Rebuilding Social Resilience in the On-line World

Processes to contact those too scared to go on-line are invaluable when the power goes down

It is ironic that the Internet and World Wide Web intended to enable resilient, easy to use, any-to any communication, have led to societies increasingly vulnerable to the loss of all communications for hours or days on end  as power supplies fail to respond to unpredictable supplies.

Meanwhile fear of abuse and fraud means that many of those in most need of rapid response from emergency health and welfare services health have not responded to texts, phone calls, or e-mails asking them to make contact to enable free upgrades before the Radio Teleswitch service ends  or the   UK transition from analogue to digital landlines .

The 2025 Spending Review is assumes major savings from enabling many more citizens to communicate on line with public services, from health and welfare through benefits to taxation. But GP practices and hospitals are already facing problems with getting patients to use the supposedly successful NHS App and other services using mobile phone facilities they do not understand or trust.

But internet access has plateaued since the surge during covid . Digital inclusion programmes, offering cheap equipment and connectivity are not enough. They need to be complimented by contact with beings via programmes (like those organized by Clear Community Web) to coax the most vulnerable on-line and/or enable neighbours and carers to access services on their behalf.

Hence the critical role of the Neighbourhood Watch movement. The Neighbourhood Alert system, now shared with Met Engage, enables communications via a network on known individual to a street or estate co-ordination to who have volunteered to help vulnerable neighbours.

Cover is, however, patchy, Across England and Wales 90,000 Neighbourhood Watch volunteer organisers engage with 2.3 million households (9%) across England and Wales. Local participation ranges from 30% of households (making a transformative difference) to almost none in parts of Lambeth.

Last year, after I stood down from convening the advisory group for the London Cyber Resilience Centre (see here farewell blog on follow up actions), I became development lead for Neighbourhood Watch in Lambeth. I had hoped to be able to take a closer look at the needs of the million small businesses, some in critical positions in the financial services supoly chains, with £multi-billion turnovers, as well as skills and cyber volunteering.

But my priorities changed as I began to see issues from the perspective of the victims and those trying to help them … including

• from cyber resilience to operational resilience – e.g. support for those without the space in their bed-sit for 72 hours water and non-oerishable food per person, even if they could afford it.
• The need for confidential personal support for those suffering domestic or other abuse reinforced by on-line monitoring lest they bring dishonour on their family/community.
• The need for guidance on practical reporting and enforcement of on-line safety legislation etc.
• The need for modular skills programmes at almost all levels from on-line safety and safeguarding to Resilience and Emergencies
• the realisation that time is not on our side. Given a long hot summer and the disorder that the Prime Minister feared last summer after the Stockport Riots may not even be a power cut away.

 Modest cyber volunteering programmes are not enough. We need corporate volunteering on a massive scale, at every level, form IT-literate home based workers to the international co-operation discussed at the UK Comms Council Fraud Summit

 In the mean time, If you are serious about wanting to help, join Neighbourhood Watch and help rebuild the social resilience of YOUR local community, wherever you are.

 If you happen to live in Lambeth please read on and offer to help join the team looking to pilot way to serve one of the Uks most heterogenous collections of overlapping social, cultural and linguistic communities. Volunteers do not have to be amateurs. You do, however, have to know what you are doing and why. And it helps if the rest of team understand your motivation.

Easy use of the term “lived experience” sets my teeth on edge but it helps give perspective to the need to turn despair into hope and to harness anger to drive practical and constructive.

Relaunch of Neighbourhood Watch in Lambeth

Neighbours by chance. Working together by choice

We make this a better place to live. Together.

Background

Across most of England the scale and nature pf Neighbourhood Watch changed during Covid  – as street/estate groups helped look after vulnerable neighbours unable to access on-line services.

That did not happen in Lambeth, where over 40% of residents had been born outside England (compared to a national average of under 15%), 33% of households contain only one person (average 30%) and 14% contain a single parent (average 10%). The local need to support vulnerable neighbours, often with poor English and/or computer skills, Was, and is, well above average

Lambeth has had a wide variety of community initiatives. Some survived and flourish today. Others did not. The survivors include Community Hubs and Neighbourhood Champions supported via the Voluntary Community Services team with a Resource Library and newsletter . That support network is being restructured after a well-attended consultation in February identified the need for greatly improved information on who was doing what and how to contact them.

In parallel police, fire and other emergency services and utilities are seeking to better identify  vulnerable residents for priority response. And the introduction of  Integrated Neighbourhood Teams as part of the re-organisations of the National Health Service means that it is not only the patients who are confused about who to contact for what and/or what comes next.

This has sharply increased the value of the  Neighbourhood Watch in providing physical contact via a recognised neighbour because those being encouraged to use on-line services “know”, from publicity for “awareness” programmes (e.g. Scam Interceptors ), that they are more likely to be texted, phoned or e-mailed by a fraudster than a genuine health, welfare or other support service.

Neighbourhood Watch is based on co-ordinators, personally known to both their neighbours and the local police team. They provide a link between the street/estate whatsapp or facebook group and the Alert System, used by 35 police forces, Get Safe On-line and Action Fraud and the basis of Met Alert (currently being piloted and due to be rolled out across Lambeth by the end of June).

Most Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinators, including in Lambeth, are also active in their tenant and resident association, are street/estate “champions” and/or administrators of the community  whatsapp group. Their workload is reduced if households join and sign up to receive advice and guidance , including alerts on frauds and scams. Local wellbeing is transformed when all those on the whatsapp group have direct access to what they need in order to help neighbours who are not.

The new  Met Engage is due to be extended to cover Lambeth on June 22^nd. This shares an upgraded version of the Neighbourhood Alert system. Community police teams able to send alerts and create, but not approve, new Neighbourhood Watch groups. The intention is to work with Community Police Teams and Ward Safer Neighbourhood Panels to encourage tenant and resident groups, faith and youth groups, GP practices, Schools and businesses to join the network and ensure that vulnerable residents who are reluctant to communicate on-line can be contacted and supported by neighbours who they know and who will help them with on-line contact.

The aim is to get the process under way with agreed communications processes, messaging and local messaging before the main publicity for Met Engage takes place, in July and August.

The action plan is therefore:

1. Rebuild, reinforce and extend the network of street/estate co-ordinators by:

   1. Ensuring they know their local police team, how to provide intelligence as well as report crimes and are known to their police team to facilitate community contact as needed.
   2. Promoting direct membership, as well as linkage with street/neighbourhood whatsapp groups, to reduce the admin/communications load groups on co-ordinators.
   3. Using the network to help the Fire Service, NHS and Others to rebuild their community contact files as the same time as providing co-ordinators with contact information.
   4. Engaging with Faith groups, GP practices, Welfare Groups, Housing Managers, Schools, Parent Groups and local businesses as both members and partners.
   5. Recruiting home-based workers via employers and professional bodies to help support vulnerable neighbours without IT skills to securely access on-line services.

   6. Recruiting supervised teenage volunteers to support parents/grandparents with limited English or computer skills and to receive mentoring and work experience in return. .

2. Address issues of violence against girls and women, teen-on-teen incidents, safe travel to/from school and safe local nights out, by promoting Safe Havens and Travel Guardian.

Travel Guardian is the extension of Railway Guardian (the British Transport Police reporting and response system) to cover all forms of travel, with anonymous reporting of incidents in public spaces (high streets, parks etc) , via Crime Stoppers to the local police. to help address violence against girls and women, teen-on-teen violence and improve travel safety to/from school, work or night out.

After the free app is downloaded users can grant permission to use the geo location tools to enable reporting to local response services as well as the location of local safe spaces/havens.

 We aim to trial a variation,  Inspire , for reporting incidents in local schools (harassment, bullying, abuse etc.) and managing response in line with mandatory DFE requirements, in co-operation with Governors for Schools, linked to an exercise to recruit digital/cyber professionals from diverse backgrounds to help with careers advice , mentoring and  support via schools and youth groups.

3 Draw teenagers into helping plan programmes to address their needs

There are many youth engagement programmes but most lack the resources to handle the issues of vetting, trust, safeguarding, governance and child protection at scale. This can only be achieved by engaging older teenagers with looking after youngsters (c.f. scouts and cadets).

The immediate intention is to work with and through the Norwood Youth Collective and Local Village Network  to identify those organising programmes this summer which can be commended to local businesses and residents wishing to provide support. These will include the Lambeth Police Summer Camp, 22^nd July to 14^th August at Oasis St Martins Village, 155 Tulse Hill, London SW2 3UP.

Longer term the aim is to engage the youngsters on those programmes, in local schools and via groups like the Lambeth Community Research Network to help co-design programmes to serve those in the age range 8 to 25.   To that end events are being planned to begin after the exam season ends (12^th June) with review of how teenagers would like to use Travel Guardian and what they would like to see from Lambeth Youth Watch, or whatever name they might prefer.