The responses of Simon Communities to four waves of Covid-19

This research report evaluates the responses of the Simon Communities in the Irish Republic to the challenges posed by Covid-19 from the points of view of the Simon Communities themselves and of key statutory (Local Authority and Health Service Executive) respondents, during the successive waves of the pandemic from March 2020 to August 2021.

While responses to the challenges posed by Covid-19 varied across the Simon Communities with their different mix and scale of services, the focus of the research is to arrive at an overall evaluation of these responses, rather than providing a detailed evaluation for each region. Although reflecting the Simon Communities context, the findings are likely to be indicative of the experiences of other homelessness NGOs during this period.

This report represents the concluding phase of a larger study encompassing two prior reports:

Systems Accelerant? The responses of Simon Communities to ‘first wave’ Covid-19 (Finnerty and Buckley, 2021).

The Experiences of Simon Community service users during the Covid-19 pandemic’ (Finnerty, Cullinane and Buckley, 2021).

The first report offered an initial evaluation, by Simon and statutory managers, of the responses of the Simon Communities to the first wave of Covid-19.

The second report explored the experiences and perspectives of Simon Communities service users themselves as they navigated successive waves of the pandemic.

This third report offers a more comprehensive evaluation, again based on interviews with Simon and statutory managers, of the responses of the Simon Communities during the four waves of the pandemic in the period March 2020 – August 2021.

Joe Finnerty, Mark Cullinane and Margaret Buckley at the School of Applied Social Studies at University College Cork conducted this final phase of the research series.

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