Month: January 2019

1 million supported, but we’re nowhere near finished

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Today we were delighted to announce that our Future Digital Inclusion programme, funded by the Department for Education (DfE), has helped over 1 million people, since 2014, to gain the basic digital skills they need for life and work. This has been the result of a great partnership with DfE, whose staff genuinely understand the wider social impact of basic digital skills on the lives of socially excluded people, and with thousands of hyperlocal community partners across the Online Centres whose special abilities both engage and support people in the heart of their communities for whom digital blended with great human face-to-face support is the lifeline they’ve been looking for.

It’s been an incredible journey to get here and I’ve met so many amazing people along the way. Here a few of them:

  • Bertram Henry was a learner in Manchester. He suffered a breakdown and could barely bring himself to leave the house. Eventually, he felt up to visiting the Jobcentre and they recommended he go along to his local Online Centre, First Asian Support Trust (FAST). He completed lots of courses on Learn My Way, improving his knowledge and confidence. Now he’s been able to find a job as well. Bertram says: “I feel bright in the morning now, because I’ve got somewhere to go, and something constructive to do. I’m not down in the dumps anymore”

Hear Bertram’s story, and how happy he was to win one of our 2 Millionth Learner Awards: 

  • Edith Ball from Preston learned digital skills at her local Online Centre – The Intact Centre. She was cautious about getting online but now there’s no stopping her – she’s using Skype and emails to talk to family abroad, surfing the internet to find out all sorts of information, and much more. She’s delighted with her new skills and is much less lonely as a result. Edith says: “Before I came here, I just sat in the house on my own, but coming to the IT classes brings me out of the house and gives me something interesting to do. I’m never bored and I enjoy everything I do there. I do still get a bit nervous using the computers but I would recommend it to anyone. The whole world is there online – you’ve just got to have the courage to go in and look!”

Hear more about Edith’s journey from the lady herself in this video, released as part of Get Online Week: 

  • Rory Whittaker from Lincolnshire is a young contract farmer. He learned digital skills with his local Online Centre Lincs Training to diversify his business in new and exciting ways, meaning he can be profitable all year round. Rory says: “For all businesses in today’s current climate, evolution is vital, and even more so if you’re a rural business. You don’t want to get left behind. You need constant financial and time investment and you need to learn how to do things more easily. I think the best way to grow a business is to find a model that works and apply it to what you know. Having great people and great projects supporting you like Rich and the team from Lincs Training makes that journey even better.”

See more of Rory’s story in this video, released as part of the Get Online Week campaign: 

An incredible journey

It has been a real journey to get to 1 million, made possible by the hard work and dedication of the 5,000-strong Online Centres Network. 80% of the people they’ve supported face some form of social exclusion, including poverty, low skills or a disability.

The programme has helped people to achieve a range of positive outcomes, with 86% of learners progressing to further learning, 76% increasing their employability, 60% improving their health and wellbeing, and 84% able to use public services online.

Our recently released Economic impact of Digital Inclusion in the UK report found that the benefits of learning digital skills are endless. From time savings (undertaking financial and government transactions online could mean an estimated value of £1.1bn saved by 2028), NHS savings (the more people that can use the online world to help manage their health, the more savings can be made – estimated at £141 million by 2028) and transaction benefits (being able to shop online, taking advantage of discounts and more, could collectively save people across the UK an estimated £1.1 billion by 2028).

Digital skills are so important in many aspects of life and reaching 1 million learners through the Future Digital Inclusion programme is an incredible achievement. I am so proud. Thank you to the Good Things team, the Online Centres Network, but most of all, the learners for being so brave and having the confidence to take that first step into online life.

There is still more to be done though. 11.3 million UK adults still lack at least one basic digital skill and 4.3 million have no digital skills at all. We will continue supporting Online Centres to help learners to make the most of the online world, but this is something that needs collaboration and, of course, the ‘F’ word (funding).

It’s not just about supporting people to be more digitally able and it’s not just about the new skills they’ve learned – it is what people can do with these skills that matters, and how they can apply them to their lives – to be digitally active – to apply for work for example, or to email a family member who lives far away, or join an online forum to help them lose weight and reduce their risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

At Good Things, we want everyone to be digitally equal – so they can participate in the digital society like others can and do. If people aren’t digitally equal, they’re excluded from an increasingly digital society. We don’t want this to happen – and so we’re campaigning for a 100% digital nation. These million people we’re celebrating today brings us that one step closer.

NHS Long-Term Plan: Prevention and saving lives through digital and in the community

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This morning, I got a letter from my doctor. I’m perfectly well, so it was a bit of a surprise to receive. The letter said (I paraphrase) that he hadn’t seen me for a while and he was wondering how I was getting on, that he knew I was busy and so if I preferred having a chat on the phone that would be fine. This has never happened to me before and asking around the team, it doesn’t seem to have happened to any of my colleagues either. Is this a new approach to preventing illness rather than just curing it? As it happened on the same day as the NHS’s Long-Term Plan, it definitely got me thinking about the importance of prevention and personalised care, and the role both digital and community support can play in this.

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Tim Brazier, our Head of Service Design, shows residents in Nailsea how they can use digital health resources, as part of the NHS Widening Digital Participation programme

The Long Term Plan really resonated with me. It’s great to see the level of ambition and the focus on digital, prevention and community. It’s really well thought through, it’s clear, and it should help to save lives. It has also made me realise (again) just how lucky we are to have a world class health service that’s free at the point of use. All praise for the NHS.

There are three big things that jumped out at me from the Plan: digital, prevention and community.

Digital, Prevention, Community

Digital, prevention, and community have been cornerstones of our approach over the last decade. We believe in a world where everyone benefits from digital, so it’s not surprising this is central to the work we do. And we achieve this through a movement of community-based organisations across the country who can tailor support based on the needs of the people they’re helping. By doing this, we are helping to prevent a range of issues – from loneliness through to mental health issues, poverty and a lack of skills. We’re preventing people from becoming even more excluded. I’m pleased that the NHS is recognising the importance and value of both digital and community, and the crucial role they can play in the prevention of illness.

Opportunities and risks

There is no doubt that digital technology offers huge opportunities to improve health and healthcare in the UK. But there is a word of warning to those who are hoping to build a digital-first service – and there are some hard lessons to be learned from the digitalisation of Universal Credit as we build a ‘digital first’ NHS.

The plan states that the NHS will ensure technologies work for everyone including people who are the most ‘technology averse’. But this is no simple feat. Digital First is a great ambition as long as it’s for everybody. Understanding and building services for those with no or very low digital skills is a huge challenge – but one that must be met in order to ensure that this ambitious plan can be realised.

A digital NHS for everybody

There are 11.3m people in the UK who do not have basic online skills such as being able to search for information, fill out a form or send an email. These people are more likely to be older, poorer and living with disabilities, to be at risk of conditions like type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety, and so it follows that they are more likely to need health services and support.

Our research shows that there is a complex set of digital and social barriers to people engaging with and using digital technology. Factors such as poverty, low literacy levels, lack of basic English skills, poor mental health and low confidence and self-esteem can all play a part. I want these people to enjoy a great health service and better health, as well as people like me who know how to navigate the health services I need (although my GP preferred letters and a chat over the phone.

The good news for Matt Hancock is that we’re here to help. I hope 2019 is the year that we can do just that, helping Matt, Simon Stevens, and their team to understand how to join up the hyperlocal informal health ecosystem and the formal work of the NHS. We really think we’ve discovered a way to blend the very human-centred support (offline) with the great online and offline formal support on offer from the NHS. Through our delivery of the NHS Widening Digital Participation Programme, working in partnership with local health systems, community and voluntary sector partners and national partners, we have been learning about the potential of technology to create the conditions where people feel more empowered to manage and improve their health and wellbeing and to access services where and when they need them.

Prevention in the community

It’s not just the NHS that has a role in helping people to find their own journey to better health and to avoiding potential health issues. We work with thousands of community partners, in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country, who are helping these people every day. Often this is about partnerships between the NHS and local community partners. Simon Harris, for example, has lost weight and reduced his blood sugar level by developing his digital confidence after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

In the first phase of our NHS Widening Digital Participation Programme (2013-2016) over 221,000 people were supported to go online and use digital health resources saving over £6m for the NHS in just one year and just by shifting the channel they used away from more expensive NHS support to the cheaper and more appropriate support channel – which might be online or the local pharmacist.

Over the last 18 months, we have supported a range of innovative pathfinders across the country, testing new ways of enabling some of the most excluded groups in our society to benefit from digital health resources. All the findings are available on our Digital Health Lab site.   

We worked with Stoke CCG to explore using social media to increase the uptake of breast cancer screening where early detection can significantly improve outcomes. The results saw a 13% increase in uptake of screenings in a deprived area, against a declining national trend.

We supported Nailsea Town Council to bring digital health to the high street developing a high street digital health hub  – connecting people with each other and with the digital resources they need to live well. One man living with dementia was able to learn how to use Skype to communicate with his family. As he was able to read visual signs, this was a much more successful way of communicating.

In Hastings, we worked with the Seaview Project and their partners to enable people who are sleeping rough to access the health services and information they need – resulting in a whole range of positive results which will have a preventative impact in the long term, including improving eating habits to help prevent diabetes to learning how to take blood pressure medication correctly.

The learnings from NHS Widening Digital Participation, and our wider digital and social inclusion programmes, show us that to fully harness the potential of a ‘digital first’ NHS for the most socially and digitally excluded people in our society, approaches to lifting barriers need to be person-centred, community-based and enabled through trusted relationships.

Launching the next five pathfinders

We are pleased to announce that in the next 18 months we will be spreading this hyperlocal digital health hub model in five more local health and care systems across the country;

North West London, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Staffordshire, Blackburn.

We’ll be stress testing what we’ve learned in other areas to see if this digital health hub model could be replicated and scaled up. There will be more news on our Digital Health Lab as these hyperlocal pathfinders get underway.

Better health for everyone: digital, prevention, community

So well done Matt, Simon and your hard-working teams. Well done for delivering a world-class health service every day for all of us. Well done for a great Ten Year Plan. Well done for consulting with people outside the NHS. But, I think you can do better. Let’s work for a truly hyperlocal health system that joins up informal and formal support – both locally and nationally – to help us build a digital health service, run by the NHS with the community. That will really be a world-class health system that works for everyone.