Community Resilience in Wales

Wednesday 1st February 2023
With Public Health Network Cymru

Being resilient describes the ability of an individual, a community, or a system to withstand stress and challenges and to adapt and survive adverse circumstances. (Davies et al, 2019)

At this webinar we heard from Nick Selwyn and Euros Lake from Audit Wales. Against a likely backdrop of further reductions in public spending, local authorities are being challenged to help people who are struggling with increased costs. They shared how community resilience and self-reliance can be encouraged to equip people to be less reliant on local authorities and reduce the demand on often over stretched services.

Lucia Homolova and Charlotte Grey from Public Health Wales shared findings from a study exploring community-led action during the pandemic in Wales. They gave an overview of key factors that enabled community-led action, the extent to which community-led action contributed to the pandemic response and its impact on mitigating or reducing health inequalities.

We also heard from Fred Weston and Catrin Cribb from Monmouthshire County Council who shared how the team enabled community action during the pandemic to respond to shopping and prescription needs. They highlighted the role of the social worker and link workers in the community and social justice team, and explained how this has developed in to a layered approach to building social capital and reliant communities.