It was in 2011 that Home Group, one of the UK’s largest providers of housing and supported housing services, first got involved with Spring Online. With no computers in their sheltered schemes at that time, a manager within their older persons’ service identified the campaign as a great opportunity to begin to bring their residents online.
Five Spring Online events were organised, one per day throughout the week covering both the North East and North West including Sunderland, Newcastle and Cumbria. The team went equipped to each site with four laptops, a mi-fi device, keyboards and a monitor and organised one hour sessions throughout the day with one helper per computer.
From dancing to dresses
Many of the residents who took part had never seen computers before and were intrigued to give it a go. Others came with more specific ideas of what they wanted to learn such as emailing relatives overseas. The activities ranged from researching local ballroom dancing lessons to perusing dresses on the M&S website to looking up places where people used to live. One lady used to visit Italy regularly and was delighted to be able to search the internet for pictures of the places she had seen and then print them off to take home.
With tea and biscuits aplenty, each day was a very social occasion which culminated in a red carpet do where every learner was presented with a certificate as an acknowledge of what they had achieved. The hustle and bustle in each scheme meant also that it attracted much attention from other residents and visitors who then subsequently wanted to get involved and get online.
How five Spring Online days became 30!
In total around 100 residents were helped to ‘spring online’ that week. Such was the positive impact of the week’s activities that many of the other Home Group schemes who had not participated now wanted a piece of the action.
This spurred the Internal Support team on to develop and extend their Spring Online formula into a model that could be applied across the country and throughout the year. Other parts of the business were enlisted to support the rollout, from HR to central support. In total, around 650 sessions across 43 days have so far been held, helping an estimated 600 residents from Scotland to Essex, Middlesbrough to West Sussex.
As the activities progressed the approach to the digital learning sessions got slicker. Realising how popular genealogy was among residents, the team bought a licence for a family history website so that everyone could have a chance to explore their ancestry. Such was the proven success of the sessions that it became easier to enlist volunteers and young people from the Group’s Care and Support service came forward to help. This group of people who had been tackling personal issues such as homelessness and mental health illness found that getting involved helped to develop their confidence and social skills. The older residents also enjoyed and thrived on the interaction with the ‘youth of today’.
Award winners!
By the time Spring Online 2012 came along Home Group’s digital literacy activities were truly flourishing. The number of the events they ran through the week doubled from the previous year and this time were held in both the North and the South. Local schools got involved and the social element of the events reached a whole new pitch with a Big Band/Swing theme. Residents who had taken part in 2011 came along, many of which now had their own laptops as a result of attending a previous Spring Online taster session. Such was the overall success that Home Group was named as Joint Runners’ Up in the Best Event Awards 2012 receiving a certificate of achievement from Esther Rantzen, read more here.
A true culture change
Fiona Lowry, Internal Support Field Support-Coordinator at Home Group said: “Helping residents to get online was something we had been very keen to do and taking part in Spring Online gave us a great way to kick it off. It gave us the hook we needed to engage the organisation and the suggested learning exercises were a good starting point for the sessions with the residents. The success of that week was greater than we could have dared hope for and the wider interest it prompted showed us how far reaching these taster activities could really be.
“As more events have been held and more and more residents have been helped we have seen a true culture change here at Home Group. Now our care and support service has permanent internet access, all of the older peoples’ communal areas have two laptops in them and our working relationships are much stronger, both internally and with the local community. We hope to emulate that success even further with 2013.”
So you see, holding a Spring Online taster event is not just about that one day or that one hour, it’s about the difference it can make and the potential it offers for the months and even years that follow. To find out how you can get involved this year visit our website and register your event today!