Online SMART Recovery mutual support groups: Characteristics and experience of adults seeking treatment for methamphetamine compared to those seeking treatment for other addictive behaviours.

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the transition of Australian Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART) Recovery mutual support groups to virtual delivery. This study examined the self-reported experience of online SMART Recovery groups for people seeking support for methamphetamine use (alone or in combination with other behaviours) compared to those who did not endorse methamphetamine use as a reason for seeking support. METHODS: An online survey invitation was embedded in the post-group exit page. Items assessed participant demographic characteristics, experience, engagement and perceived contribution of the online group to recovery. Unique responses (n = 1414) were analysed using chi-square. RESULTS: After alcohol, methamphetamine use was the second most common behaviour to prompt online SMART Recovery group attendance (n = 205, 14.5%). People attending for methamphetamine use were more likely to endorse multiple addictive behaviours (n = 137, 66.8% vs. n = 371, 30.7%, p < 0.001). Irrespective of whether people attended for methamphetamine use or not, participant ratings of experience, engagement and perceived contribution to recovery were positive and largely comparable. People attending for methamphetamine use were significantly less likely to set a 7-day plan (72.7% vs. 81.9%; χ2  = 9.47, p = 0.002). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the acceptability of online SMART Recovery groups for people experiencing addictive behaviours, including methamphetamine use. To maximise the benefits of these groups, further evidence on how best to support people to develop a change plan within a time-limited, online group setting is needed. Online mutual support groups may help to reach and support people who might not otherwise engage in treatment and support, including people who use methamphetamine.

"They have their security, we have our community": Mutual support among people experiencing homelessness in encampments in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unaffordable housing is a growing crisis in Canada, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet perspectives of people living outdoors in encampments have primarily gone unheard. We conducted qualitative interviews with encampment residents to explore how mutual support occurred within the social context of encampments. We found that mutually supportive interactions helped residents meet basic survival needs, as well as health and social needs, and reduced common health and safety risks related to homelessness. The homelessness sector should acknowledge that encampment residents form their own positive communities, and ensure policies and services do not isolate people from these beneficial social connections.

CONFRONTING WHITENESS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION THROUGH RACIALIZED STUDENT ACTIVISM

In 2010, a group of racialized doctoral students at an elite university in Canada collectively mobilized against institutional racism within their school of social work. They insisted that their school confront the ways in which White supremacy was embedded within various policies and practices. These early initiatives led to the creation of the Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Although the RSN has ended, it has produced a new generation of scholars who continue to interrogate Whiteness and White supremacy. It has also offered roadmaps through which newer generations of racialized social work scholars can advance anti-racist and decolonial feminist perspectives within postsecondary social work institutions in Canada. In this article, the authors, who are now tenure-track or tenured professors at Canadian universities, demonstrate the ways in which graduate student anti-racist activisms are a central avenue for confronting Whiteness and institutional racism. Through a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, this article draws from the authors’ personal experiences within the RSN, the group’s source documents, and their collective analysis on how the RSN has informed their ongoing activism. They discuss how their everyday experiences align with current anti-racist struggles and movements to shape their actions and responses in academe. The RSN Model of Racialized Students’ Activism is presented to demonstrate the collective processes the student activists explored to reflect and apply their intersecting identities to support racialized students and address systemic racism.Alternate :En 2010, un groupe d’étudiants racisés, aux études doctorales dans une université canadienne, s’est mobilisé collectivement contre le racisme institutionnel au sein de leur école de travail social. Ces étudiants ont insisté pour que leur école confronte les façons dont la suprématie blanche s’ancrait dans diverses politiques et pratiques. Ces premières initiatives ont conduit à la création du Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Bien que le RSN n’existe plus, il a donné naissance à une nouvelle génération de chercheurs qui continuent de s’interroger sur la blancheur et la suprématie blanche. Il a également offert des feuilles de route grâce auxquelles les nouvelles générations de chercheurs en travail social racisés peuvent faire progresser les perspectives féministes, antiracistes et décoloniales au sein des programmes de travail social dans les établissements postsecondaires au Canada. Dans cet article, les auteurs, qui sont maintenant professeurs titulaires ou permanents dans des universités canadiennes, démontrent comment les activismes antiracistes des étudiantes et étudiants sont une avenue centrale pour confronter la suprématie blanche et le racisme institutionnel. Grâce à une méthodologie autoethnographique collaborative, cet article s’inspire des expériences personnelles des auteurs au sein du RSN, des documents sources du groupe et de leur analyse collective sur la façon dont le RSN a influencé leur activisme actuel. Ils discutent de la manière dont leurs expériences quotidiennes s’alignent sur les luttes et les mouvements antiracistes actuels pour façonner leurs actions et leurs réponses dans le milieu universitaire. Afin de démontrer les processus collectifs entrepris par les activistes étudiants pour refléter et utiliser leurs identités entrecroisées afin de soutenir les étudiantes et étudiants racisés et confronter le racisme systémique, le modèle d’activisme des étudiantes et étudiantes racisés du RSN est présenté.

Collaborative housing communities through the COVID-19 pandemic: rethinking governance and mutuality

The national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the prevalence and importance of informal mutual support in neighbourhoods and social networks. Mutual support structures and functions are strong in collaborative housing, in which people often intentionally form resident communities to enhance support practices. Using qualitative methods, this article examines how lockdown restrictions have impacted on practices of mutual support in collaborative housing, when the infrastructures of shared facilities and proximate neighbourliness were challenged. There were ambiguous definitions of ‘households’ associated with collaborative housing communities when interpreting the lockdown rules to provide mutual aid and support. Shared values, commitments and length of time of establishment mattered when operationalising such support. Moreover, the lockdown helped some communities re-evaluate their governance structures, decision-making and the limits of mutual support as they experienced what changing care needs of individual members meant to their communities. It resulted in a more realistic appraisal of their local social capital. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Housing Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

SMART Recovery International and COVID-19: Expanding the reach of mutual support through online groups.

BACKGROUND: Mutual support groups play an extremely important role in providing opportunities for people to engage in alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment and support. SMART Recovery groups employ cognitive, behavioural and motivational principles and strategies to offer support for a range of addictive behaviours. COVID-19 fundamentally changed the way that these groups could be delivered. METHODS: A series of online meetings were conducted by the lead author (PK) and the SMART Recovery International Executive Officer (KM), with representatives from the SMART Recovery National Offices in the Ireland (DO), United States (MR), Australia (RM), and Denmark (BSH, DA), and the United Kingdom (AK). The meetings focused on discussing the impacts of COVID-19 on SMART Recovery in each of the regions. RESULTS: As a result of restrictions to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, the vast majority of SMART Recovery face-to-face meetings were required to cease globally. To ensure people still had access to AOD mutual support, SMART Recovery rapidly scaled up the provision of online groups. This upscaling has increased the number of groups in countries that had previously provided a limited number of online meetings (i.e., United States, England, Australia), and has meant that online groups are available for the first time in Denmark, Ireland, Hong Kong, Spain, Malaysia and Brazil. DISCUSSION: Whilst the urgent and rapid expansion of online groups was required to support people during the pandemic, it has also created an opportunity for the ongoing availability of online mutual support post-pandemic. The challenge for the research community is to critically evaluate the online delivery of mutual support groups, to better understand the mechanisms through which they may work, and to help understand the experience of people accessing the groups.

A Friend in Need? The Sino-Russian Relationship Under the Coronavirus Crisis in Twitter: a Russian Perspective.

The paper focuses on the COVID-19 as a stress test to the Sino-Russian strategic partnership: has it driven Russia and China closer together, farther apart, or made no difference? Employing content analysis of official Russian discourse as expressed by the Kremlin, the Government, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), both via their official web pages (104 online publications) and Twitter accounts (260 tweets), this study focuses on the Russian twiplomacy as a more suitable mean to reflect the real-time changes of an evolving crisis. The analysis demonstrates that the Sino-Russian relationship extends beyond the "axis of convenience." It does not, however, correspond to the support expected from a consolidated (comprehensive) strategic partnership, nor does it achieve the intensity of soft balancing (vis-à-vis the USA) in a particularly polarized and politicized international context.