100% Digital Leeds has supported residents of Westward Care’s Southlands Retirement Apartments to partner with Leeds Older People’s Forum and Leeds tech company Axiologik, to improve residents’ digital skills and confidence. Southlands Retirement Apartments is a collection of retirement apartments situated in Roundhay in the north of Leeds. These self-contained apartments allow older people to lead an independent life and run their own home while also having the option of care and support should they need it.
With support from Leeds Older People’s Forum’s Digital Inclusion Officer and corporate volunteers from Axiologik, residents have developed their digital skills and confidence to make better use of their digital devices, increasing their independence.
“The sessions have been very helpful, I’ve found out things that I didn’t know my phone could do. We had a power cut here the other day and I thought I know what I can do, I have a torch on my phone!”
Margaret, resident of Southlands Retirement Apartments
Understanding the needs of residents
100% Digital Leeds was contacted by a resident at Southlands Retirement Apartments who was interested in replicating the digital skills activity that had taken place at Headingley Hall. He had recognised a need for digital support for the residents of the retirement apartments and knew that they would benefit from receiving help with digital tools and technology, but didn’t feel like he had the confidence or skills necessary to deliver the sessions himself.
“Being the youngest, everyone was asking me questions all the time when they were getting stuck with using their phones. I use digital a lot, I know the basics but I don’t know everything. Quite early on I asked Westward Care if they had any contacts that could support with digital as some of the questions I couldn’t answer. A lot of residents need support with the basics of emails and messages.”
Mick, Residents’ Representative, Southlands Retirement Apartments.
100% Digital Leeds visited Southlands and spoke to the group about the personal barriers they were experiencing to getting online and what they felt was important to them. Residents spoke about their lack of confidence with digital tools and technology, concerns about scams and fraud, and confusion about passwords and apps.
It became clear that access to equipment and connectivity was not an issue, as many residents owned a smartphone or tablet. However, some residents were not making full use of the ‘smart’ features of their devices, so not realising the potential benefits of digital.
“A lot of the residents own a smartphone but only use it as a phone and don’t know what else they can do with it. People were very keen to maintain contact with their families, particularly the people living alone. A lot of residents have been bought tablets by their family too, they maybe know how to receive and send a message and take a video call but that’s the extent of their confidence.”
Mick, Residents’ Representative, Southlands Retirement Apartments.
Support from Leeds Older People’s Forum and Axiologik
100% Digital Leeds facilitated a partnership between Southlands and Leeds Older People’s Forum. Leeds Older People’s Forum is a network of third sector organisations working with and for older people. They partner with 100% Digital Leeds to facilitate the Older People’s Digital Inclusion Network, and they led on the development and delivery of Be Online and Stay Safe (BOSS), a project supporting older people more likely to face additional barriers to digital inclusion and media literacy, including cultural, language, and literacy barriers.
Leeds Older People’s Forum were awarded a UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) grant to appoint a Digital Inclusion Officer to increase digital inclusion for older people, and the organisations that support them. The Officer’s remit was to provide both digital skills support for participants and to support organisations to develop their own digital skills offer, to make sure that the digital inclusion work is sustainable.
Leeds Older People’s Forum’s Digital Inclusion Officer began delivering weekly digital skills sessions with the group. They followed the Be Online Stay Safe programme, to address the challenges faced by older people. The programme empowers older people who may be more susceptible to online scams to feel more comfortable and confident navigating the online world.
In addition, one-to-one troubleshooting sessions with individual residents helped to address specific digital concerns. This tailored, person-centred support was made possible by volunteers from tech company Axiologik, who brought additional skills and capacity to the session.
“Having the extra volunteer support means that I could do the generic training on basic digital skills, but then I’ve got support to deal with those other questions that might come up as well. For example, if one resident wants to know about voice notes it can distract the entire class, so this way they’re getting more out of the session and more person-centred support by having that one-to-one help.”
Sam Haggart, Digital Inclusion Officer, Leeds Older People’s Forum.
The volunteers from Axiologik were highly valued by the Southlands residents, for the skills and knowledge they were able to share but also for their patience, words of encouragement and personal interest in the group. The residents enjoyed meeting new people, learning valuable new skills, and seeing new faces in the apartments.
“Having the Axiologik volunteers coming in has been great, they bring a different perspective.”
Mick, Residents’ Representative, Southlands Retirement Apartments.
“If I was teaching on my own, the maximum I could probably teach is about three people. So having more people to support means that more people could access the sessions. And then when volunteers are partnered up with the same people every week you can form a relationship with that person and you get to understand their learning level and how they learn as well. Also, taking the time out of your day to come along and join in a session means so much to the residents.”
Sam Haggart, Digital Inclusion Officer, Leeds Older People’s Forum
Improved digital skills and confidence for residents
Some residents were already engaged with digital, but were struggling with particular issues, which caused frustration. One resident, Patrick, was supported with a one-to-one session to get him properly registered on PATCHS, which is the digital tool used to contact their local GP practice.
“When I originally registered myself and my wife on PATCHS the system confused the two of us because we share one email address. So whenever I tried to log into PATCHS it couldn’t distinguish between myself and my wife. Sam was able to sort me out and make sure that we were both registered with different email addresses which made it far easier. I can get messages to the doctors now and when my wife fell out of bed I was able to send a message straightaway to the doctor, I got an acknowledgement that it had been received and the doctor came that afternoon.”
Patrick, resident of Southlands Retirement Apartments.
Residents unsure of how they might benefit from digital were also encouraged to think about how they could use their digital devices in a way that made sense to them and their own individual circumstances and priorities. The Digital Inclusion Officer and volunteers had conversations with the participants to see what digital tools and resources were meaningful to each resident. They aimed to find the motivational ‘hook’ for residents who lacked an understanding of how they could benefit from using their device.
“David really didn’t like using his device, he didn’t even want to do the BOSS exercises. So I said we can look at the real basics, for example would you use your torch? You know, if you were to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? And he said, oh, actually, that’ll be really useful because the light switch is on the other side of my room and I don’t want to fall. So he knows how to use his torch now and can now go to the toilet in the middle of the night without any accidents.”
Cat Hardy, Talent Partner, Axiologik.
The Digital Inclusion Officer and volunteers then supported residents to expand their digital skills and knowledge.
“One of the residents put a reminder in for her grandson’s football training, so that she would remember to text and ask how it went. And it’s just about staying in touch but being anchored to your family is really important. Another lady wanted to send voice notes. That’s all she wanted to do, practising week by week sending voice notes to her family, which was a game changer for her because she had arthritis in her hands. The voice notes for someone who can’t type is hugely important for staying in touch with family. Another resident wanted to have repeated calendar invites in her phone to remind her about her daily activities to make her feel busy and give her a reason to get up in the morning. She told me that if she has a reminder that she’s got an exercise class at half eleven, she’ll have a lighter breakfast that day. This was important and valuable to her and was motivation for using her phone.”
Karen Lewis, Account Manager, Axiologik.
The benefit of employee volunteering to Axiologik
Axiologik is a Leeds-based digital delivery consultancy business, delivering digital transformation for organisations including the NHS and the Home Office. The organisation is keen to work with organisations in Leeds through its Employee Volunteering Programme, allowing them to see the benefits for both the people they support and the organisation itself.
Leeds Older People’s Forum partnered with Axiologik after meeting them at a Digital Volunteering Matchmaking event held by Leeds Digital Volunteering Partnership. ‘Empowering communities’ is a key element of Axiologik’s Social Value Strategy, and their staff are encouraged to make use of the four days of paid volunteering allocated by the company’s Employee Volunteering Scheme.
“Cat and I had just joined a dedicated CSR committee within Axiologik to make a positive impact and positive difference and our commitment to social support is a huge part of our business. It’s embedded in our DNA, in terms of what we want to do for our team and the communities we serve and work in. It’s written into our contracts that we can have up to four days a year dedicated to support any initiatives that we feel we are personally or professionally aligned to. Sometimes we’re not aware of where we can make that positive impact. And so the timing [of the volunteer event] was beautiful because we wanted to make sure that we are actually driving value and driving the impact we want at an organisational level.”
Karen Lewis, Account Manager, Axiologik.
The member of staff who was particularly interested in volunteering lived locally to the home and was keen to support an organisation in her local area. She could also see the huge benefits they were able to provide to Southlands with their capacity and expertise for only a few hours of volunteering a week.
“Southlands is my local community, I live half a mile from them. I’m in the neighbourhood. On a human level there is a really rewarding feeling to volunteer your time, something that is an hour of our week, which was not very long at all but it was really appreciated by the group. Our time is valuable, but time is the one thing we as an organisation can lend. We have knowledge and experience and are able to support with interventions that non digital organisations would really struggle with, and might have to pay to get someone in to deliver for them. Our lending of skills for a day is relatively inconsequential time wise, but it has a big impact on the organisation that we are supporting.”
Karen Lewis, Account Manager, Axiologik.
Axiologik have worked with the NHS on driving digitisation of health services including digital interventions like PATCHS. Staff reported that volunteering to support people with low digital skills and confidence was extremely valuable. It allowed them to see the results of their digital transformation work in practice. Supporting the end user to access the products they developed gave staff greater understanding of the impact those interventions have on digitally excluded communities.
“Volunteering with residents at Southlands has increased our understanding of the communities of older people who need support to access those services.”
Karen Lewis, Account Manager, Axiologik.
Next steps
The temporary support from Leeds Older People’s Forum and Axiologik has given Mick the confidence to continue supporting his fellow residents as a volunteer ‘Digital Champion’.
Having the Be Online Stay Safe modules and learning resources has given Mick a framework which he will continue to follow.
“I couldn’t see a way of helping the residents with all of their digital issues before Sam started the BOSS sessions. Having the BOSS resources means that in between the formal sessions if anyone has a question for me I have exercises I can use to support them, as a refresher to continue to practise their digital skills. Going forward I’d like to run a session once a month as we get new residents in. I’d like to see digital inclusion support be embedded across the home”
Mick, Residents’ Representative, Southlands Retirement Apartments.