Local community experience as an anchor sustaining reorientation processes during COVID-19 pandemic

In recent months, Italian citizens have alternatively experienced a forced, total or partial, loss of their opportunities to go out and meet their social network or their reduction, according to the restrictions locally needed to contain the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. The effects of these unprecedented circumstances and restrictions on their local community experience are still to be deepened. Consequently, this study investigated young citizens’ experiences of and attitudes towards their local communities of belonging after ten months of alternatively strict and partially eased restrictions. The World Café methodology was used to favor the exchange of ideas and open new viewpoints among participants. What emerged suggests that the communities of belonging may have worked as anchors to which young citizens clung as an attempt not to be overwhelmed by the disorientation brought about by the loss of their daily life (e.g., routines, life places, face-to-face sociability). On the one hand, this suggests that a renewed focus on local communities and a more involved way of living in them may stem from this tough time. On the other hand, these results point out the need for more meaningful and actively engaged people–community relationships as drivers for recovery processes under emergency circumstances

Sense of responsible togetherness, sense of community, and civic engagement behaviours: Disentangling an active and engaged citizenship

Local communities should represent entities where individuals get answers to their affiliation needs and for which they feel responsible, but in modern ones, increasingly complex ways of living together are fostering citizens' civic and social disengagement. The present study addresses the relationships between the cognitive, affective, and behavioural components of an active and engaged citizenship. Five hundred and fifty-five Italian citizens answered an online questionnaire about their Sense of Responsible Togetherness, Sense of Community, and Civic Engagement Behaviours. The results support Sense of Community as a mediator in the relationship between Sense of Responsible Togetherness and civic engagement behaviours, suggesting that the representations about community members being active and responsible, and having opportunities to meet and match, could at the same time strengthen their tie to that community and foster their civic engagement for it. This could set up a cycle of enhancement and empowerment for individuals and communities through increasing the opportunities for local generative interactions and civic engagement

Sensemaking processes during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic: Using diaries to deepen how Italian youths experienced lockdown measures

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about disruptive changes in individuals’ lives, breaking the established systems of meaning worldwide. Indeed, in the first months of the pandemic, with individuals being forced to stay at home for a prolonged time to contain the spread of the virus, the need to build new meanings to understand and face this crisis emerged. Building on this, the present study contributes to the understanding of how sensemaking processes were shaped in the face of COVID-19 collective trauma during the very first months of the pandemic. Hence, 36 Italian young adults aged between 21 and 25 submitted daily diary entries for two weeks (T1 was the third week of Italian National lockdown; T2 was the penultimate week before the ease of such stay-at-home orders), resulting in 504 texts. The stimulus was always “Could you describe your daily experience and feelings?”. The Grounded Theory was used. Thus, 15 categories emerged, grouped into three macro-categories. The core category was sensemaking as adaptation. Indeed, the sensemaking process seemed to be a strategy to adapt to the new circumstances related to the lockdown, facing the emotional, cognitive, and activation reactions such conditions by relying on coping strategies and the redefinition of primary as well as broader social relationships

Academic community in the face of emergency situations: Sense of responsible togetherness and sense of belonging as protective factors against academic stress during covid-19 outbreak

In the face of emergency situations, such as a global pandemic, individuals rely on their personal resources, but also on community dimensions, to deal with the unprecedented changes and risks and to safeguard their well-being. The present study specifically addresses the role of individual resources and community dimensions with reference to academic communities facing COVID-19-related lockdowns and the changes that these have implied. An online questionnaire was administered to 1124 Italian University students. It detected their sense of belonging and of responsible togetherness with reference to their academic community through community dimensions, their student self-efficacy as an individual resource, and their academic stress—potentially stemming from studying in the middle of a pandemic. A multiple mediation model was been run with structural equation modeling. The results show that both the community dimensions associate with higher student self-efficacy and the sense of responsible togetherness, while also associating with lower academic stress. Moreover, student self-efficacy, in turn, associates with lower academic stress and mediates the relationships between both community dimensions and students’ academic stress levels. From these findings, the protective role that community dimensions can exert on an individual’s life becomes apparent. Building on this, further strategies should be implemented to reinforce personal and community resources in order to strengthen individuals against potentially stressful circumstances

Combatting intimate partner violence: representations of social and healthcare personnel working with gender-based violence interventions

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has been declared a global epidemic by the World Health Organization. Although the attention paid to both the perpetrators and victims of gender-based violence has increased, scientific research is still lacking in regard to the representations of operators involved in interventions and management. Therefore, the following study explores how the representations of operators affect how gender violence can be managed and combatted through an ecological approach to this phenomenon, in addition to highlighting the roles of organizationallevel services and their cultural and symbolic substrates. In total, 35 health and social professionals were interviewed and textual materials were analyzed by thematic analysis. The evidence suggests that services contrasting gender-based violence utilize different representations and management approaches. The authors hope that these differences can become a resource, rather than a limitation, when combatting gender-based violence through the construction of more integrated networks and a greater dialogue among different services, in order to make interventions designed to combat gender-based violence more effective

Children witnessing domestic violence in the voice of health and social professionals dealing with contrasting gender violence

Witnessing domestic violence (WDV) is recognized by the Istanbul Convention as psychological abuse that has dramatic consequences on the psychophysical health of children. Therefore, professionals who form the support network for WDV victims play a very fundamental role. In order to draw up useful guidelines for services dealing with WDV, and to give children more awareness of supportive settings, this study analyzes WDV in the perception of health and welfare professionals to enhance their skills and strategies for contrasting gender violence. Sixteen Neapolitan specialists dealing with WDV children were interviewed. A theoretical intentional sampling was used. Narrative focused interviews were carried out, transcribed verbatim and analyzed through the grounded theory methodology, using the ATLAS.ti 8 software (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin, Germany). We assigned 319 codes and grouped these into 10 categories and 4 macro-categories. The analysis of the texts led to the definition of the core category as “The Crystal Fortress”. It summarizes the image of the WDV children as described by the professionals working in contrasting domestic violence. In this structure the parental roles of protection and care (fortress) are suspended and everything is extremely rigid, fragile and always at risk of a catastrophe. It also symbolizes the difficult role of health professionals in dealing with such children and their families. For WDV children, protective factors guarantee solid development and supportive settings help them to learn proper emotional responsiveness and expressiveness and to develop their skills in talking with adults while avoiding negative consequences

“Kept in Check”: Representations and Feelings of Social and Health Professionals Facing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

Social and health professionals facing gender-based violence in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) express feelings and thoughts closely connected to their place of work and the users of their services. However, research on professionals’ reflexivity and their implications has not been closely investigated. Therefore, this article will describe representations of IPV among social and health professionals facing gender-based violence as well as their personal feelings in accomplishing their job. Fifty interviews with health and social professionals were analyzed using grounded theory methodology supported by Atlas.ti 8.4. Five macrocategories will describe this phenomenon, leading to the final explicative core category that summarizes professionals’ attitudes toward it. Being “kept in check” among partners, partners and families, services, and institutional duties is the core category that best expressed their feelings. Therefore, implications for services and training will be further discussed

Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Youth: The Influence of Rural and Urban Contexts on the Process of Building Identity and Disclosure

The study investigates how the territorial community can influence the individual and social well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) youth and especially the recognition of their feelings and the construction of their own identity as well as their needs to be socially recognized. This research focuses on the experiences of 30 LGB individuals (23 males and 7 females), with a mean age of 25.07 years (SD = 4,578), living in urban and rural areas of Southern Italy. Focalized open interviews were conducted, and the Grounded Theory Methodology, supported by the Atlas.ti 8.0 software, was used for data analysis. The textual material was first coded, and then codes were grouped into five macro-categories: Freedom of identity expression in the urban and rural context, identity construction and acceptance process, need of aggregation and identification with the LGB community, role of the interpersonal relationship in the process of identity acceptance, socio-cultural context, and LGB psychological well-being. The results showed a condition common to the two contexts that we can define as “ghettoization.” The young LGB is alone in the rural area due to a lack of places and people to identify with and greater social isolation. On the contrary, although there are more opportunities in the urban area, young people feel stigmatized and ghettoized because “their places” are frequented exclusively by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer (LGBTQ) community. The work will extensively discuss the limitations of the research, future proposals, and the practical implications of the results

Downside: The perpetrator of violence in the representations of social and health professionals

Gender-based violence is a widespread phenomenon and pandemic that affects women’s lives. Many interventions have been activated for perpetrators, but the dropout rate is still high. In order to draw up guidelines for responsibly and sustainably dealing with the phenomenon, this study is aimed at investigating the professionals’ perception of the perpetrator as a useful element in designing innovative intervention policies. Open interviews were carried out with welfare and health professionals and the Grounded Theory Methodology was used to analyze the collected data. These results detect attitudes of social health personnel and their feelings of impotence towards gender-based perpetrators because of the emergence of an inevitable repetitiveness of the violent behavior, as well as the “normality of violence” in a patriarchal culture and its “transversality”. This reflective knowledge allows for the opportunity to develop best transformative attitudes toward the phenomenon. According to the results, it is urgent to establish an active and convinced alliance with the healthy part of the man, through specific prevention paths, in order to activate an authentic motivation for change and its sustainability