Beyond individual responsibility – towards a relational understanding of financial resilience through participatory research and design

This paper contributes to an increasingly critical assessment of a policy framing of
‘financial resilience’ that focuses on individual responsibility and financial capability. Using
a participatory research and design process, we construct a ground-up understanding of
financial resilience that acknowledges not only an individual’s actions, but the contextual
environment in which they are situated, and how those relate to one another. We
inductively identify four inter-connected dimensions of relational financial resilience:
infrastructure (housing, health, and childcare), financial and economic factors (income,
expenses, and financial services and strategies), social factors (motivation and community
and family), and the institutional environment (policy and local community groups,
support and advice services). Consequently, we recommend that social policies
conceptualise financial resilience in relational terms, as a cross-cutting policy priority,
rather than being solely a facet of individual financial capability.