Data on the Covid-19 crisis for charities and funders
The current crisis poses many challenges to charities and funders. One of the most difficult challenges is determining which people and places need extra support now, and which might need support as the crisis develops. This will become particularly pertinent when we start to see some of the economic factors of this crisis take effect.
There are large amounts of data available from government and official sources, which tell us about the health and economic vulnerability of certain places and communities.
We have taken some of that data and built tables, which we hope are accessible to charities and funders. They help to show the places that are currently suffering the most from Covid-19, and those that have underlying factors—such as age, health and the economy—which may put them at risk.
In the first stage of this data release, we have also included data from our previous research on local charity density (you will see this in the tables labelled ‘Proportions’). We want to add more charity data, and data from other social organisations fighting the crisis, like mutual aid groups and social enterprises. We hope this will help to inform funders of where there may be gaps in local-level charity capacity, compared to some of the indicators of risk and need.
“This is a fantastic resource for charities of all sizes. It’s really great to see both the data and the analysis, and we look forward to seeing more of this as the project develops. It’s vital that all of us make the best use of data in our decision making as we strive to get through this crisis.” John Herriman, CEO, National Emergencies Trust
How to use the data
This project is a first step and we should be clear about what it is not. We have used a selection of factors—from health, age and the economy—but this is not intended to be a comprehensive data set. Nor is it intended to provide an index of the most affected or most vulnerable people and places in England. Therefore, at this stage, with the data we have, we do not think it appropriate to apply relative weightings to different health versus economic factors, to produce a one-size-fits-all risk map.
At present in the below tables, our data on the number of Covid-19 related deaths in each local authority comes from ONS data from 10 April. We will update our data tables with the latest ONS data when we launch our next iteration of this project. Or, for our most up to date data set, please download the updated full data set here. We use the ONS data because the data set accounts for deaths that have occurred not just in hospitals, but in care homes, other facilities, and in private accommodation. Figures are not released daily, like the Covid-19 cases data, but rather weekly.
What we want is for charities to look at the data or geographies which relate to their fight against Covid-19, and to think about whether it tells them something new, what they could learn if they had different data, or whether it doesn’t reflect their experience on the ground. Similarly, we want funders to think about the amount of charities in a place, and how the data squares with their own analysis of need and delivery capacity.
Download the full and updated data here.
Comments