What works: Lessons from the frontline of digital support & advice services
Government and essential services have fundamentally changed. More and more services have gone digital, meaning that the problems people face often require digital support. But between 14 and 22 million people in the UK face one or more barriers to digital services.
In response, Citizens Advice have set up digital support services, both as part of our daily work, and as dedicated outreach and support. This report summarises 5 key things we’ve learned about providing effective digital support:
- Help people with the tasks they want to do, instead of offering ‘digital skills’
- Empower people to do tasks themselves.
- Run outreach services to meet people where they are
- Build trust over time with face to face support
- Offer digital support side by side with other services, such as advice.
These lessons are drawn from a combination of 4 local service visits, adviser surveys, interviews and focus groups and 800 evidence forms relating to cases where clients faced digital exclusion issues.
Citizens Advice is one of many organisations offering vital digital inclusion support. Many services have been funded by health bodies or via the UK Government’s Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund. Whilst these have provided valuable support to trial new and innovative approaches to digital inclusion, these funds are often short term in nature, leaving uncertainty around the future of support.
We call on UK Government to consider long term sustainable funding options to support local digital inclusion services.