COVID 19 Relationships cast asunder, can a new world be built?

Amidst all the talk of what comes next, as the weeks of lockdown roll on, the grim statistics increase ever upwards and the tales of individual lives lost and affected - whether known personally, or related to us via the news - mount, it can be difficult to take it all in. Sometimes it pays to take the times we are living in back to its most basic….

All deaths are tough, all diseases cruel but there is something particularly awful about Covid 19 – it takes our most basic human instinct for touch and turns it against us. It leaves 13 year old boys to have to die and be buried alone and means partners cannot be present as mother give birth in delivery suites. As a parent both prospects leave me with horror. And with thousands of people dying in intensive care or care homes, slipping away observed by family only via a smartphone, and with funerals conducted by Zoom that inability to touch, even in death, is truly heartbreaking. At Easter my family marked the anniversary of my mother passing and being able to care for her in our  own home, with the amazing support of Marie Curie nurses, and able to say our goodbyes was an immense comfort then and still is some 22 years on.

Even for those of us whom Coronavirus has not yet directly reached it has still bequeathed us social distancing and self-isolation. It has taken away some of life’s greatest pleasures from the simple – the ability to hug, touch, hold hands, celebrate family events and, for those of faith, to come together – to the more sophisticated – virtually ending travel around the world. Being human is to relate to others, particularly in our towns and cities.  I’ve been a happy Londoner for nearly two decades and to me the very essence of that is to be part of a maelstrom of humanity, from festivals, to park life, packed tube trains to busy art galleries, street markets to pubs and restaurants, rubbing shoulders, often literally, with people from all over the world. It makes my mind throb and my heart sing and I miss it terribly. My kids have grown up with this too and have always taken it in their stride. Now they only go 500 metres from our front door to the park and every time we see someone I have to direct them to move away and leave a wide birth – which to both me and them still remains entirely counter-cultural.

Professionally at the Lloyds Bank Foundation we have always prided ourselves on being a relationship-based funder – not for us just assessing paper-based applications, our approach is based on going out to visit and see charities in action as part of initial assessments and on an ongoing basis. And the small and locally rooted charities we support have always been about face to face interaction for people overcoming some of life’s toughest challenges, such as homelessness, domestic abuse and mental ill health. Overnight Foundation staff had to retreat to our homes and the 650+ small and local charities we partner with had to move services online. Charities have worked wonders but a welcoming cup of tea, in-depth progression meeting and supportive group work can never be replaced entirely by a food drop, phone call or Zoom session.

And we know the impact of the shutdown will be deep and long-lasting, with untold havoc wrecked on many people’s livelihoods and lives. Domestic abuse and mental ill health are soaring; and those who were bottom of the pile will slip further down, those who already suffered will suffer more – the low paid and vulnerably employed; those in temporary accommodation, refugees or in prison; those who struggle at school, now losing months of contact; and in particular those from black and minority ethnic groups now being singled out by Covid-19 on top of decades of marginalisation. Loneliness and isolation can be crippling at the best of times, now it is itself a pandemic. And for every neighbourhood WhatsApp group buzzing with sour dough recipes, gardening tips, Zoom pub quizzes and marvelling about the bird song, there are millions of people off line and on their own, stuck behind closed doors without access to learning, literally staring at the wall, wondering where the next meal will come from and waking each day to know it will be tougher than the last. Some people talk about us being “in this together” – as a wise head on Twitter said, no we are not in the same boat, we are instead in the same storm, it’s just some of us have a super yacht and some of us only a broken oar.

So whilst this is a disease which can indeed strike Prime Ministers it does differentiate, it seeks out the poorest and most vulnerable and hits them hardest and repeatedly.

So anyone who consciously welcomes this crisis as a chance to “reset” I fear deluded. This crisis will set us back decades. And we must not forget to look beyond our own shores too - in Gaza, Syria and across Africa, those countries with weak health systems, crowded slums and fragile economies will be ravaged by coronavirus. And even those spared by the disease will face the economic devastation which will be deep and long lasting, setting back economies and the prospects and chances for families and communities for a generation or more, in time maybe triggering massive dislocation even conflict. And in every country there is the huge matter of how we pay for all the additional public expenditure. If we thought a decade of austerity in the UK had been tough – we must fear we ain’t seen nothing yet.

So we should never welcome this crisis or that it has happened. But we can and should very much seize the opportunity to try to do things differently, to shake things up and to build back better. Whilst the times are brutal what can we learn?

Wise heads have written powerfully – Julia Unwin on why emotions and empathy matter , David Robinson on how we need to invent the future we want,  Caron Bradshaw on why charity is not gentle, Sophia Parker on the stark realities of child poverty, and many more.

I will not repeat what they said.  I humbly offer 5 thoughts on things that matter and that we should be actively seeking to take forward as individuals, organisations, charities and communities who care:

1.     SOME REALLY BASIC THINGS NEED FIXING AND FAST.

We entered this pandemic underprepared with a public infrastructure that was creaking at the seams.

That we have come through as we have so far is a testament to the goodwill of those who work in our public services, but we have to do better. More hospital beds, equipment and staff is a bare minimum. Proper public health and preventative services is vitally needed. That 50% of those working in social care are on zero hours contracts and the majority are on the minimum wage is a scandal that has to change. Yes it has been positive to see Ministers make rapid changes to Universal Credit, benefit conditionality, Local Housing Allowance levels and to housing rough sleepers and releasing some prisoners – all changes that charities and others had been calling for for years, introduced overnight. But we should not get carried away, the bar was shockingly low and has risen only slightly. Our social security system is still threadbare with the rafts of cuts, caps and restrictions and the pernicious 5 week wait implemented over the last decade left in place and leaving people with not enough to live on; rough sleeping and wider homelessness had soared over the last decade and we incarcerate more people than the rest of Europe. We must get serious about turning all of this around and for the long term.

2.     WE NEED TO BETTER UNDERSTAND OUR SOCIETY AND ECONOMY AS AN ECOSYSTEM AND TO SUPPORT AND NOURISH IT AS SUCH.

Any ecosystem needs its different and constituent parts.

So of course this crisis has revealed that strong, well funded public services are the bedrock of a humane society and an effective response. But we also need effective and responsible businesses – the supermarkets and food supply chains have worked wonders to keep us fed, some great new partnerships have formed, such as British Gas’ work with Trussell Trust, and across the land businesses large and small have stepped in to support employees and wider communities, whether that’s chefs in top hotels making hot meals for key workers and vulnerable families or manufacturers making PPE or ventilators. We need both strong and well funded public services and a vibrant and responsible private sector. But we also need to sort out two things which have too long bedevilled us:  

• firstly we need to get much better as a country at doing things at the right level by the right people - so those in poverty should be supported by a strong benefits system run at the national level, not be reliant on local charity and foodbanks; whilst on the other hand when school meal vouchers need distributing or people who want to volunteer their time to be mobilised, this can be done much better at local level ,not through some top down central government private contract. And the fiasco around coronavirus testing highlights yet again that too often hitting a target, misses the point!

• Secondly, within this national and local ecosystem we have to better explain, understand and support our voluntary sector, not because charities have a right to exist, but because people and communities have a right to, need and expect the countless services that charities have come to provide – and indeed neither the state or the market can work without a strong civil society too.

3.     UNDERSTANDING AND SHAPING PUBLIC OPINION IS VITAL.  

Lockdown is tough, particularly for many, but it exists not just because the Government told us to but because people will it for themselves, their friends and family. Indeed the public were ahead of the Government, starting to take themselves away from public spaces, getting football matches cancelled before the Government said to. A few overzealous policeman may have grabbed the limelight but the bigger story is that millions of people have been themselves locking down, socially distancing and helping their neighbours, encouraged and driven by very simple messaging. With the right framing, arguments and narratives that tap into people’s instincts to protect themselves -  but yes also to care for others - people can be won over to behave differently. And as key worker s have been clapped, Captain Tom heralded and anger grown at the shortage of PPE we can see that people have an innate sense of fairness, of community, of right and wrong. And when people say “I feel for those stuck in cramped flats” we need to turn that empathy into action for better housing.

I completely recognise it isn’t easy, but too often as campaigners we make it so bloody complicated – we need to strip our causes back and open them up, giving people something they can themselves engage with, grip and share so that they just as actively work, call and vote for the fairer society we need.

4.     IF WE WANT TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD, WE CANNOT JUST WILL IT, WE HAVE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

I’ve read too many pieces saying “this crisis shows that we can’t just go back and we can do things differently”. Yes it shows we can, but it far from means we will. War analogies have been overblown in this crisis, but one that I think is really important is reflecting on how a new and different society was built here in the UK after the Second World War ended. Looking back now it seems inevitable that the horrors of war were followed by the creation of the NHS and the welfare state at home and the United Nations and many other institutions at international level. But they didn’t just happen, they did so because people put in the ground work, made and won the policy and practical arguments and political case from town halls, through trade unions, cooperative societies, charities and a range of formal and informal activities to Parliament. They persuaded the public of the case for shared sacrifice for a better society, how it could be done and the public in turn willed and voted for it. This led to a new consensus of what constituted a good society and economy which generally lasted for several decades whichever Government was in post.

So we who will a better world need to be putting in the hard graft now to build the practical, policy and political cases for the changes we seek and persuading people to make it happen.

This effort needs to engage all sectors of society but it must engage particularly with young people  - for them the Spring of 2020 will not be one they forget in a hurry and, I will wager, will shape their attitudes for the rest of their lives, making them more amenable to shared sacrifice and protective of the NHS and desiring of something much better at the end of the rainbow.

5.     FINALLY FROM THE MACRO OF BUILDING A BETTER NATION AND WORLD RIGHT DOWN TO THE MICRO. THIS CRISIS HAS REVEALED THE MULTIPLE ROLES WE EACH INDIVIDUALLY PLAY AND NEED TO PLAY.

If you are an intensive care doctor or nurse then your work will rightly be pretty much 99% of your focus, caring for patients under extreme circumstances. But for most of the rest of us we have had to wear multiple hats and play multiple roles. So personally I am a father, a funder, a husband, a manager, a brother, son, a neighbour, colleague, chair of charity trustees and school governor. During this crisis we can’t get by doing just one of those roles all of the time, we have to do all of these roles at least some of the time. It’s not just about accepting kids joining you on Zoom calls (important thought that is!) but about ensuring genuinely changes and adaptations are made to include people who are disabled or caring, who live outside London or need to be included in different ways. It means recognising that popping out for an hour in the middle of the day to buy shopping for your neighbour is something good. And that even when this “is over” that we should ensure that we keep asking people how they are, how they are feeling and wishing them to keep well as real and genuine sentiments.

Never again should people force us to choose just one or the other part of our lives. As Shakespeare might have said we must “to thine whole selves be true”

The task before us is huge. We have to fight this accursed virus, work to mitigate the damage that it and lockdown has and will wreak and then build a better society and local communities. At the start of this year no one could have envisaged what was about to hit. But maybe we have been talking about 20:20 hindsight for a reason.

It falls to us now in this year, 2020, this generation to take this cruel and twisted disease to seize the opportunity to envisage, work for and achieve a better, fairer, stronger society. Do I think we can do it? Quite honestly I don’t know and I would be a fool not to have grave doubts, but Goddamit we will never forgive ourselves if we do not try.

Duncan Shrubsole is Director of Policy, Partnerships and Communication at the Lloyds Bank Foundation. @duncanshrubsole