Written evidence submitted by Age UK
Name: Angela Kitching and Hannah Pearce
All rights reserved. Third parties may only reproduce this paper or parts of it for academic, educational or research purposes or where the prior consent of Age UK has been obtained for influencing or developing policy and practice.
Age UK is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England (registered charity number 1128267 and registered company number 6825798). The registered address is Tavis House 1-6 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9NA.
Impact of Covid-19 on the Charity Sector
The Covid-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on all areas of life across the country. The voluntary sector has been a lifeline in providing care and support to older and vulnerable groups during the crisis. Given the scale of the challenge facing the country and the widespread social and economic impact, the help they can provide at this time is invaluable. However, charities are suffering financially for many of the same reasons as other forms of organisation are too.
Age UK is the best-known charity for older people in the UK, with no other as widely identified by the public as being able to provide help of all kinds. It comprises a national charity and nearly 140 local Age UKs, independent charities in their own right that share the Age UK brand. There is a local Age UK in every county of England plus in almost every London borough. Our partners Age UK London, Age Scotland, Age NI, and Age Cymru are each also a charity in their own right.
Age UK nationally has an income of c.£130 million; the rest of the Age UK ‘family’ excluding the national charity has a collective income of c.£200 million. Age UK’s national income comes from three main sources; 400 charity shops; fundraising with the public, including legacies; and other forms of trading including the sale of incontinence products, funeral plans and financial services.
Nationally Age UK is responsible for providing information and advice to older people and their families via its website; a free telephone Advice Line open every day of the year 8am to 7pm, manned by trained staff; and through the provision of free written material posted to individuals – these two latter channels being especially important for the 50% plus of over 70s who do not have access to the internet. All the information and advice Age UK provides is developed by subject experts and the service is also accessible via letter and email. Last year Age UK’s website received 9.5 million unique visitors and there were just shy of 300,000 enquiries to the Advice Line by email, letter and phone. The national Age UK information and advice service also backs up and supports the delivery of information and advice through local Age UKs.
Another national Age UK service is The Silver Line telephone helpline which is open all day and all night, every day of the year. It offers emotional support to older people who are lonely, depressed, anxious or suicidal. Last year it received 400,000 calls.
Age UK nationally and The Silver Line together provide telephone befriending services for lonely and isolated older people, on a one to one or sometimes a group call basis – for example, enabling Services Veterans to chat to each other. At the moment c.3,500 older people benefit from these services.
Local Age UKs deliver a wide range of services to the older population in their areas, with support from the national organisation – they are essentially the Charity’s on the ground delivery arm. These services typically include social and wellbeing activities such as dancing and keep fit classes; support at home such as gardening and shopping; day centres; support for family carers; help for people with dementia; befriending; and the provision of face to face and telephone information and advice and advocacy in claiming benefits. Half of local Age UKs provide foot care and a third domiciliary care.
The specialist knowledge and expertise of Age UK and our local partners will help people in need to respond and adapt to the impact of Covid-19 – either directly by supporting the health and social care system or indirectly by supporting those affected by the enormous economic and social consequences of coronavirus. The network is part of a wider sector that is experiencing exceptional increased demand due to the impact of Covid-19, including hospices, care homes, domestic violence shelters, food poverty organisations, family support, meals on wheels and other forms of community transport, and mental health charities.
Age UK is now entirely focused on helping older people get through the pandemic – save for the continuation of a small number of specific projects which have to carry on contractually and which have their own restricted funding, though wherever possible these too are being flexed to respond to the pandemic. In response to rising demand we are endeavouring to scale up all relevant provision.
Nationally demand for all Age UK’s information and advice services has soared; enquiries to the Advice Line were up 88% in the week to Friday 5th April and the service has been deluged with emails and letters as well as calls – too many to respond to promptly, which means we will have to scale up and bring in more staff.
Key themes among these enquiries are problems accessing food and medicines; financial worries, including scams; and loneliness and how to deal with the emotional impact of the pandemic and enforced isolation. Older people contacting us are often desperate and needing urgent help.
Visits to the website are up by 76% since 1st March 2020, to almost 1.9 million sessions.
Our Advice, Policy, Research and Content teams are working together to put up relevant, continually updated content on the Coronavirus hub on our website which is tailored to our audiences and to the questions they are raising, as well as reflecting the latest Guidance. This new content is also available through the post, where we are able to continue to dispatch materials for free from our warehouse in Warrington. We are also working with national and local media partners to help them to circulate useful information to older people through print, online and broadcast media.
Calls to The Silver Line are up by 30%. Many of those calling are in great distress.
Locally local Age UKs are invariably at the forefront of the effort to sustain the older population through the pandemic. In some places they are leading it, at the request of local authorities and Local Resilience Forums. A top priority for local Age UKs, which the national charity team is supporting, is to find ways to adapt their services to continue to help their many existing service users, in discussion with local authorities. Very importantly, across the country local Age UKs have rapidly reorganised, closed or flexed activities that are not relevant to the current situation and expanded their work to meet local needs. Discussions are ongoing with the NHS Responder scheme and other referrers on how local Age UKs can organise the delivery of local services to older people who are being shielded, deploying the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have registered for the scheme.
Most local Age UKs are delivering shopping and collecting prescriptions. They are also offering befriending and friendship services over the phone, and doing regular phone check-ins with very vulnerable older people, many living alone, a lot of whom are not within the shielded group. Some local Age UKs continue to offer essential domiciliary care and support in older people’s homes, while others are working in partnership with the NHS to bring older people home after being discharged from hospital in a safe and timely fashion.
The response the voluntary sector has had from the public for support has been phenomenal and we are grateful for the Government’s efforts in these unprecedented times, but it does not make up for the financial losses incurred through immediate loss of fundraising and other income.
Nationally, Age UK lost one third of its income overnight and ongoing due to the closure of its 400 charity shops, this equates to just shy of £900k a week in income. We have lost that at a stroke and although we have furloughed all our retail staff there are other fixed costs, principally rent, that we still have to go on paying, significantly increasing the scale of the financial damage. As a result of these shop closures Age UK has experienced an extreme squeeze on cash and emergency financial measures have been required to keep the Charity going in the short term, but these are not sustainable beyond a 3 month period. Other income streams are also severely affected, such as fundraising from events like the London Marathon. Age UK has a reasonable level of reserves but pension liabilities and other factors mean these would not allow the Charity to keep going for very long.
Locally, our 140 local Age UKs are reporting that they are being very severely hit by the pandemic financially. We are working with great urgency to understand the position each of them are in and which are at the greatest risk of immediate closure but we know that some will fold within weeks without additional financial assistance. The factors are often the same as for the national charity: trading income decimated; contracts for services paused and income halted; and the usual paid for services impossible to deliver so income from these having dried up, all leading to a great shortage of cash and an inability to pay bills, including salaries and utilities.
Age UK has launched a fundraising appeal to help the national and local charities and so far is it going quite well, more than £2 million having been raised within a fortnight, but however successful it is it cannot possibly compensate for such a drastic loss of income as is being experienced both nationally and locally, nor resource the adaptation and expansion of the services which our older population are urgently requiring in far greater numbers currently than we have ever seen before. In particular, if we are to keep up with the volume of approaches to our Advice Line we will to bring in more staff, over and above those we have already deployed to help out. Age UK’s Advice offer is unique – without it there are few if any other places for older people to go for the same crucial service.
The funding announcement on the 8th April was most welcome and it is right that the first priority should be to enable charities and community groups to keep delivering while the virus is such a present threat. However, at a time of national crisis, the voluntary sector needs long-term financial support to prioritise services for those who need us the most. Realistically, life is not going to return to normal in most places for years to come, certainly so far as older people are concerned. It is for this reason we need clarity from the Government that this package was intended to be a down payment of support for the sector, and not the only package charities will receive during this crisis. With charity shops shut and fundraising events cancelled, we estimate charities stand to lose around £4bn in 12 weeks as a result of the crisis. This is a ‘perfect storm’ and it means charities are taking difficult decisions already; for example, to close some services just when they are most needed.
A long-term package of financial support needs to be announced for the voluntary sector organisations working on the front line and directly contributing to tackling the impact of the coronavirus to allow them to prioritise services for those who are most in need.
Age UK North Yorkshire and Darlington
Age UK North Yorkshire and Darlington has been quick to adapt and respond to the needs of local, older, vulnerable people in this crisis. They have created new community outreach offerings, including telephone befriending, hot meal delivery, shopping services and telephone advice. These services are necessary, however their usual income streams have been decimated at a time when services are needed more than ever. Since the onset of Covid-19 they have seen an almost complete cessation of income generating activities including cafés, day centres, domiciliary care and other activities such as music groups, exercise groups, dance, outreach and community support groups and lunch clubs. They have had to furlough 13 staff members and close a number of offices in Harrogate, Skipton, Northallerton and Richmond. They stand to lose £60,000 over just 12 weeks and without sustained funding, they are at risk of having to close their doors by September 2020.
Age UK East Sussex
Age UK East Sussex have moved at break-neck speed to redesigned their services at the onset of the pandemic; creating a new Community Emergency Response Team to assess someone’s needs and ensure they get the help they need. Information and Advice staff are also on hand to provide answers to all the tricky situations that this crisis is presenting. All their income (apart from one NHS Social Prescribing contract and some grant funding from Macmillan for a Cancer Support service) was cut off. They are a well run local charity with a clear ten year plan for income diversification and growth through social enterprise. In the past ten years they have more than doubled the funding they have secured to provide services for older people. But because they don’t rely on Government contracts – they fundraise, run charity shops and provide some paid for services that older people need – their income has been wiped out by social distancing measures. Even with Government support to furlough staff, getting a shop rent holiday, applying for business support, paid staff voluntarily cutting their wages, they will not be able to continue beyond the next few months, if nothing substantial changes.
Age UK Isle of Wight
Age UK Isle of Wight have supported over 1200 individuals since the Government’s social distancing measures began on 23 March. Many are alone and have mental and physical challenges. Referrals are 53% up on this time last year and over 200% up on contacts which includes existing clients. Over 180 of these clients have been supported by their team at St Mary’s hospital, a team recruited in January to help with Winter Pressures who now find themselves working alongside NHS colleagues, in PPE, helping patients to return home and isolate. This has been achieved with an initial volunteer reduction of 60% unable to go out (those aged over 70); community staff reduction of 40% (those over 70 or self- isolating due to health conditions); processing 220 applications to volunteer in three weeks, undertaking references and support; and 14% of staff are now furloughed to protect longer term financial sustainability of the organisation. Through lost income and increased costs directly associated with responding to the coronavirus crisis they expect to be in a deficit position of £221k rather than the small surplus predicted.
Mrs W is a client previously known to Age UK Isle of Wight, she is 78, lives alone, has no family on the island and has early stages of dementia. The charity has been in contact with her and her grandson and have arranged to do weekly shopping for her. The Grandson will pay the charity directly and the volunteer will claim back the money spent.
The volunteer reported that she has had to hand the bag of shopping over to Mrs W at the front door as she can’t bend to pick bag up. The volunteer also reported that Mrs W had said she would pop to the shops if needed and didn’t seem to understand why she couldn’t; she said Mrs W was tearful and a little confused. Age UK Isle of Wight have arranged a daily welfare call from the volunteer to remind Mrs W why she can’t go out and see if she needs anything. This has happened for the last five days and has helped to calm Mrs W’s worries and stopped her going out.