Tuesday, 29 March 2016

Formality and informality (2 of 2): a new paper from Alison Gilchrist

Last autumn I referred to Alison Gilchrist’s work on formal and informal modes of operating. Alison’s main paper is still under revision, but the TSRC have just published a 4-page summary which – albeit necessarily somewhat theoretical – offers a wealth of insights into a theme that is both broad and complex. It’s also downright fundamental to community development.

This paper crystallises a range of aspects in very clear language and I think it will be read and referred to for a very long time.

Meanwhile I can point immediately to one application, by referring to my recent post about formality and informality in relation to Good Neighbour schemes. Alison rightly draws attention to the significance in community development work of negotiating between and managing these modes. She calls this practice ‘blending, braiding and balancing’:

‘Astute choices are needed as to how formal and informal modes are blended or balanced against each other. The study revealed a praxis – bringing together skills, judgements, techniques and understanding - that is applied in specific situations. This praxis may be a ‘knack’ acquired over a lifetime’s experience or it may be a deliberate strategy implemented through a combination of conscious decisions, group exercises and behaviours. It involves judicious braiding of informal processes with formal procedures to create the optimal conditions for collective discussion, agreeing goals, making and measuring progress, involving people, keeping going, being fair and so on.’

 

29 Mar 2016 00:13:00 | Informal support

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Formality and informality (1 of 2): Good Neighbour schemes, and the shadow of coercion I’ve been interviewing several development workers in rural areas, about how they develop and support Good Neighbour schemes. Inevitably, a key set of tensions that they have to negotiate is around formal and informal arrangements. These schemes sit sweetly in the space between the ancient informality of neighbouring and the post-industrial formality of organised care services. Central to the tensions that arise in this space is a widely-anticipated (though not always evident) negative response from community groups to expectations that they should adopt formal procedures. Formal procedures can range from requiring safeguarding checks to maintaining monitoring records. There are a couple of issues to disentangle here. The first concerns the unpredictable variety of responses at the area level, which I do not think can readily be explained by the worker’s approach. Thus in one county, in helping about half a dozen new schemes to become constituted, one worker told me that there had been no difficulty in getting groups to accept the requirements of systematic evaluation, for example in administering questionnaire surveys; in another county, I was advised to reduce my expectations to the minimum, because the groups would not take to it. In a third county, one of the schemes was not interested in any form of preliminary information gathering about client needs or availability of volunteers, they just decided to get on with it. I was told of another scheme whose representatives had decided to go beyond just a committee and constitution, turned their first meeting into an agm, and were set on applying for charitable status. It also seems to be the case that most groups expect if not demand safeguarding checks, and this can extend to some non-risk roles for which it is illegal to have someone checked. It's not clear to me how this variation can be explained. The second issue is even more nuanced and rather more tricky. It concerns the risk that sensitivities to community groups’ responses can come across as patronising: you don’t want to be implying that they should be protected from some kinds of information because it’s too complex for them or too demanding. Within the groups that express an interest in forming Good Neighbour schemes, it’s common to find retired people with professional backgrounds – often from the medical and care professions – for whom the generation of a little administrative bureaucracy is an expectation not an issue; who would anticipate the requirement for monitoring data; and who, if it were not provided to them, might well invent their own system for evaluation because they can see in advance that it would help to demonstrate their achievements with a view to future funding. I am told that this configuration and outlook can often be found in low income areas as well as the more affluent neighbourhoods. At the same time it’s unsurprising that many groups might find administrative tasks a burden; and anything that threatens a group’s sustainability might need rethinking. But it’s fair to say that lack of...
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