Introduction: Community spirit

People have many views on what community itself means and why it is important. Parents identify a sense of community in a friendly atmosphere, a sense of trust and reciprocity, a link to neighbours and to local activity, a helping hand, mutual support and a sense of responsibility. It is these social links that reflect what families think of as ‘community spirit’, a somewhat ephemeral feeling about local social relations. Mothers often use the terms ‘community’ and ‘community spirit’ interchangeably.

This chapter explores how the parents we talked to feel about their local community, how much they can control or shape what happens in it, what efforts they make as parents to get involved and help the community work better, who else they rely on and what undermines the sense of community. It looks at the role of special programmes for parents and children, using Sure Start as an illustration of community support in action.

The existence of ‘community spirit’ was clearly important to families from our first visit and was a recurring theme in ideas about what would help families and children. Parents talked about their community and held strong views about it because for them it made where they lived succeed or fail as a place to bring up children.