Wednesday, 02 March 2011

The ‘request scruple’ and the demand for neighbourliness

Linders cover Our society seems to be crying out with a perceived need to stimulate neighbourliness. The assumption is that the supply of neighbourliness in many residential populations is simply inadequate for the demand: people are not neighbourly enough, it seems, and the entire social structure is in jeopardy. The hunt is on to invent ways of stimulating neighbouring. So here's the Campaign to End Loneliness starting to capture ideas for instance, and we have one or two over on the 50 Ways site also. Is this the right approach?

Back in 2009 I had the privilege of editing the English language summary of a Dutch PhD thesis submitted by my friend Lilian Linders.

The study was about ‘the significance of proximity’ and looked at the nature of informal care at neighbourhood level. What Lilian found and describes is starting to excite the social welfare field in the Netherlands, and there are good reasons to reflect on her conclusions.

Lilian-linders The research was carried out in a low income urban area, perceived as fairly cohesive in the traditional sense, with a population of about 2,400, clamped between an industrial zone and several highways. (I was driven close by last week, as it happens). Lilian speaks of ‘informal care’ in a very broad sense, she means I think the full range of informal support provided, including informal care and some very intimate tasks carried out by known co-residents repeatedly.

‘Apart from the willingness to help a neighbour, a plethora of problems like poverty, alcoholism, incest, disease, divorce, debts, domestic violence and loneliness was found. Therefore the dividing line between givers and receivers of informal care is blurred. The model is one of mutual aid.’

She found that most support was provided one-to-one, not on a collective (‘community’) basis, but simply because people knew each other. It had everything to do with trust at a personal level.

One of the things that Lilian latched onto, with keen insight, was the reticence in requesting neighbourly support. She calls this the ‘request scruple’ – a reluctance to ask for help. This contrasts sharply with the ‘support scruple’ – the reluctance to offer support.

Neighbours prefer social distance and are surprisingly reluctant to ask for support. Nonetheless, they do help each other, on an individual one-to-one basis, in personal and sometimes demanding and intimate circumstances.

The reluctance to ask for support extends to friends, acquaintances and family members, largely because of the fear of dependency and the social ideal of autonomy.

Lilian’s key finding is that the request scruple is far more of an impediment to informal care than is a shortage in the supply.

This helps to clarify the argument that informal care is not a consequence of neighbourhood cohesion: it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you have a cohesive neighbourhood, people will care for one another in time of need. That depends on personal relationships.

One last point. Lilian draws attention to the significance of mutual support between vulnerable people. This is a tidy example of the difference between the Dutch approach and the English. Big society thinking clobbers away at notions of charity and philanthropy, thinking those of us with some kind of surplus should be supporting those without. In the Netherlands, as I have been describing in recent posts, there is serious policy impetus behind the principle of informal care and mutual support.

You can see a clear English language presentation summary of Lilian’s work here.

Speaking to the study tour group last week, Lilian's colleague Rick Kwekkeboom had some important points to add, particularly around the invisibility of informal care. She noted that informal support only becomes visible when it is over-loaded. The role for formal services is to help people to care for one another and not get overburdened.

I don't see the request scruple as a peculiarly Dutch phenomenon. In the UK we could do with an approach to social support that acknowledges these nuances of mutual support, and is less obsessed with some kind of charitable or philanthropic motivation.

Previously:

Social networks and informal support

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

Other posts tagged 'Informal support'

 

2 Mar 2011 11:21:38 | Informal support, Neighbourhood relations, Older people, Social capital

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Mutual support and ‘primary care’ In Eindhoven the other day I had the privilege to meet co-ordinators of an extensive self-help network, hear about some of the ways in which the groups work, and gain insight into the importance of the experience for sufferers. There are about 80 mutual support groups in the network, covering a range of shareable problems including mental health, addiction, sexuality, and so on. One of the promotional leaflets proclaims: ‘Secretly, many tea parties are self-help support groups’. Our discussion was framed by the broad social policy context of how a society provides care for its citizens; what are the responsibilities of individual and state, what is the role of the professional, and so on. Someone mentioned ‘primary care’. What ironic language, in the circumstances. There we sat at a focal point for several hundred people who come together semi-formally to help themselves and others as fellow-sufferers to just about function, not disparaging professional care but claiming and reserving an independent space. And we were using the language that characterises part of the problem. I suggested a while ago that most 'primary care' is self-administered by individuals or administered within households. It was suggested that perhaps that’s ‘zero care’. Fair enough. Listening to the members of the self help network, I thought, this is primary care. So it would be helpful if the care system were re-oriented to acknowledge, structurally and constructively, the role that people themselves play in co-producing each others' health and care and quality of life. That would also be likely to save money, though not for the insurance and drug companies.
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Social care provided by older people is worth £34 billion WRVS have published distinctive research into the socio-economic contribution of older people in the UK. The report, Gold age pensioners, claims that people over 65 made a net contribution to the UK economy of £40 billion last year, even allowing for the costs of pensions, welfare and health services. 'This equates to just over £100 million per day, challenging the widely held view that older people progressively become a burden and a drain on society.' The hidden value of older people’s volunteering is said to be worth £10 billion per year. Provision of social care by older people is worth £34 billion, predicted to grow to £52 billion by 2030. The contributions range from leadership or high levels of membership of local clubs and societies, to informal support looking out for vulnerable neighbours and helping them stay independent for longer. ‘Sixty-five per cent of older people regularly help out elderly neighbours – and are the most likely of all adult age groups to do so.’ ‘Older people are very often the driving force for local community-based organisations, with active retirees combining their expertise, skills and experience to provide the leadership, as well as a disproportionate quantum of the membership, of many local organisations, groups and societies.’ I was told about this report yesterday while I was at a drop-in session for older people (part of our Neighbourhoods Connect project in Haringey) - at more or less the same time as one of the participants was saying: 'You can come here and make people cheery; and if you can do that, it makes you cheery too'.

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