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Blog posted by: Vicky Album, Tuesday, 24 April 2018.

Want to be part of our campaign to embed digital skills in service delivery? Become a partner in our Reboot 2018-19 project, in association with the Good Things Foundation.

This April Homeless Link is re-launching Reboot, our digital project in collaboration with the Good Things Foundation and Mind, aimed at ensuring people experiencing homelessness can access all the opportunities that are available in the digital world.

Our new partners will help us to build networks with their local partners, assisting us to make changes to digital inclusion across their local communities. You can read about the new project and apply for grant funding by 15 May via our Reboot project page.

Alison Nolan at Wintercomfort in Cambridge describes their experience of taking part in Reboot last year.

“A big success of Reboot was sharing digital skills in a more casual way. We now have laptops and tablets on the centre floor. This means we are able to support service users with short interventions; perhaps reminding them of skills learned previously, finding out information or giving them support in a less intimidating environment than a classroom.

“For our service users, it is often this lack of pressure, casualness and informality that works best. We have a huge number of service users who are living on the streets at the moment and building relationships with them is paramount. So to be able to engage with them briefly, in a way that is helpful to them and stress-free, is enormously useful.

“Among other things, we can quickly help them find information. We can also keep them entertained, manage their health appointments, get contact information and teach them to do it all for themselves easily, while they don’t have to commit to turning up to a lesson.

“Sessions that focus on their interests have also had some great results.

“Digital Photography was very popular with those who participated. It enabled us to explore the city and the environment in a positive way, forgetting about homelessness and concentrating on the beauty around us and the technical side of photography. A local mental health team even asked if some of the photos taken could be included in their new service leaflets, which greatly boosted morale.

“We have also changed how we work in the more formal ‘computer room’ setting. We have always supported our service users to be able to find work, but we have been guilty of rushing through things, often doing the work for them, rather than supporting them to learn how to do it for themselves. The temptation is that you can work more quickly if you do things yourself, but this doesn’t help the service users in the long run and makes them very dependent on staff.

“To change this, we altered the emphasis of the sessions (and our monitoring) to focus on what the learners had been taught, rather than the results of their job searching. We also renamed the sessions to include the word ‘digital’. These small changes shifted the focus and reinforced the message that the learners needed to do things for themselves in order to progress.

“We have discovered that the learners have since become more confident in supporting other learners. As they have gained confidence using the internet for themselves, there have been far more incidences of people suggesting good sites to use and highlighting jobs found, both during sessions and in more casual conversations.”

Learn more about becoming a Reboot UK partner here: www.homeless.org.uk/reboot-uk. The application deadline is 15 May 2018.