Locked Down, Locked Out? Local Partnership Resilience in the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2021

Across much of the UK, but particularly (following the Christie Commission) in Scotland, there is a growing recognition of the value of local partnership in responding to some of the most complex social issues and problems. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures (beginning in March 2020) have posed enormous challenges for public services and partnership working at the local level. Aside from rising demand for cash-strapped public services, and troubling implications for existing social inequalities, the lockdown has also forced organisations to work in different ways, particularly working remotely. Our project researched the impact of the pandemic and lockdown on local partnership working arrangements, aiming to answer the following research questions: How has Covid-19 affected Scottish local partnership arrangements, in the short and medium term? How has Covid-19 affected efforts to implement the recommendations of the Christie Commission (particularly the prevention principle) in Scottish local government? How have Scottish local partnerships changed their practices to meet the challenge of the pandemic, and how can any progress be built upon? What are the implications of these for existing social inequalities? What are the potential lessons for other countries, particularly in terms of local partnership responses to crises? The first phase of data collection was an online survey which gathered quantitative and qualitative data and received 31 responses. As well as data collection the survey was also used to recruit for the second phrase - online interviews with 23 local partnership professionals. We gathered data from across Scotland but principally from rural areas outside the 'Central Belt'; for anonymity, it's probably not possible to provide more detail on this (but please see Readme.docx). These data may be helpful for studies of interagency partnership working, community resilience or more generally the social impacts of Covid-19. It may be helpful to read them in conjunction with the study's final report.

This is a project about how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected arrangements for agencies that work in partnership within local communities to deal with difficult and complex social problems. It is increasingly well-known that the Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society - these are also the people who are most likely to rely on services provided at the local level. Many of these services require partnership responses. For the last few decades, partnerships between agencies have increasingly been recognised as key to tackling complex issues like homelessness, criminal offending, deprivation, ill-health, addictions and social care - all of which tend to reflect wider social and economic inequalities. These 'wicked problems' (Buchanan, 1995) might require input from social work, the NHS, charities and criminal justice agencies among others. We intend to investigate the impact of Covid-19 and its associated 'lockdown' measures on the operation of these local partnerships. The pandemic has created significant extra demand for some local services while also putting new financial strains on local authorities. Partnership arrangements have tended to depend on regular meetings between relevant individuals from partner organisations, and it will not have been possible to conduct these in the lockdown. We are interested in considering this dynamic and its impact on both those working in the partnerships and on the service users. Furthermore, over this period local government has also been subject to major long-term budget cuts, including under 'austerity' policies enacted by the UK government since the 2007-8 financial crisis. For most local authorities, the context is one of long-term financial strain, not just the short-term impact of the pandemic. However, there is also evidence that the crisis has led local partnerships to work innovatively and quickly to deal with complex social problems at the local level. Notably, there was significant success in reducing street homelessness in the early months of the lockdown (Teixeira, 2020), while the shift to remote working is likely to have created some efficiencies as well as challenges. We will be focusing on local partnership arrangements in Scotland because local government in Scotland has significantly greater autonomy relative to central government, and because partnership has been a particularly essential element of Scotland's political response to austerity. We will carry out the research in two stages - an online survey of all 32 Scottish local authorities, followed by a series of interviews with people working in different types of local partnership within local authorities. We will then analyse the data and publicise our key findings - first to relevant stakeholders and then to the academic community. Any academic outputs from this project will be made available 'open access' (so that anybody can read them) under UKRI policy. We believe this research will contribute to helping local councils respond to Covid-19 and to other crises, and hence to reducing the unequal impacts of these crises on the most deprived and marginalised groups in society.

Coverage and methodology