50 chasing every vacancy
RHONDDA Cynon Taf has been named one of the areas of the UK worst hit by unemployment as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 50 unemployed people chasing every vacancy, a study suggests.
RHONDDA Cynon Taf has been named one of the areas of the UK worst-hit by unemployment as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 50 unemployed people are chasing every vacancy in parts of the UK, a study suggests. New research shows the worst-hit areas cover 11 local authorities including Rhondda Cynon Taf, as well as Broxtowe, Bolsover, and Telford.
It’s reported former industrial and inner city areas are seeing an average of 20 people claiming unemployment-related benefits for every job vacancy, up from around four people per vacancy before the coronavirus crisis began.
Contrastingly, the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) said in more affluent areas of England it is estimated there are on average five unemployed people chasing every job.
Tony Wilson, director of the IES, said: “This crisis has affected all parts of the economy, but it’s clear that it is hitting some places harder than others.
“Many of these areas were struggling before this crisis began and are in even more trouble now.
“We need to be doing much more both to support employment demand in the short term – for example by cutting employer National Insurance – and in the longer term to support new industries and jobs.
“There are tentative signs that hiring may now be starting to pick up as businesses start to reopen, but these are very early signs.
“New vacancies are still at barely a third of the levels they were a year ago, and there’s a lot of people working fewer hours than they’d want or wondering if they will have jobs to go back to after furlough.”
The study also indicated there were tentative signs that the hiring market may be starting to recover, with the number of newly notified vacancies in the second week of June reaching 106,000 – nearly double the number for the last week of May.
More than a third of all vacancies advertised are now in health, education and social work, compared with just one in five before the crisis began.
Dave Innes, head of economics at the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation, which funded the study, said: “This research shows parts of the economy where workers are at the highest risk of poverty, such as restaurants and non-food retail, are being hardest hit by the outbreak.”
Minister for employment, Mims Davies added: “We know it’s a challenging jobs market for many at the moment and some sectors have been hit particularly hard.
“That’s why we’ve taken unprecedented action to support our economy during this emergency, protecting millions of jobs and thousands of businesses through the furlough scheme, grants, loans and tax cuts.”
MORE than 1,000 hospital patients were discharged to Welsh care homes without having a test in the first months of the coronavirus outbreak.
An investigation by the Cynon Valley Leader revealed that 1,097 patients were discharged from hospital to care homes without a test during March and April this year.
A care home owner has told us that during this time they were put under pressure to take patients being discharged from hospital – despite their own fears that it would bring the virus into their facilities and put the elderly people in their care at risk.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 713 people with coronavirus in care homes have died in the start of the pandemic – nearly a third of the 2,317 deaths in Wales linked to Covid-19 recorded by June 5.
There have been calls for inquiries into how the virus was allowed to get into care homes and spread so widely – and why rules that would have protected residents were brought in so late.
It was not until April 29 that the Welsh Government decided to test all people being discharged from hospital in Welsh care settings – until then it had only been those patients who had displayed symptoms.
And it was not until May 16 that all care homes were allowed to request testing – until then it was only those that had seen previously confirmed cases.
Nigel Clark, owner of Alma Lodge and Baglan Lodge care homes near Port Talbot said he was under intense pressure to take discharges from hospital into his homes during this period.
Mr Clark said this pressure came after he refused to take anyone without a test.
He said: “We decided on the official day the lockdown started.
“We had been told to stop visitors coming in that week. We decided that if family members can not come in the home we can’t take others without a test.
“The residents are so vulnerable. They [Welsh Government] would only give a test on people showing symptoms. We took the decision because of the risk of them being asymptomatic.
“There was pressure. We were under tremendous pressure to take people from the hospitals.
“One of our resident’s children lives opposite the home. To tell them they can’t see their family but take people without a test would have been unacceptable.”
In total, during March and April this year, 1,097 patients were discharged from hospital to care homes without a test for coronavirus – 798 in March and 299 in April.
There were also reports from care home owners about their residents dying in unusually high numbers with no official explanation.
In late April, one care home in Newport said 15 of its residents had died in a single month. None had been able to get tests for the virus.
In total, there have been 2,592 people die in care homes in Wales since the end of February this year. In a normal year, that would be 1,602 deaths in care homes in that period.
It was not just hospital discharge processes that put patients in care homes at risk. The lack of testing available in Wales at that time put them at risk in other ways. This lack of testing was demonstrated in Mr Clark’s Alma Lodge Care Home in Taibach. Despite not allowing any untested admittance from hospital, the virus entered his home another way.
His staff were forced to self isolate with suspected
Covid-19 symptoms as they had not been able to get tests and he needed to bring in agency workers to keep caring for his residents.
None of the agency staff had been symptoms, but according to the owner, that is how the virus took root in Alma Lodge, because without tests there was “no way of knowing who was bringing the virus in”.
“On April 19 we had five members of staff test positive who were asymptomatic.” he said.
Though Mr Clark was able to keep the virus out of his other home, Baglan Lodge, he lost over a third of his sixteen residents at the Taibach care home in a fortnight.
First Minister Mark Drakeford defended the Welsh Government’s approach to keeping care
home residents safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking at a press conference from Cathays Park on Monday, Mr Drakeford insisted the Welsh Government followed the advice it was given at the time.
He said he did not have “the virtue of hindsight” when decisions on the Covid-19 crisis were being made.
“At every point we have followed the advice that we have been given about the right testing regime for people being discharged from hospital and going to care homes,” he said.
“Early in the pandemic the advice was to test symptomatic patients. Anybody who had symptoms was tested before they left hospital, and the advice early on was that the testing of people without symptoms would not have given useful outcomes that could have been used in making decisions about where people would be discharged to live.
“When the advice changed, we changed the practice. I think we changed our practice probably three times during the coronavirus crisis in relation to care homes.”