Coronavirus (COVID-19) Changed The Lives Of People In Ireland In An Unprecedented Way: Assignment Formatting Dissertation, TUD, Ireland

Introduction

Coronavirus (COVID-19) changed the lives of people in Ireland in an unprecedented way. The first infection recorded in Ireland was on the 29^th of February 2020. By the second week of March 2020, the rate at which the infection was spreading had reached pandemic levels. The Irish government had to announce a national lockdown on the 12^th of March to mitigate the effects of the virus.

Many health systems worldwide, particularly Ireland, were caught unaware by the spread of the coronavirus. The crisis placed a massive burden on the government and health organizations in the country to find a solution that would slow down the spread. While hospital organizations were the focus of the attention in the ensuing panic and confusion brought about by the coronavirus, social care organizations that provide services to vulnerable people found themselves in a crisis as they made efforts to protect their service users from the virus.

At the height of the pandemic, there was much talk and publicity about the great work done by frontline workers in difficult circumstances. This study aims to explore the experiences of social care managers in managing their services and supporting their staff and service users through the crisis.

All crises in their various forms affect the organization, be it reputation, emotional, or public safety concerns. Holmgren and Johansson, (2015). In a similar measure, a crisis can affect the people who work for the organization in one way or another. The effect of a crisis can be controllable if an organization has a plan on crisis management that can be effectively implemented by those working in the organization’s various departments. Coronavirus, however, is a largely unexpected crisis, particularly in social care services. We explored crisis management during the pandemic through the lens of the social care service providers.

Research Purpose

This research aimed to explore the experiences of frontline managers who work in the residential units of disability services. We examined how the frontline managers coped with the advent of the coronavirus in Ireland, the closure of services, and the threat posed by the virus to both service users and staff. By examining these experiences, this thesis will help understand how critical, good crisis management is to human service organizations. The research project will also contribute to the growing body of knowledge in social care management in Ireland and make recommendations as to how disability services can improve current planning and coordination of crises within organizations.

To achieve the purpose of this research and approach the problem statement, the researcher sought to answer the following question:

Based on the experiences of frontline managers during the coronavirus pandemic, is there anything that services for people with disabilities learn about managing through crises? What lessons have proved valuable to frontline managers during this period, and what situations need to be rectified in preparation for future occurrences.

To argue why the lessons from this crisis or recommendations thereof are of importance to the social care organizations, we will attempt to answer some questions such as:

What kind of impact did the crisis have on service users and frontline managers in disability services?

What were the experiences of the frontline managers in disability residential units in managing through the COVIS 19 crisis?

The perspective of this research will be from a social care point of view with the purpose that social care professionals and service providers may draw some learning from the coronavirus crisis and use this learning for their future specific considerations and applications.