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ObjectiveDesignResultsConclusionsTo explore the role of Black-led community organisations in supporting Black mental health and wellbeing in the UK.A qualitative, Black Emancipatory Action Research Framework was adopted. Framework application involved adequately compensating community organisations for their consultancy role; having ‘research conversations’ rather than interviewing participants; and focusing outputs on community benefit. Eight individual and group research conversations took place with nine Black directors, employees and volunteers working with Black-led community organisations, aged between 19 and 62, living in the UK. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse conversations.Three themes were developed in relation to what Black-led community organisations do for Black mental health. These are: identify and respond to mental health needs; selectively build relationships with mainstream services; and drive social and systemic improvements. Findings revealed that Black-led community organisations uniquely identify and address mental wellbeing by offering respite from racism, hosting activities, and meeting urgent needs. They navigate and facilitate access to health and social systems, protect communities from harmful services, and advocate for social and systemic change. Drawing on the study design, findings, and the broader literature, we propose three key changes to current funding, community, and research practices. These are a reconsideration of how Black-led organisations’ work is valued and measured, a forging of greater collaboration between these organisations, and bolder consideration of how research practice can benefit Black communities.Black-led organisations play multiple roles in supporting individual and collective mental health, crucial for mediating the effects of racism and mitigating ethnic inequalities. To our knowledge, this is the first study to both illuminate the critical role of community organisations in promoting Black mental health in the UK and to prioritise participant, and community, benefit throughout the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IMPACT: The concept of management control 'as a package' is explored within the context of five voluntary hospices in the UK, using a comprehensive framework, Simons' levers of control. not applied widely in the voluntary sector. This article argues that, to enhance its practical application in this sector, this framework needs to be modified to include broader concepts of ethos, responsibility and judgement. This tool can be used in further research as well as providing a framework for discussions between voluntary organizations and their stakeholders about a balanced approach to managing and accounting for their organizational performance, not predominantly through measurement. As demands for accountability increase within the voluntary sector, there is more focus on performance measurement. However, management control has been considered 'as a package', including more elements than just measuring performance. As this approach is yet to be considered within voluntary sector literature, this article seeks to apply the notion of control as a package in the context of UK voluntary hospices. It develops a comprehensive performance management framework, drawing on Simons' levers of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In Western welfare states, public and non-profit service organizations are increasingly looking for ways to combine the efforts and expertise of professionals and volunteers to provide support and services to vulnerable target groups. However, little is known about how professionals and volunteers collaborate to provide these social services and support. The aim of this qualitative study is to analyze how professionals support volunteers in a befriending project, where volunteers provide support to people after they are released from prison. Therefore, we interviewed social workers (n = 4) and volunteers (n = 13). Findings: Our results show that professionals provide tailor-made support to volunteers through different interventions: they share their knowledge and expertise, provide emotional support, and advise and coach the volunteers. Furthermore, in complex cases, professionals intervene to access appropriate social support and realize the rights of those involved. Applications: Our findings provide a comprehensive perspective on how complementarity is constructed in the daily practice of collaboration between volunteers and professionals. Although professional interventions and support are necessary to address the needs of vulnerable people, volunteers offer a wider range of support than professionals alone can provide. Consequently, close collaboration between volunteers and professionals can result in a valuable response to the needs of people who have recently left prison. However, when a client's situation becomes complex and volunteers lack the skills, experience, and status to deal with it, professionals are advised to take over. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes some consequences of skewing relational (care) labour into more transactional forms of marketized public service areas; with particular reference to contracted criminal justice services in England and Wales. The authors attribute this to an interplay of the incentives of the corporate sector and those of governments which form a collective 'artificial intelligence' promoting marketization. This creates unintended consequences. Whereas corporate incentive structures minimize transaction costs and optimize profit, recent UK governments have incentivized economic productivity over socially beneficial indicators in public services. The article finds that narrowly transactional calculations of value in the commissioning of care services may produce short-term fiscal incentives for commissioners (usually the state) and corporate suppliers and 'care resellers', but generate longer-term supply-side problems. The article concludes by signposting how more pluralistic forms of collaboration among government, commerce and third sectors can be differently—and more socially—conceived. There are lessons to be learned in the article for all capitalist economies. Governments marketize the delivery of care supposedly for reasons of economic efficiency or innovation. The authors theorize that marketization is, in fact, motivated by government incentives which increase transactional activity, creating the illusion of (economic) growth. This occurs at the cost of devaluing relational aspects of social care, with consequences for workers and users. The voluntary sector is especially construed as a domain where social productivity is supposedly reliant on strong relational values, and distanced from primarily transactional, profit-pursuant activity. Marketization of this sector presents a clear example of depreciating relational values relative to transactional economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prisoners are a critical source of prison regulation around the world, but regulation by (rather than of) prisoners remains little analysed. In this article, we utilise the 1990 riots at HMP Strangeways (England), as a case study of prisoners (re)shaping imprisonment. We examine prisoners' roles in these riots and subsequent cross-sectoral regulatory activities. We innovatively use the four-phase process of translation from actor-network theory to guide document analysis of (1) Lord Woolf's official inquiry into the riots and (2) the voluntary organisation Prison Reform Trust's follow-up report. We explore how participatory approaches could inform prison regulation through (former) prisoners partnering with external regulators throughout the processes of identifying problems and solutions to establish broader alliances seeking social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke systems of care are grappling with pressures to ensure high-quality, evidence-informed, person-centered services with an emphasis on safe and timely discharge to the person's home and community. The literature describing the need for robust stroke systems has focused on services within the healthcare system, which are predominantly hospital-based and guided by the Medical Model. However, given the long-term nature of stroke recovery and the importance of attending to the challenges of resuming a meaningful life post-stroke, the involvement of community organizations becomes paramount in providing longer term support. This perspective paper explores the engagement of “community” within the context of stroke systems of care. It proposes that the community is both a destination of the pathway and a partner that can help address the ongoing and often unmet needs experienced post-discharge. Through these partnerships and collaborations, we suggest that community organizations can fill service gaps; volunteers could be leveraged to expand the breadth and quality of health and social services to meet the needs of stroke survivors and their families.

Abstract Background The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and increased adversity and challenges for vulnerable and marginalised communities worldwide. In the UK, the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector play a vital role in supporting the health and wellbeing of people who are marginalised or experiencing multiple complex needs. However, only a small number of studies have focused on the impact that Covid-19 had on the VCSE sector. Methods As part of a Health Inequalities Impact Assessment (HIIA), we conducted qualitative focus groups with staff and volunteers from five organisations to examine short, medium and longer-term impacts of Covid-19 upon the VCSE sector in Northern England. Nine online focus groups were conducted between March and July 2021. Findings Focus group transcripts were analysed using Framework Analysis and yielded three central themes: (1) exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities, adversity and challenges for vulnerable and marginalised populations; (2) the ‘price’ of being flexible, innovative and agile for VCSE staff and volunteers; and (3) the voluntary sector as a ‘lifeline’ - organisational pride and resilience. Conclusions While the voluntary sector ‘adapted at pace’ to provide support during Covid-19 and in its continued aftermath, this resilience has potentially come at the cost of workforce and volunteer wellbeing, compounded by political obstacles and chronic shortage in funding and support. The VCSE sector has a vital role to play in the post-lockdown ‘levelling up’ agenda. The expertise, capacity and resilience of VCSE organisations, and their ability to respond to Covid-19, should be celebrated, recognised and supported adequately to maintain its resilience. To not do so threatens the sector’s sustainability and risks jeopardising attempts to involve the sector in addressing the social determinants of health.

Private sector investable assets totalling USD 35.3 trillion globally are currently bound by at least one environmental, social and governance (ESG) criterion, 1 and could be targeted to deliver responses to the environmental crisis and subsequent devastating impact on vulnerable communities. However private sector finance for climate resilience and nature recovery is reported to be either moving very slowly, or not at all. 2 So what is the hold up? The co-founders of Biodiversity Capital have a longstanding combined history of delivering projects in urban regeneration, as well as green 3 and blue 4 infrastructure, housing and culture across the private and public sector, where financing for projects follows a linear start to finish model with handover to the client on completion. Since the beginning of the 20th century, charities have received funding from either government or philanthropists to deliver programmes against an agreed set of quantifiable targets and outputs. The current crisis on our hands is not static, it is a mix of complex, intertwined social, economic and environmental factors, where long-term stewardship, ultimately unique and very local, is now deemed a fundamental part of the equation from the start. In the light of this, we argue that achieving climate justice will require private finance to embrace the distinctive nature of collaboration between governments and the non-profit sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document community responses to the COVID-19 pandemic among Inuit living in the province of Manitoba, Canada. This study was conducted by the Manitoba Inuit Association and a Council of Inuit Elders, in partnership with researchers from the University of Manitoba. We present findings from 12 health services providers and decision-makers, collected in 2021.Although Public Health orders led to the closure of the Manitoba Inuit Association's doors to community events and drop-in activities, it also created opportunities for the creation of programming and events delivered virtually and through outreach. The pandemic exacerbated pre-existing health and social system's shortcomings (limited access to safe housing, food insecurity) and trauma-related tensions within the community. The Manitoba Inuit Association achieved unprecedented visibility with the provincial government, receiving bi-weekly reports of COVID-19 testing, results and vaccination rates for Inuit. We conclude that after over a decade of advocacy received with at best tepid enthusiasm by federal and provincial governments, the Manitoba Inuit Association was able effectively advocate for Inuit-centric programming, and respond to Inuit community's needs, bringing visibility to a community that had until then been largely invisible. Still, many programs have been fueled with COVID-19 funding, raising the issue of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTWe document community responses to the COVID-19 pandemic among Inuit living in the province of Manitoba, Canada. This study was conducted by the Manitoba Inuit Association and a Council of Inuit Elders, in partnership with researchers from the University of Manitoba. We present findings from 12 health services providers and decision-makers, collected in 2021.Although Public Health orders led to the closure of the Manitoba Inuit Association’s doors to community events and drop-in activities, it also created opportunities for the creation of programming and events delivered virtually and through outreach. The pandemic exacerbated pre-existing health and social system’s shortcomings (limited access to safe housing, food insecurity) and trauma-related tensions within the community. The Manitoba Inuit Association achieved unprecedented visibility with the provincial government, receiving bi-weekly reports of COVID-19 testing, results and vaccination rates for Inuit. We conclude that after over a decade of advocacy received with at best tepid enthusiasm by federal and provincial governments, the Manitoba Inuit Association was able effectively advocate for Inuit-centric programming, and respond to Inuit community’s needs, bringing visibility to a community that had until then been largely invisible. Still, many programs have been fueled with COVID-19 funding, raising the issue of sustainability.

The Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector offers services and leadership within the health and care system in England and has a specialist role in working with underserved, deprived communities. This evaluation aims to identify best practices in self-management support for those living with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and to develop a theory of change (TofC) through understanding the impact of VCSE organisations on diabetes management. An appreciative inquiry (AI) was carried out and co-delivered using qualitative interviews and an embedded analysis with VCSE partners. A voluntary service coordinated seven VCSE organisations who assisted with recruiting their service users and undertook interviews to identify the impact of existing activities and programmes. People living with T2DM were interviewed about services. Themes were as follows: (a) individual and group activities; (b) trusted services and relationships across the community; (c) long-term engagement; (d) sociocultural context of diet and nutritional choices; (e) experience of adaptation; and (f) culturally appropriate advice and independent VCSE organisations. The structured educational approach (DESMOND) for T2DM was accessed variably, despite these services being recommended by NICE guidelines as a standard intervention. The VCSE offered continuity and culturally appropriate services to more marginalised groups. This evaluation highlights the importance of targeted engagement with underserved communities, particularly where primary care services are more limited. The TofC is a unique insight into the impact of VCSE services, offering bespoke support to manage T2DM, suggesting areas for improvements in capacity and offering the capability to sustain the VCSE sector as an essential element of the T2DM care pathway in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing trend across the social sciences to engage with archives. Within human geography, this has stimulated a debate about the nature of archives, including moving from considering 'archive as source' to 'archive as subject.' We build on and extend this thinking, suggesting that an even more active appreciation of the dynamic nature of relationships between researchers, owners of records, and archival material is needed. This paper draws on an interdisciplinary study of voluntary action and welfare provision in England in the 1940s and 2010s to highlight how the different iterative processes involved in collaborative archival research are part of what we call co‐curation. Co‐curation involves the negotiated identification, selection, preparation, and interpretation of archival materials. This has implications for both research processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voluntary and civil society sector plays important roles in climate policy, mitigation and adaptation, especially given the pervasive government and market failures in this policy domain. Does the quality and quantity of scholarship published in nonprofit-focused journals reflect the topic's importance? This article reviews voluntary sector scholarship on climate issues and serves to introduce Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 's first organized collection of research on the voluntary sector and climate change. We begin by summarizing and commenting on the findings of a modified systematic literature review of past research on this subject. We then introduce the other five articles published in this symposium, place them in the context of past literature, and discuss their potential contributions to helping researchers expand the conversation and the knowledge on this topic in future work. Finally, we outline ideas and issues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the state is needed to suppress illegal philanthropic practices, how the state can make Pancasila a "civic religion". Pancasila as the basis and pillar of society's civility as well as the "social glue" where sanctified spaces and symbols become markers of social identification that connect individuals in a common bond. The purpose of this research is to discuss the phenomenon of traditional philanthropy through the voluntary sector in shaping community identity. This research uses qualitative research methods, with the research design using a descriptive approach research design. In this study, the author conducts library research, then describes the phenomenon of traditional philanthropy through the voluntary sector in shaping community identity. The results show that philanthropy develops along with the development of human life itself. Voluntary sector refers to organizations whose primary goal is to create social impact rather than profit. This is often called the third sector, civil society or the nonprofit sector. The value of social justice and community welfare, especially in developing community identity empowerment, such as health services for poor families, economic empowerment, scholarships, job training, capital provision for middle to lower traders and others aimed at empowering community identity through philanthropy.

Organisational practices like mandatory practices, management practices, involvement in policy-advocacy-lobbying-networking practices and governance practices are considered healthy practices that contribute to organisational performance. This paper identifies some of the standard organisational practices of NGOs (N = 33) in Kerala State, India. From the study, it was evident that the NGOs were more into mandatory practices. The relation orientation of the Managerial leadership Behaviour showed a higher mean value of 2.8567 ± 0.49331SD than the task orientation. The study unravels the need for an updated policy in the voluntary sector and affirming the role of social work professionals in the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the public and scientific discourse on welfare innovation and new public governance, community coproduction is thought to combine the best elements of the public and voluntary sectors, hence creating better and more efficient responses to social need. However, coproduction also blurs sectoral boundaries, potentially mixing incompatible practices, values and goals. In this paper, we investigate how volunteers and public sector employees experience and handle the coproduction ambivalence that results from cross-sector incompatibility. The paper is based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork on welfare coproduction among managers, employees and volunteers in a large Danish municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have increasingly called for multi-stakeholder and participatory approaches to place branding. The inclusion of communities is often argued for creating legitimate place brands. However, there is limited understanding of how these notions interact. This paper investigates how stakeholders construct legitimacy and inclusivity in their place branding practices. We develop a theoretical framework for legitimacy-inclusivity and apply it to a case study of Northamptonshire, UK. The analysis reveals contrasting approaches by industry stakeholders and voluntary organisations in terms of representation and advocacy, engagement and co-creation, and effectiveness and impact. The unique characteristics and mechanisms of voluntary organisations, which facilitate community leadership and engagement, have implications for more inclusive and legitimate place branding. • Legitimacy and inclusivity emphasise inclusion of marginalised narratives. • Voluntary sector can foster inclusivity as community leaders and engagement experts. • Community leaders enable representation and advocacy for marginalised groups. • Social value ethos and co-creation mechanisms enable community engagement. • The framework of input, output and throughput legitimacy can enable inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Danish Prison and Probation Service (DPPS) is facing prison overcrowding, staff shortages and a political focus on order and control. This situation is challenging prisons in fulfilling their rehabilitative function. Delivery of rehabilitation services in the DPPS from external voluntary organisations is therefore of interest and a strategic, systematic collaboration between the DPPS and the voluntary sector has been included in DPPS agreements that describe the financial framework and the operational and developmental targets to be realised during the contractual period 2022-25. Knowledge about the current collaboration and its potential is nevertheless scarce. This study explores the present informal collaboration between voluntary organisations delivering in/post-prison rehabilitative programmes and the DPPS, with a focus on funding structures and collaboration demands. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with prison and probation staff and representatives from voluntary organisations as well as participant observation of volunteer training in/post prison. The findings reveal that the rehabilitative work of volunteers in prisons is challenged by, among other things, the focus placed by the DPPS on professionalism, standardisation and impact measurement. Moreover, lobbying for funding is found to be time-consuming and challenging to the autonomy of voluntary organisations. The article supports protecting the voluntary organisations’ diversity of methods and approaches to prisoner rehabilitation.

Integration has become a buzzword in debates and discussions on immigration which also reflects upon Norwegian policymaking. In this article, we do a policy analysis of twenty-nine Norwegian governmental documents published between 1973 and 2021 and ask how the understanding of integration has changed during that time. We further ask how integration has been problematized in these documents. Our study is inspired by Bacchi's approach "What's the problem represented to be" which provides new insights on policymaking and its effects on the population. We find that integration has increasingly been put on a par with employment yet that in recent years policymakers have acknowledged that a focus on employment is too short-sighted. To cover more aspects of integration, the concept everyday life integration has been introduced where the voluntary sector is to play a central role both in terms of social integration and its ability to facilitate finding employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic restructuring and welfare reform are driving new forms of urban poverty in the global north. Shadow care infrastructures is a new frame for conceptualising the complex and interconnected practices through which marginalised people seek survival in this context. It remaps welfare landscapes across a continuum that includes formal and informal, established and improvised practice, the not-for-profit sector, informal community networks and exchange and the black market. Conceptually, it centres the care practices that sustain life and the infrastructures that sustain them. Activating a 'shadow geographies' tradition it foregrounds care infrastructures that are necessary, but rarely visible within, welfare discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing dualisms of work as formal, paid employment on the one hand or informal, unpaid domestic labour on the other, means volunteering is often overlooked. Although academic interest in voluntary labour is growing, it remains inadequately theorised in the sociology of work. A more sociological meaningful understanding of volunteering is needed. Through an analysis of voluntary body work labour, this article advances theorisation of volunteering as work in two ways. Firstly, the article invokes a total social organisation of labour approach to overcome the paid/unpaid work dichotomy. Secondly, it grounds this theorisation empirically by drawing on the volunteers' insights into their delivery of body work labour to shed new light on the complex ways in which volunteers frame labour within wider social relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison health, prisoner safety and imprisonment rates matter: intrinsically and for health and safety outside. Existing prison regulation apparatuses (e.g. OPCAT) are extensive and hold unrealized potential to shape imprisonment. However, criminologists have not yet engaged much with this potential. In this article, I reconceptualize prison regulation by exploring the work of a broad range of multisectoral regulators who operate across stakeholder groups. I illustrate that voluntary organizations and families bereaved by prison suicide act as regulators, although their substantive actions have been erased from official narratives. Mobilizing (threats of) litigation, these actors have responsibilized the state and brought qualitative changes across the prison estate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voluntary sector is a strong pillar in Norwegian society and has in recent years gained increasing attention as an arena for integration. Though voluntary activities can be valuable door openers for (recently arrived) immigrants, they may, under certain circumstances, contribute to minoritization processes. In this exploratory article, I will investigate social connections and relations between (Norwegian) volunteers and immigrant participants based on a focus group with eight participants involved in a community centre in a Norwegian town through analysing the volunteers’ ideas of how the voluntary sector can contribute to integration processes of immigrants. Special attention will be paid to some of the participants’ behaviour towards the only immigrant participating in the focus group, as this behaviour may reflect minoritizing processes. This article aims to contribute towards a more nuanced picture of what voluntary activities may achieve in terms of integration processes and to bring to light potential risks of creating unequal power relations in the social connections between (Norwegian) volunteers and immigrant participants and facilitating minoritizing processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]