Building a strong approach to engage remotely with non digital users

Debby Mulling (Catalyst) Public Seen by 33

Summary of work	How might we better equip/prepare people who are digitally excluded, due to low tech access, skills or confidence, to access and engage with our support services remotely?
Loomio discussion period	7-12 of July
Loomio decision date	13 July
Date for kick-off call	12:00-13:00 July 22nd
Latest start date	3rd of August 2020
Expected contract length	4 Weeks
Budget range	Up to £10,000 for the digital partner(s)

About the work

Why the work is being done	This small cluster of two organisations have struggled during lockdown to equip/prepare digitally excluded users to actively access and engage with online service offers. Users have limited digital literacy, sometimes living in areas with poor broadband connection, and include stroke patients who have mobility and speech restrictions. We want to understand our audience better and know what tools or systems are best placed for building our engagement activities. Our activities include: 1:1 conversations, group conversations, building supportive communities (internal and external) that provide peer support.
Problem to be solved	The problem area is wide and includes: Building effective engagement approaches that meet the needs of our users and increase our reach to hard-to-reach groups. All tech used for our engagement activities needs to be easy to access and accessible to people with limited digital skills and devices.
Who the users are and what they need to do	As a stroke survivor with limited access and ability in using online tools, I need to access the information that was previously provided to me face-to-face by the organisation. As an isolated local resident with limited access and ability in using online tools, I want to be able to take part in conversations and groups that were valuable sources of support pre-lockdown. As a staff member/volunteer I need to create activities /facilitate conversations that are accessible, engaging and support community building during lockdown and beyond.
Expected outcomes for this work	Deeper dive to understand the shared challenge area and how this is experienced by the different user groups. Identification of key opportunities for shared approaches, tools or infrastructure to engage remotely with our users. Identifying other relevant projects and partners this group, or the individual members, could connect to. Broadly scoping a Phase 2 piece of work. A case study and/or other useful documentation to be shared with the sector.
Any work that’s already been done	This work forms a part of the support all organisations are receiving from Nesta. As a Cluster we have had an intro session to identify our joined challenge. This Miro Board captures our discussion.
Who the Digital Team will work with	At the kick-off session, reps from each charity will be present and we’ll agree on the lead point person from the cluster and the level of engagement from each partner.
How many days can your team commit to this project?	The lead organisation is expected to commit two days a week to this project. Involvement from the other organisations might vary and needs to be agreed as a team.

About the organisations	Stroke Association - Provide specialist support, fund critical research and campaign to make sure people affected by stroke get the very best care and support to rebuild their lives. This project is submitted by the Volunteering team, who coordinate volunteer-led peer support groups, deliver training, and devise innovative ways to bring clubs and groups together to share experience. Be Buckfastleigh - A collaborative community project with the people of Buckfastleigh to develop new activities and opportunities within the local area for people to connect, learn, be active, care and give. During COVID, the focus has shifted entirely to crisis response - pulling together health and wellbeing provision and ensuring engagement with isolated residents.

Partner skills and experience

Essential skills and experience

Data
- Needs assessment and audit
Design
- Service design
- User research & user story design

Digital
- Digital inclusion and accessibility specialism, experienced building online capabilities with people with low digital literacy or with restrictions in movement, mobility or speaking.
Maximising connection and relationships remotely.

Nice-to-have skills and experience

Experience in supporting community and individual empowerment
Experience working with nonprofits
Working with coalitions and partnerships

Reporting

List reporting requirements

Playback

Service recipe

Ben White Thu 9 Jul 2020 3:42PM

I'm signalling interest for a role I think should be included but isn't currently listed

We'd be very interested in this and culd pick it up as as an end to end project, though of course open to partnership working. We're currently working on a collaborative venture with 4 charity partners (one of whom is the Stroke Association) that aims to provide personalised information to people with complex health conditions.

Giselle Thu 9 Jul 2020 9:51AM

This one isn't quite right for me

Looking across other projects it looks like the same question applies to the "Remote onboarding" one and the "Strengthening communities" one.

Giselle Thu 9 Jul 2020 9:39AM

This one isn't quite right for me

There's a box for 'signalling interest in the data role', but I can't see any explicit outline of a data role. Pls correct me if I've missed it!

There's the data audit bit, but struggling to understand what this is or how it feeds into the other elements of the work. Is that the scope of the 'data role'?

Thanks :-)

Poll Created Wed 8 Jul 2020 1:06PM

Contribute to this Digital Team Closed Mon 13 Jul 2020 11:02AM

Outcome

by Ellie Hale (CAST / Catalyst) Mon 13 Jul 2020 12:29PM

Thanks for your input everyone! 🎉

To summarise, we have:

One partner interested in the whole project: @Ben White
One partner interested in the design role: @Darshan Sanghrajka
One partner interested in the relational design aspect of this project: @Matt (Deepr).

Since @Ben White has made a compelling case for their skills and experience in this field, and for leading this project as an end-to-end piece of work, and @Darshan Sanghrajka hasn't added any additional information, we feel it will be best for the project if the bulk of Discovery sits with Reason Digital. However, @Matt (Deepr) offers additional specialist expertise, and we think could provide additional value working in a small capacity on this project.