Welcoming, Listening, Guiding: what flows in the helping relationship at the Red Cross and beyond?
This research aims to identify the “best practices” in welcoming, listening, guiding, and providing social support.
Humanitarian or social context and issues
This research project proposes to examine the functioning of the Red Cross’s reception, listening and guidance services, without ignoring the work carried out by other associations. More specifically, this research aims to question the methods used to receive, listen to and guide vulnerable members of the public by analysing the existing situation in terms of relational approaches, service provision and spatio-temporalities with a view to contributing to a change in the culture of the systems operated by the CRF, moving – to put it somewhat simplistically – from a historical logic of emergency, distribution and charity to a logic more focused on encounter, relationship building and long-term social support.
Objectively assess the various methods of reception, listening and guidance that are used, with a view to identifying their effects on those being received and on the volunteers providing the reception. With this in mind, the research aims to identify operational courses of action designed to provide practical support for the changes inherent in the Red Cross’s activities by helping to identify ‘good practices’ in reception, listening, guidance and social support.
- What are the various methods (interactional, spatial and temporal) of welcoming, listening and guiding that can be observed within the services targeted by the study?
- How are these approaches and practices perceived and received by the people receiving support?
- What is the impact of these methods of welcoming, listening and guiding on the journey of the people receiving support, but also on the involvement of volunteers, or in other words, on their ‘journey of commitment’?
Field of research and methodology
The research will focus on an ethnographic study of the Nancy Local Unit (Red Cross) and the Café-Sourire reception centre run by the Saint-Vincent de Paul Society, as well as a complementary approach within the Lille Local Unit.
Based on a highly qualitative – ethnographic – method informed by semi-structured interviews (30 in total) conducted with service users and volunteer teams, the research will also develop a quantitative component based on reporting from the targeted schemes (which will identify the regularity, frequency and duration, as well as the reasons for the use of services by those receiving assistance, but also, in a more longitudinal manner, changes in their personal situations and their movements to other assistance programmes). The survey will also be based on questionnaires completed by beneficiaries within the services studied, with a view to providing a more general overview of the perception and reception of the services offered and the relational modalities through which these services are provided.
The scientific benefits of research for humanitarian and social actors
Within the framework of pragmatic sociology, the research draws on interactionist microsociology and theoretical contributions from the anthropology of gift-giving and the sociology of recognition in order to analyse ‘what circulates’ in the helper-helpee relationship, not only in terms of material assistance (‘service provision’), but above all on the symbolic level of identification, trust and recognition of the Other (‘relational provision’). In short, with a view to better understanding the dynamics of the helping relationship, the aim here is to develop a conceptual framework that focuses on analysing the relationships and bonds that are initiated, woven, maintained or broken in the charitable contexts studied, while moving towards the effects and impacts of these different forms and types of bonds, both on beneficiaries and on volunteers.
The research aims to shed light on the practices of volunteers and encourage them to reflect on their actions, while contributing to the identification of ‘good practices’ in terms of welcoming, listening, guidance and social support.
Biography
Thibaut Besozzi earned his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2015. He is a member of the Research Department at IRTS Lorraine and an associate researcher at LIR3S, University of Burgundy Europe. His research focuses on the sociology of marginality, urban sociology, and the sociology of social action.
Photo credit : D. Pazery