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Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in the United Kingdom, community intelligence highlighted a growing need among people who had already been struggling. Some of these people, who come from all ethnicities, races, and religions, were familiar faces in Gurdwara langar halls (the communal dining areas in every Sikh place of worship). As soon as Gurdwara attendees noticed these community needs, phone calls and text messages started to spread, and plans were made to find solutions to help.
The events that this chapter covers, the systematic processes that spur people into action during situations of need, is not new. The acts of providing hot food, things that people need, and standing alongside people who are oppressed, is a normal practice in Sikh communities. It describes ‘Sikh activism around social justice and humanitarian relief [that centres on] Sikh concepts of sewa (selfless service) and langar (community kitchen) in a contemporary context’ (Singh, 2018).
This chapter therefore describes individual and collective actions by minoritised and often racialised Sikh communities to address needs and provide services that were necessary during the pandemic and related lockdowns. These services have included health and care services, like support for mental wellbeing, and provisions to nurture physical and emotional wellbeing. The co-production described in this chapter, therefore, relates less to research and more to the actual design and delivery of services by Sikh individuals and organisations. This chapter brings together the experiences of individuals and organisations, and describes the impact of existing structures on activism in racialised communities.
Early on during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in the United Kingdom, community intelligence highlighted a growing need among people who had already been struggling. Some of these people, who come from all ethnicities, races, and religions, were familiar faces in Gurdwara langar halls (the communal dining areas in every Sikh place of worship). As soon as Gurdwara attendees noticed these community needs, phone calls and text messages started to spread, and plans were made to find solutions to help.
The events that this chapter covers, the systematic processes that spur people into action during situations of need, is not new. The acts of providing hot food, things that people need, and standing alongside people who are oppressed, is a normal practice in Sikh communities. It describes ‘Sikh activism around social justice and humanitarian relief [that centres on] Sikh concepts of sewa (selfless service) and langar (community kitchen) in a contemporary context’ ().
This chapter therefore describes individual and collective actions by minoritised and often racialised Sikh communities to address needs and provide services that were necessary during the pandemic and related lockdowns. These services have included health and care services, like support for mental wellbeing, and provisions to nurture physical and emotional wellbeing. The co-production described in this chapter, therefore, relates less to research and more to the actual design and delivery of services by Sikh individuals and organisations. This chapter brings together the experiences of individuals and organisations, and describes the impact of existing structures on activism in racialised communities.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now being largely ignored in developing responses to it.
This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.
The second volume focuses on methods and means of co-producing during a pandemic. It explores a variety of case studies from across the global North and South and addresses the practical considerations of co-producing knowledge both now - at a distance - and in the future when the pandemic is over.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Groups most severely affected by COVID-19 have tended to be those marginalised before the pandemic and are now largely being ignored in developing responses to it.
This two-volume set of Rapid Responses explores the urgent need to put co-production and participatory approaches at the heart of responses to the pandemic and demonstrates how policymakers, health and social care practitioners, patients, service users, carers and public contributors can make this happen.
The first volume investigates how, at the outset of the pandemic, the limits of existing structures severely undermined the potential of co-production. It also gives voice to a diversity of marginalised communities to illustrate how they have been affected and to demonstrate why co-produced responses are so important both now during this pandemic and in the future.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered people’s lives. While pandemics have of course occurred before, for modern times COVID-19 has been unusually destructive and inhibitory in scale. However, what this pandemic shares with previous ones is having a disproportionately detrimental impact on people who were already disadvantaged by structural inequalities before the pandemic began (; ). The virus has been particularly pervasive and destructive in its impact on Black, Asian, and minoritised ethnic groups; people of lower socioeconomic status; people in undervalued employment; people living in deprived areas, poor housing, and/or overcrowded accommodation; older people; disabled people; people with learning difficulties; people with psycho-social disabilities; and people with long term conditions – especially those who rely on social care. This has caused us to reflect on the relative strengths and weaknesses of approaches typically taken in modern politics and public policy in general, and health and social care specifically, as well as to consider alternatives that could better serve us in the future. For us, key among these alternative approaches is co-production.
In the introduction to this volume, we outlined how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to better understand and utilize co-produced responses to improve public policy, political responses, and health and social care research and practice. However, there are extensive constraining social structures that inhibit working in this way. The experiences of the most exposed, marginalised, and discriminated – in short, those who are systematically excluded in our societies – rarely directly influence the policies and practice that are ostensibly created for their protection. Crucially, given the disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19, why are these people and communities not considered best placed to create and implement sought-after solutions for effective management, improvement, and research of pandemic responses?
Through this book, we wanted to:
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explore how so many people are ignored, disempowered, and discriminated against in health and social care research, policy, and practice;
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address how and why more collaborative, diverse, and inclusive responses could lessen the toll of this pandemic and future health emergencies, as well as more generally improve health and social care research, policy, and practice;
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illustrate how and why collaborative ways of working can help to address the social wrongs and power imbalances that we need to right.
In particular, this volume set out to explore: (1) the impact of existing structures on ambitions and efforts to work in more participatory and collaborative ways in health and social care research, policy, and practice, and (2) how the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing inequities and marginalisation both in practice and research. The collection has demonstrated through a diverse range of examples the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives and ways of working.
