Category: DBS News and Advice

Recent cyber attacks on organisations as diverse as the NHS and EasyJet have shown just how vulnerable businesses are to attacks from organised hackers. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that companies across the world have been ploughing money into addressing the external threat. However, new research appears to prove that perhaps this investment is misguided, and that a greater threat is posed by the company’s own workers and management.

Lockdown hasn’t just affected those of us who have legal occupations. Police in the South-West of England have highlighted that the drugs trade has been affected too, with drug dealers having to become increasingly creative to move illegal drugs around and get them to users. Police in Plymouth tweeted a photograph of an evidence sack of envelopes, all addressed to individuals around the city who had ordered their illegal drugs to be delivered through the post, at a time where social distancing means that visiting people at home or meeting in the street attracts far more attention. The Police also pointed out that the penalties for receiving drugs in this way are exactly the same for being caught possessing drugs under other circumstances.

At the start of the Covid19 pandemic, there was endless press coverage about the army of volunteers who were stepping up to help the NHS. The idea was that they would carry out routine tasks, freeing up doctors, nurses and other health professionals to deal with patients. However, as restrictions begin to ease, all indications are that in pharmacies, volunteers have not been having the impact initially hoped for.

The launch of a new recruitment platform is set to revolutionise the way workers are recruited for key social care roles. The online platform is a joint venture between the UK government and a care recruitment portal and is called Join Social Care. Candidates interested in working in this field can register with the site, upload all of their information into the system and even upload a video interview which can be accessed by potential employees. The platform is also supported by Skills for Care and allows carers to access free training online to increase their chances of landing a job quickly.

A recent inspection of a care home in the north east of England saw the facility branded “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission. The inspection, which took place before the current coronavirus pandemic, highlighted several serious failings at Burbank Mews care home in Hartlepool. The facility cares for adults with learning disabilities and autism and was previously rated as a “good” in a previous inspection.

There are around 2,600 independent schools in the UK, providing education for 615,000 children. The sector is however coming under increasing financial pressure, partly due to schools closing through the Covid19 pandemic, and partly down to changes in government rules around tax breaks and charitable status for private schooling. One way of keeping revenue flowing could be widening access to sporting facilities, but this might not be as straightforward as it sounds.

Details are still beginning to emerge about the ongoing economic impact of the coronavirus. Despite the government’s furlough scheme providing a basic income for many, thousands of others have found that they don’t qualify for government support. It’s perhaps therefore no surprise that food banks in some parts of London are reporting that traffic through their doors has tripled since the start of the Covid19 outbreak.

As the UK starts to emerge from the coronavirus lockdown, focus is being directed towards the government’s strategy to test people to see who has the virus, and then track who they’ve been in contact with. A smartphone app will help with this process in some areas. In other parts of the UK, the system depends on contact tracers, whose job it is to speak to or email people who might be at risk. There’s a huge recruitment drive to get as many people as possible trained up. Here’s what you need to know if you think you’d be good at the job.

Even before schools across the country were closed due to the coronavirus outbreak, the online tuition industry was booming. At an increasingly early age, parents are starting their children working with tutors. Often, it’s to brush up on key skills before SATS testing, or to prepare for a senior school entrance exam. Other parents just don’t want their children falling behind and hire a tutor to deliver weekly lessons to reinforce the basics of numeracy and literacy. Increasingly, parents are turning to online tuition for both convenience and to cut costs on face to face lessons. But should we be concerned about how safe our children are during online tuition sessions?

Many of us have fond memories of our secondary school language exchange. It was a rite of passage for many British teenagers, who said Auf Wiedersehen, Adios or Au Revoir to their parents and headed off to spend a week with a host family in Germany, Spain or France before then hosting a foreign teen in their own home. But according to a recent report by the British Council, the school language exchange is becoming a thing of the past, and the decline is due to an increase in red tape.