Herefordshire Council

We want our older population to remain active and independent, engaged in their communities, making the most of their skills through taking part in volunteering and confident in their ability to get out and about. We are keen to explore how assisted technologies can help, linking closely with health organisations in the county. Exploring digital tools to support safeguarding linking back to council services, providing alerts, sharing health check information and fostering connections. A strong element of the “discovery” will be to understand how the council’s aim of preventing older people needing social care intervention can be supported through maximising technology.

It is the older population who are less likely to use technologies, so we would like to include innovative ways of reaching people and methods of engagement and training. This would include working with existing networks, such as parish councils and voluntary sector, along with new connections in communities. This would involve testing best methods of engagement through community digital workers which would be provide useful shared knowledge. What we don’t want is for older people to miss out or feel excluded by the digital opportunities – instead to embrace digital as a tool to enable greater quality of life.