The first story TFN wrote about coronavirus (hardly anyone called it Covid-19 at that point) was – aptly, it would turn out – about the effect of what was then ‘just’ an outbreak could have on mental health.
That was on 13 February last year. After that our coverage marked the terrible progression of the virus – nothing more for a few weeks till 3 March (a story about the possible implications for carers), and then suddenly, it was daily.
A look through our website’s story archive shows how what had at that point been declared a pandemic began to impact on society and our sector with speed and ferocity.
In TFN, fears for fundraising led to stories about big events being cancelled, warnings about the effects on our workforce, fears about how it would hit the homeless, pleas by charities for more hand sanitiser and to stop panic buying, calls for PPE, demands on government for action, worries about the impact on the most vulnerable.
Chillingly, as it would turn out, there was a warning about the effect on care homes.
This was all in the period of Wednesday, 4 March to Wednesday, 11 March.
TFN tries to cover the breadth of what the voluntary sector does, so even this limited, week-long snapshot provides a startling indication of the broad front we found ourselves suddenly fighting on.
Not just for a week, but for a year and for the foreseeable future. It hasn’t let up, and it won’t.
Over the past year we’ve seen income streams, already squeezed, dried up as many traditional means of fundraising stopped. Charity shops closed, mass events fell.
Volunteer numbers collapsed – and staff had to adapt to home working when they weren’t furloughed. Many lost their jobs.
In social care, there were a whole raft of problems around issues of basic safety – life and death issues for staff and service users.
Every crisis represents a sharpening of contradictions – and with Covid we saw a huge increase in demand for what charities do, everything from emergency food to alleviating the mental health crisis which has built over the year, hinged with a contraction of charities’ capacity.
Organisations and individuals had to think fast – and on their feet. And we’re getting through it. We have truly seen the best of the sector over the past 12 months.
More contradictions – as people’s social lives and living spaces contracted, so the need they felt for community increased. Civil society, as the community sector, was able bridge this.
Society hasn’t collapsed – it has changed and as people look to make something better than what was there before they have been looking to civil society and the voluntary sector as a model, from neighbourhood self-help groups to pioneering ways of flexibly re-sculpting the working day and reframing our relationship with work.
But it’s been tough, often heartbreaking. Any positives gained over the past 12 months find their obverse in the scale of human misery.
Both of these sides of the pandemic experience must shape how we go forward.
In this month’s TFN we have taken a look over 12 months of the pandemic – and have also looked at wellbeing.
As stated earlier, this is apt as our very first story on the subject was about this.
TFN will write many more Covid stories. That is sobering.
But there’s a huge amount of hope to be taken from this, as it shows how the voluntary sector continues, battered but still fighting and changing lives for the better every day.
And it shows how human and community solidarity endures, despite and sometimes even because of the ravages of disease and disaster.
Graham Martin is editor of TFN.
