Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

This chapter addresses the paucity of relevant literature on the impacts of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales. It identifies and discusses challenges presented by COVID-19 to groups and communities in Wales including Black and global majority people, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people, older people, women, children in care and care leavers and disabled people. It describes how Welsh Government and Welsh communities responded to the crisis, identifying key features of ‘the Welsh way’. It provides messages for practice, including acknowledgement that a key effect of the pandemic was to exacerbate and compound existing inequalities so that already marginalised people have borne a disproportionate share of its toll, providing further proof of the need to view the challenges people and communities face through the ‘social lens’.