Bridging the digital gap for charities’ clients in practice
SARAH BROWN, deputy CEO of CITIZENS ADVICE MID MERCIA, writes: Citizens Advice provides free confidential and impartial information, advice and support for everything from family disputes to debt and money problems. With the help of 338 individual charities, it does this from more than 3,300 community locations throughout England and Wales. CAMM is one of them – we serve people in South Derbyshire, Derby City, East Staffordshire, Tamworth and surrounding areas.
Since 2015, we’ve been offering digital training and support to our clients across Derbyshire using an accredited curriculum, “Learn My Way”. As paper applications and processes become a thing of the past, we knew that a lot of our communities could risk being left behind. There are numerous reports that highlight the impact of the “digital divide” on employability and recruitment for high level jobs.
Yet we mustn't forget the very real impact that lack of access to, or confidence in using, digital tools could have for people who cannot book appointments online, bank their money safely or access guidance on local council websites – all daily tasks we now often take for granted.
Identifying the need
Of course, these challenges are even more difficult to overcome when you have a physical disability such as being deaf. According to the Good Things Foundation,32% of people who are registered disabled are unlikely to have the most basic digital skills. And here in Derby, we have the second largest deaf community in the UK, outside London.
This, coupled with feedback from a number of local sources, such as our carer support service and other local agencies, made us realise that there was demand for specialised digital training. We had the expertise – we just needed the resources to be able to provide something that truly met the community’s needs.
Hub for deaf people
Building on the foundations of our existing digital training programme, using the “Learn my Way” curriculum, we created our Digital Hub – a free service to empower those who are deaf or hearing-impaired to become confident online.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones we monitor are in line with our charity’s wider goals of improving good physical and mental health, as well as relieving poverty and distress. Alongside measuring volume of referrals and sessions delivered, we also seek to assess each client’s digital confidence via feedback forms, while also measuring how our training is facilitating improved online interaction with others, reducing social isolation and increasing confidence to live independently.
Covering everything from the skills to manage money online to using public health services or searching for employment, we wanted this to be delivered by a digital project adviser who is proficient in British Sign Language (BSL) to break down barriers between deaf people and technology – this is where The Access Foundation came in.
Funding a clear focus
We already have dedicated resources to fund our existing digital projects, but they’re based in different geographical areas. The £30,000 grant from The Access Foundation helped us give the project as much focus as it required.
To allow us to measure the impact and outcomes and deliver the training in the most impactful way, we knew we had to launch an entirely separate project. Money was needed to recruit a specialist trainer for 30 hours a week, and also invest in equipment such as hearing loops, tablets and laptops to help us deliver the training into the community.
Other tasks such as creating an accessible web page to help clients access the training, as well as identifying regional training venues and promoting the service, were all essential costs required to ensure the Digital Hub would reach those that would benefit from it.
A flexible approach
I’m sure all leaders will agree that hiring is difficult in today’s climate, and searching for staff with specialist experience is particularly challenging. Due to our unique position, we had many direct links within the deaf community already, which made the process of finding the right person far easier.
Steph, our BSL digital adviser, is BSL level 6 trained and is already a familiar face within the local deaf community. She’s worked with us before in a previous role and adapted to this position instantly, which made the onboarding very smooth and allowed us to kick-start the programme far quicker. We were also able to adapt the direction of the hub using the ideas and thoughts she shared, based on her experience and knowledge of the community.
This flexibility even in the initial implementation stages, has been a key learning for us and we will continue to run on a very flexible model. Even after conducting initial research and interviews, we found that many preconceived ideas of what our clients would want to get out of the training were quite different to the reality.
By listening to our clients’ needs and adapting the training, we have now added a very specific webinar onto our programme to help people navigate through the Derby City Council website, helping them to pay council tax or apply for a blue badge – just one example of how a collaborative approach can help the end-user to make the most of the service and resources available.
100% satisfaction rate
Launching in January 2023, the service delivery commenced in March 2023. After the first six months of the project commencing, we had delivered 46 one-to-one sessions, supporting 30 individual clients, and reached around 1,200 people through social media and low level support.
To date, 50 new partners have been engaged to promote the project through referrals and four volunteers have been recruited to help deliver the project in more locations. 12 people have explicitly expressed an increase in digital confidence, and 31 clients have demonstrated improved skills in five key areas, while 87% of people expressed increasing confidence to live independently. We’re proud to have achieved a 100% satisfaction rate.
In the rest of 2023, we plan to secure more Derbyshire venues to deliver one-to-one sessions in wider locations, recruit more volunteers and improve accessibility of both our venues and the digital devices that we deliver training on.
We’re thrilled to be able to reduce digital barriers and frustration, and will continue to develop the Digital Hub to reach our goals. By teaching these practical skills, we’re giving people the confidence to live independently, access more services and remove any fear they may have over using something which is becoming more and more essential to everyday life as we know it.
PIERS McLEISH, trustee of THE ACCESS FOUNDATION, writes: The Access Group incorporated The Access Foundation in 2021 to enhance and expand the company’s ability to give back. Following a number of investment and equity cycles we were able to start awarding grants up to a total of £2 million every year by 2026.
I was delighted to be invited to be a founder of the foundation alongside two other trustees, and one of our first tasks was to agree on our three key funding pillars. It was important that two of these were focused around staff, which led to us creating our “charity of the year” pillar – chosen by employees – and our “staff sponsored” pillar which helps smaller charities with whom people have a direct connection.
Making a big impact
The third and biggest pillar was to “bridge the digital divide”, with the goal of supporting people who are digitally disadvantaged in any way. With our founders having such strong roots in software, this is an important area for us, and somewhere we hope to make a big impact.
With there being very little promotion we were taken aback by the volume and quality of applications that came through. As a grant-making organisation we were prepared to actively research relevant charities to seek where we could make the biggest difference, but they soon came to us.
Citizens Advice Mid Mercia sent in its application during the early stages of the scheme and we were impressed from the start. We want to know what tangible impact our funding will provide, and CAMM provided a well written and considered application. The outcomes were clear and we could immediately understand exactly what they wanted to achieve. Overall, it showcased a cohort of people who needed our help, and the application made us confident that they’d be able to successfully deliver that service.
Helping the highest number
We always assess each application on a case by case basis, but a common theme we look out for is services that are focused towards a clear cohort of people who truly need help. Financially, we want to find programmes that will help the highest number of people for the amount of funding granted. CAMM showed that with £30,000, more than 400 deaf people in their local area would have their lives improved in a very sustainable way. This made our investors very happy too.
This was the first “digital divide” grant we awarded to a charity which focuses on disabilities. Previously we’d worked with organisations which helped people who were struggling financially, so we were pleased to be able to work with a wide variety of causes and groups of people who are struggling with digital poverty.
A lot of people think the digital divide is about quite sophisticated things, but more often than not, charities need to help their communities do things like register with their doctor, apply for benefits or get on the register to receive local help that’s available. The improvements might appear quite basic, but they're helping a huge number of people.
