion of internal or external migration
Much official government policy focuses on people’s ability to “survive” these shocks, rather than be able to build adaptive resilience, which learns from shock and builds systems that can adapt more to change:
- Holding the line
- Bouncing back
- Owning a need
- Adjusting to a new normal
Examples like community connectors, family group conferencing and social prescribers can help in this transition.
What can we learn from communities that have to rebuild after disasters?
