Stephen has launched a new report looking at how faith groups and local authorities are building on partnerships forged during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Keeping the Faith 2.0 was commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Faith and Society as a follow-up to a 2020 report which charted the dramatic increase in collaboration between local authorities and faith groups at the start of the pandemic crisis. It found that two thirds of local authorities reported an increase in partnership working with faith groups after the pandemic began. The report found that over 90% of the local authorities described their experience of working with faith groups in the pandemic as “very” or “mostly positive”, and that over three quarters expected the partnerships to continue in the future.
Keeping the Faith 2.0 is drawn from in depth interviews with faith group and local authority leaders from around the UK, carried out in the year after the earlier report. It assesses how partnerships between local authorities and faith groups forged in the intense initial months of the pandemic have developed since.
The research showed that the initial focus of partnerships on food distribution had broadened out to encompass first vaccination, and then wider mental health and wellbeing support. Faith groups were being more systematically involved in service provision. Their pandemic experiences, and the greater recognition it had brought them, had galvanised their sense of mission and purpose, and strengthened their confidence.
The Faiths Minister, Paul Scully, attended the launch. He welcomed the report and assured the audience that central Government would continue to look at ways in which it could work with those whose of faith. “I know you will continue to provide seemingly limitless reserves of commitment and goodwill and trust to people who face difficult times,” he said. “The government wants to work with you on that, to co-create the kind of solutions and world we want to live in.”
Speaking at the launch, Stephen said: “We warmly welcome this new report, highlighting lessons from the intense collaborations formed as the pandemic crisis broke, and suggesting how those lessons can best be applied and developed in the future.”
To read the report, click here.