Fostering community self‐help in deprived neighbourhoods

Attempts to nurture community self‐help in deprived neighbourhoods presently tend to pursue the “third sector” route of developing community‐based groups. Reporting data from recent UK government surveys of community involvement, however, this article uncovers how such a third sector approach promotes a form of community self‐help more reflective of the culture of engagement in affluent than deprived populations. If community self‐help is to be harnessed in ways that build on the existing culture of engagement in deprived neighbourhoods, then this article shows that the current third sector route will need to be complemented with a “fourth sector” approach that seeks to further develop informal forms of community self‐help (i.e., acts of one‐to‐one reciprocity(. The article concludes by outlining some possible policy initiatives that might be used to implement this fourth sector approach.