Insights from New Research

• Unpack the variable impacts of COVID-19 on the labour market and supporting those disproportionately impacted, including by way of short-term employment creation, entry level jobs and re-training options for those industries that may not recover from COVID-19 in the short or long term. • Increase supports at the household level in areas such as financial support, support for students with schooling needs, information, and employment supports. • Address access to health and medical services and reduce waitlists. • Stimulate better research, data and information on the impacts of COVID-19, at a granular level.

These insights from health and social service organisations add to our multidimensional understanding of the ongoing impacts of COVID-19. The findings are supported by other sources of information, including case studies and surveys. There is significant work to be done in the future to continue to build resilient individuals and communities, while simultaneously improving the institutional and service structures. While the providers acknowledged that some in the community had a sense of things returning to normal, both the initial RSNA and this update found that COVID-19 has exacerbated and continues to exacerbate pre-COVID-19 issues and challenges in the Cairns community as well as generating new effects.

Insights from New Research

As the studies above highlighted, there are ongoing impacts and vulnerabilities of COVID-19 for individuals, households, industries and communities in the Cairns LGA. Cairns also acts as a hub to the surrounding LGAs in terms of services, administration, connectivity, transport and information.

CRC, partnering with JCU, undertook two online-surveys during June-August 2021. The surveys were as follows.

• Pulse of the Community Wellbeing Survey was administered online from 29 June 2021 to 3 August 2021. There were 602 responses received. • COVID-19 Cairns LGA Three-Day Snap Lockdown Survey was administered online from 12 August 2021 to 31 August 2021. A total of 1475 responses were received. • Additionally, there were 140 comments on the CRC Facebook website during August 2021, which provided further input from the community.

The purpose of the surveys was to provide a snapshot in time from the perspective of residents to inform the following.

• Identify a baseline measure (particularly related to wellbeing and resilience), comparing where communities feel they have journeyed since the pandemic commenced and what support they predict will be required into the future. • Synthesise the evidence of adaptive capacity at an individual, household, neighbourhood and community group level. • Identify the challenges and impacts during lockdown periods. • Provide future strategies to inform recovery and resilience planning.