Abstract
AbstractThis paper describes and analyses the response of UK civil society in the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, roughly the period March to July 2020. While focussing primarily on civil society actors, the paper includes an exploration of how civil society and the national government interacted with each other. It considers the extent to which responses to the Covid-19 crisis reflect familiar patterns of behaviour by civil society in the UK, and in the relationship between the government and ‘third sector’. The paper concludes by pointing to emergent issues for civil society as the UK looked towards recovery from the initial wave of crisis.
Highlights
How should governments respond to the approach of a global pandemic? How should they prepare their citizens and their health services? What equipment and food should be stockpiled? Should they impose restrictions on population movements? How should they balance threats to health against threats to the economy or children’s education? What expectations should be placed on civil society to partner with governmental agencies?These major questions continued to be debated within the UK during the late summer of 2020 with little consensus about the wisdom of what the national government did during the early days of the Covid-19 crisis or about what it should be doing to prepare for future waves of infection
This paper describes and analyses the response of UK civil society in the early months of the Covid-19 crisis, roughly the period March to July 2020
As mentioned earlier in relation to ‘spontaneous volunteering’, there was an outpouring of support – practical and moral – for National Health Service (NHS) hospital staff as stories emerged in March and April about the extreme stress being experienced by hospital workers on Covid wards
Summary
How should governments respond to the approach of a global pandemic? How should they prepare their citizens and their health services? What equipment and food should be stockpiled? Should they impose restrictions on population movements? How should they balance threats to health against threats to the economy or children’s education? What expectations should be placed on civil society to partner with governmental agencies?. If lessons are to be learned about social and public policy responses to pandemics, analysts will need retrospective historical analysis and records of how the crisis was experienced and how civil society responded at the time It is the purpose of this paper to provide such a contemporary record and to explore emergent policy and organisational themes. It goes on to point to five aspects of civil society activity in the UK during the period April–July as civil society responses to the crisis consolidated: digital volunteering; network formation; citizen support for the NHS; the national government’s own initiative to recruit volunteers; and formalisation of spontaneous informal initiatives The latter part of the paper moves beyond description to propose points of note for public policy. The paper concludes with some indications of emergent issues for civil society as the UK looked towards recovery from the initial period of crisis in the late summer of 2020
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