2013-05-23T22:42:06-04:00 Sarah Hamilton-Fairley http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=sarah-hamiltonfairley Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sarah Hamilton-Fairley Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1138492 2011-12-09T04:35:45-05:00 2012-02-07T05:12:01-05:00

Sarah Hamilton-Fairley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hamiltonfairley/
However, despite successful efforts to encourage more people to get online there is still a significant portion of the population that remains digitally excluded.

The Oxford Internet Survey findings, released in October, showed that 23% of Britons had never used the internet. Retired people are the least likely internet users, with only 37% online. They are also the least confident, with 45% nervous in case they break something.

Disability remains a key source of digital exclusion with only 41% of disabled Britons using the internet - about half that of non-disabled (78%).

Sadly, digital exclusion and social exclusion go hand in hand.

It should be easy for everyone to access the services they need. The exodus of services from the real world to digital realms is not going to help those families and individuals who are not online. Instead, there is a danger it will make them even more excluded and disadvantaged.

David Cameron has stated: "We need to ensure people aren't being left behind as more services and business move online. I believe there's a real danger that they are and that the implications of this are extremely serious."

Technology should make accessing information simpler, but that is not always the case. Research by Ofcom in 2009 revealed that only 15% of people in deprived areas had used a government website. Of those who had, many found it inaccessible because they didn't have the skills to use it effectively.

Local authorities have a crucial role to play in supporting vulnerable citizens. However, research by the Local Government Information Unit (2010), commissioned by StartHere, found that 85% of local authorities admitted having difficulty in contacting the following groups: vulnerable families, Black Minority Ethnic (especially older people in these groups), young people, NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training), young offenders, young carers, older people with disabilities, older housebound people, asylum seekers, migrant workers, travelling communities, the homeless, ex-offenders on release, ex-servicemen and women, and people for whom English is not their first language.

That the government has recognised the undeniable link between digital and social exclusion is fantastic, but more needs to be done to make vital services accessible to the most vulnerable members of society - and to get them online.
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Sarah Hamilton-Fairley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hamiltonfairley/
These latest unemployment numbers paint a truly awful picture for young people negotiating an already fiercely competitive jobs market in Britain today.

The young unemployed are Britain's abandoned generation - excluded from the jobs market in a brutal economic climate.

But equally as fundamental is that, as well as being out of work, today's youth don't know where to turn. The lack of direction is almost as serious as the lack of jobs.

We all know how it feels to leave education, whether that's school or university, and feel daunted by the big wide world of work.

The reality is that most young people are not expecting to sponge off the state, they really do want to be employed, but the are few jobs and many applicants. And nowhere near enough support to help them get the training and experience and advice they need to get that all-important first job.

I'm not saying Britain's young unemployed need spoon-feeding, because initiative is a crucial attribute for an employee, but some level of guidance on how to navigate the jobs market would be welcome, as would clearer information on the benefits of seeking employment in order to inspire the young generation to find work.

Young people leave school and university and while they have learnt a lot, what they haven't learnt is the skills required to find employment. It's up to us to teach them those skills and give them the support they need.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1067138 2011-11-02T19:00:00-04:00 2012-01-02T05:12:01-05:00

Sarah Hamilton-Fairley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hamiltonfairley/
We have known for a long time that offenders tend to have a wide range of problems, including poor mental health, drug and alcohol misuse and low levels of literacy and numeracy.

But by far the most interesting finding in the report, in my opinion, was that the young offenders surveyed said having a job would stop them reoffending - but that they did not know who to contact to prepare for the jobs market ahead of, and after, leaving prison.

What's clear is that addressing all these problems, social, health and jobs-related, is key to reducing the risk of offending and reoffending after release. If not, we will be simply be talking about the same thing in years to come.

With the current cost of keeping someone in prison around £40,000 per year, there is a financial as well as a societal reward to reducing reoffending, too.

At any one time, there are in the region of 70,000 offenders on short-term sentences whose lives can be turned around, but if their problems go unaddressed there is a significant chance that they will go on to reoffend. And so we enter a vicious circle.

The irony is that there are numerous organisations and services across the country that can provide vital support and the necessary information about the types of help available.

Information should be provided automatically, as part of the rehabilitation process, within prisons and continue on release through probation and in the community. As well as helping support offenders it would save huge amounts of time for offender managers. But often it is not.

The problem, all too often, is that this information is gathered in a random and unstructured way across the country. The resultant duplication wastes huge amounts of money and doesn't help, as this evidence shows, these vulnerable youngsters connect to the organisations that could offer the necessary support.

What is needed is a standard way of collecting and maintaining a comprehensive database which is accurate and up-to-date and which serves the whole country.

It requires collaboration at both national and local levels between key organisations, principally the third sector ones, who are already working in this area. What's encouraging is that the Ministry of Justice are also keen to learn how this might work to best effect, both within the prison environment and beyond.

In future, the hope is that we can support young offenders by providing signposting services and quality information before they leave prison, because this infrastructure is unfortunately not in place and urgently needs to be.
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Sarah Hamilton-Fairley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-hamiltonfairley/
It's been said that the idea is slowly being jettisoned, brushed under the carpet, but as yet nobody is really quite sure. In the next few days, we'll almost certainly find out.

The problem, of course, is that nobody really understands what the Big Society is, other than a pastiche of concepts, economic, political and philanthropic.

Or, depending on your position, a euphemism for Big Cuts.

Perhaps the only thing that is certain, and which most people would agree on, is that it's about people, organisations and communities driving things -- rather than the state. Whatever those things are.

In my opinion, the problem is that people, the Government, maybe even the keenest apologists of the Big Society, have over-conceptualised it, have looked for complex ideas and ideals that do not exist, and do not even need to exist.

Why so? Because the reality is that the Big Society already exists, it's there, it's happening now. It's just a case of helping people and communities -- and indeed the Government -- to find it.

We can only talk about the Big Society from our own experience, of course. And in our experience, there are tens of thousands of voluntary and community organisations providing vital services in neighbourhoods across the country each and every day.

This is the Big Society in action, just not in words. These countless organisations, local and 'hyperlocal', do not go under a single banner or think of themselves as part of any government initiatives. They just get on with the important work they're doing.

But what they lack, and what prevents them from being the Big Society, is any real and coherent framework. They're the Big Society in everything but name.

So the key issue for us it not whether the Big Society exists -- we feel it does -- but rather that the Government needs to put in place an infrastructure, a framework, call it whatever you will, that somehow links it all up.

To some extent, we're trying to do exactly that ourselves -- albeit on a smaller scale. At StartHere, we try to help the most vulnerable people in our society navigate the maze of statutory and voluntary organisations that are there to help them.

We do this by aggregating knowledge and data from thousands of support services across the country and present it in the form of a constantly updated platform that people can use to find the elements of the Big Society that they need.

Marcel Proust said that 'the real voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes".

Following on from this, maybe the challenge for the Government is to see what is already there, just in a new way, rather than imagine what is not. ]]>