Prejudicial community self-reliance

Name(s):

Obsolete self-sufficiency patterns

Unexercised responsibility for external relations

Nature

Although consolidation of services at a regional level provides more effective delivery to all communities, it does require that communities open channels of access for receiving available resources and services.

Incidence

Although a wide range of services and funds are accessible, communities are hampered from developing these external relationships by several factors. The complexity of the legal procedures for obtaining some grants deters residents from requesting available funds. Land use issues involve baffling relationships with government and neighbours. Access to distant municipal and district services may be limited and awkward. Often police and fire detachments are located at a distance and crisis calls are hindered when shared telephone lines are busy. Medical care for the children may be provided from another district. Yet the heart of this problem lies neither in the distance from services nor in the complexity of procedures. Rather, it has to do with the a determination not to allow government dependency to inhibit self-reliance which is exaggerated into a near rejection of these benefits which others receive as a matter of right.

Claim

Economic survival patterns demanded radical individualism for sheer self-preservation. Social structures were designed to provide community care, mainly by assigning everyone a necessary role. The lingering influence of these now outmoded structures of social care and decision-making limit beliefs in authentic participation and intentions to embrace forms of social interdependence; in the present day context old patterns actually diminish effective participation. It is understandable that the resultant prevailing attitude is for even greater stress on individuality and less on community. The task for these villages is to develop a uniquely creative role in the context of the wider, more complex human community.

Broader

Economic isolationism

Overemphasis on self-sufficiency with respect to interdependence

Restrictive effects of tradition-bound community decision-making

Narrower

Unexplored programme data

Cross jurisdictional interests

Delays in planning authorization

Reduced information distribution

Unimagined fund-raising opportunities

Reluctant claims on external resources

Incomplete understanding of new societal service systems