Tag: COVID-19 Inquiry

Hourglass: Abuse of older people doubled during pandemic

“Older victims of abuse were locked in and left behind” – that’s the stark warning from Richard Robinson, Chief Executive of Hourglass, the only UK-wide charity dedicated to ending the abuse of older people, as he spoke to the Domestic Abuse Support and Safeguarding roundtable today.
 
Attending the Inquiry’s final investigation into the societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Richard Robinson is highlighting the often-overlooked impact of the pandemic and government restrictions on older victims of domestic abuse—many of whom were trapped with their abusers, cut off from support, left out of crisis planning, and their needs ignored in pandemic guidance and restrictions.

Calling for dramatic change, he is urging policymakers to ensure older people are no longer an afterthought at times of national emergency.
 
The roundtable session, part of the Inquiry’s final investigation (Module 10), took place today, bringing together leading voices from across the domestic abuse and safeguarding sectors to examine the societal consequences of the pandemic, with a specific focus on vulnerable populations.

Speaking ahead of his attendance, Mr Robinson said: “We must be clear: the pandemic intensified existing inequalities, isolating older people and placing many in harm’s way. At Hourglass, we saw a sharp rise in abuse cases as victims were locked in with perpetrators and cut off from help.
 
Older people in general were left behind – not just in policy, but in protection – and older victim-survivors of domestic abuse were almost entirely ignored. That must never happen again.”
 
Hourglass data, which Mr Robinson presented to the Inquiry, includes: 

  • A 33% rise in calls to its helpline in 2020/21, with a further 22% increase the following year.
  • A surge in psychological and sexual abuse cases, and a doubling of reports involving abuse by neighbours.
  • Widespread concern about neglect and loneliness, with nearly half of the public believing older people became more vulnerable to abuse during lockdown.
  • Evidence that 43% of adult family homicide victims during the pandemic were aged 65 or over.

Mr Robinson is calling for urgent and lasting change, including a Violence Against Older People Strategy to sit alongside the existing VAWG framework; a comprehensive Safer Ageing Strategy to tackle abuse, ageism, and structural neglect; and ring-fenced, multi-year funding to expand the UK’s critically under-resourced support services for older victims.

He added: “The Covid-19 Inquiry as a whole is a vital opportunity to shine a light on what went wrong and why. But it’s also the moment to commit to doing better.

“Today’s roundtable should highlight that older people must no longer be an afterthought in crisis planning. Their safety, rights and dignity must be central to how we prepare for the future.”
 
The roundtable is chaired by Kate Eisenstein, Director of Policy, Research and Legal at the Inquiry, and includes representatives from national and specialist organisations across the domestic abuse, justice, and safeguarding sectors.
 
The charity is urging those keen to support the charity to donate by visiting www.wearehourglass.org.uk/donate or Text SAFER to 70460 to donate £10.

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From austerity to crisis: Covid-19 Inquiry highlights UK’s pre-pandemic weaknesses, says TUC

Just three days short of its second anniversary, the Covid-19 Public Inquiry published the report from the Module One investigation into the resilience and preparedness of the United Kingdom (writes TUC’s NATHAN OSWIN).

The report highlights the devastating consequences of austerity in the decade that preceded the pandemic and the risk of vulnerability in the UK population.

The Impact of austerity on public services

Inquiry Chair, Baroness Hallett, states plainly that, “In short, the UK entered the pandemic with its public services depleted, health improvement stalled, health inequalities increased, and health among the poorest people in a state of decline.” This blunt assessment underscores the critical condition of the nation’s public services as they faced the unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The role of the TUC and evidence from frontline workers

As Core Participants in the Inquiry, the TUC played an integral role in the process, working with our unions to provide the evidence that ten years of under-investment and real terms funding cuts to public service in the run up to the Inquiry left key services struggling to cope.

“Public services, particularly health and social care, were running close to, if not beyond, capacity in normal times” the report states, a statement that doctors, nurses, porters and social care workers have been telling us all. 

The Inquiry also heard that “there were severe staff shortages and that a significant amount of the hospital infrastructure was not fit for purpose. England’s social care sector faced similar issues. This combination of factors had a directly negative impact on infection control measures and on the ability of the NHS and the care sector to ‘surge up’ during a pandemic.”

A call to avoid past mistakes

The report is both a damning indictment and a call to never repeat the mistakes of that decade – a desperate reminder of the need to invest in our public services.

And while the report is not naive about the costs needed to make the UK more resilient ahead of the next pandemic – a matter of when not if – it reaches  the conclusion that “the massive financial, economic and human cost of the Covid-19 pandemic is proof that, in the area of preparedness and resilience, money spent on systems for our protection will be vastly outweighed by the cost of not doing so”.

Addressing health inequalities

What’s more, the Inquiry is crystal clear as to the price we pay for inequality across our communities. It notes that at the outset of the pandemic, the UK had “substantial systematic health inequalities by socio-economic status, ethnicity, area-level deprivation, region, social excluded minority groups and inclusion health groups”.

And Baroness Hallett’s report correctly states that these inequalities weakened the ability of the UK to cope, stating that “resilience depends on having a resilient population. The existence and persistence of vulnerability in the population is a long-term risk to the UK.’ 

Recommendations for the future

The recommendations themselves speak of the need to engage with wider society for planning on how we handle a crisis and to take into account the “capacity and capabilities of the UK”. 

No one knows the capacity and capabilities of our public services better than the staff that deliver them and the TUC and its affiliated unions stand ready to assist the government in this vital work.

Conclusion: Building a resilient future together

It is by working in partnership – with proper resources going into our public services – that we can truly learn the lessons this report sets out and secure the resilience and preparedness that the UK needs for a future full of challenges.