News tagged 'communities work programme'

We are very pleased to be working with a fantastic set of well known and trusted organisations in the Tyne Tees TV region to make sure everyone gets the support they need to prepare for the digital TV switchover, which takes place in the region this September.

North Tyneside VODA, Wansbeck CVS, Age UK County Durham (pictured below), Tees Valley Rural Community Council and North Yorkshire and York Forum will be engaging local groups to support them to provide information and advice to end users. They will offer free training, access to a small grants scheme and free materials to local groups, enabling them to give advice to their end users at existing events and activities in the community about how to switch to digital TV and what help is available.

To reach people who don’t have contact with community groups and who are eligible for the Switchover Help Scheme, volunteers from Tees Valley RCC and Circles Network will work with trusted individuals in local communities, such as local shopkeepers and mobile hairdressers, who are aware of the people in their community who might need some extra support to access the Help Scheme.

The organisations have had extensive training from Digital Outreach, Digital UK and the Switchover Help Scheme, and are ready to start spreading the word!

If you are supporting people in the Tyne Tees region, please get in touch with the organisation covering your area.

Contact details

North Tyneside VODA - covering Tyne and Wear
Lynne Craggs
lynne.craggs@voda.org.uk
0191 643 2633

Tees Valley Rural Community Council – covering Teesside and Darlington
Andrew Samuel
asamuel@teesvalleyrcc.org.uk
01642 201 096

Wansbeck CVS – covering Northumberland
Anne Kidd
anne.kidd@wansbeckcvs.org.uk
01670 856 587

North Yorkshire and York Forum – covering North Yorkshire
Claire Petty
claire.petty@nyyforum.org.uk
01347 825710 

Age Concern County Durham – covering County Durham
Mark Dunne-Willows
mark.dunne-willows@ageukcountydurham.org.uk
0191 374 6363



Success stories

Advice point volunteers help elderly gentleman re-tune his TV

An elderly gentleman who was very hard of hearing came to the advice point run by lead organisation COVER in Thetford. He knew quite a lot about switchover from the TV adverts and door drop leaflets he had received. However, he was struggling to re-tune his TV. He had tried to call the DUK advice line, but because of his hearing difficulty he could not hear the instructions that the adviser was giving him.

He saw an advert in the local paper for the switchover advice point so decided to go down there for some help. The volunteers demonstrated to the gentleman how to re-tune, taking him through the process step by step so he could see what he needed to do. The gentleman knew the model of his TV, so the volunteers looked up the exact instructions for re-tuning his TV and wrote them down for him to take home. The gentleman was really pleased that the volunteers had been there to help him.

Communities Programme volunteer engages trusted people to spread the word ‘

Joan’ is a volunteer for Suffolk ACRE who helped to engage community supporters through the Communities Programme. Joan was taking a trip to the north of the county and took a ‘scenic route’ visiting rural villages along the way. Joan visited many villages, stopping at two drop-in centres, three church groups, a vicar’s, and a disability day centre. She spoke to people she knew about the Switchover Help Scheme and asked them if they knew of anyone in their community who might need support to access the help they were eligible for – for example, because they were isolated or found it difficult to fill in forms.

Two weeks later, Joan re-visited all the villages and found that the people she had spoken to had in turn spoken to people they knew who were eligible for the scheme. The leader of the three church groups said that he’d spoken to a number of people who were eligible, and that one of the congregation had already phoned him to say that the Help Scheme were “coming to sort her TV out”!

Joan was really pleased she had been able to help.

The final transmitter in the Anglia TV region, Tacolneston, switched to digital this month.

During the run-up to the switchover, we worked with VCS organisations in the region who have strong local networks to deliver a range of outreach activities and events to help local residents prepare for the switchover. Together they put in a fantastic effort, delivering some great results for Digital UK and the Switchover Help Scheme and ensuring target groups knew what they needed to do to continue watching TV after the switchover.

Lead organisation COVER ran four advice points on the Tacolneston switchover days, where friendly staff and volunteers supported over 330 people. During the run-up to the switchover, COVER and their partner organisations overachieved on all of their targets, delivering 101% of their end user events and 118% of their one to ones.

Photo: A gentleman receives support from an advice point volunteer

Through the Communities Programme, trained volunteers from Norfolk Rural Community Council (Norfolk RCC) and Suffolk ACRE engaged over 1,200 ‘community supporters’ – people who are known and trusted in their local communities by those the outreach programme aims to reach. These community supporters supported over 100 people to access the Help Scheme.

CSV, which delivered the targeted awareness programme in over 50 Tacolneston postcode areas identified as having a lower response rate to the Help Scheme mailings, engaged volunteers who used their local knowledge and contacts to ensure Help Scheme literature and posters were displayed in 120 community venues (such as medical centres, libraries and churches), and 114 commercial venues (such as post offices, cafes and hairdressers) and encouraged local venue and business owners to spread the word about the scheme.

WRVS made sure that Help Scheme eligible people who requested a home visit received face-to-face support from a friendly volunteer to help them complete their packs, be there with them as a chaperone when the engineer calls, and help them use their new equipment.

Photo: Age UK Norfolk cascade the messages about switchover to their clients.

A big thank you to COVER, Norfolk RCC, Suffolk ACRE, CSV, WRVS and all of the volunteers who gave their time to help. The outreach work you have delivered has ensured that over 6,000 people in the Tacolneston area have received the support they needed to switch to digital – a fantastic result.

We are delighted that four people delivering outreach work have had their outstanding work recognised in the Switchover Help Scheme Charter Awards.

The Help Scheme launched the Charter Awards earlier this year to celebrate the excellent work being carried out by all key Help Scheme delivery partners to serve eligible people. Anyone can be nominated for an Award if they are working on behalf of the Help Scheme – from a volunteer who goes the extra mile to ensure an eligible person isn’t left with a blank screen, to engineers or call centre staff providing an outstanding service. 

Over just two months of the awards scheme running, Belinda Shiu from Sheffield Chinese Community Centre, Douglas Pye from the Community Council of Staffordshire, and Brian Goodwin and Jan Hawkins from the Rural Community Council of Essex, have all received awards for their dedication and commitment to supporting eligible people.  

Congratulations to Belinda, Doug, Brian and Jan, and a big thank you to those who nominated them.

Belinda Shiu, Centre Manager - Sheffield Chinese Community Centre

Being the manager of the Chinese Community Centre, Belinda is a well known member of the Chinese community in Sheffield. She put in a huge amount of work on the targeted awareness programme in Yorkshire to support the elderly people in her community to access the Help Scheme.  As well as conducting sessions to raise awareness of the Help Scheme, she also arranged appointments with each of them so she could register their Help Scheme preferences over the phone on their behalf and book engineer appointments for those who wanted to take advantage of the scheme.

Belinda dealt with several lengthy phone calls on behalf of the elderly Chinese people she represents, and even accompanied people to the post office and arranged payments for those who were not familiar with the process of paying through credit cards.

Douglas Pye, Community Volunteer - Community Council of Staffordshire

Doug is a member of staff at the Community Council of Staffordshire. Working on the Communities Programme, Doug knows how important it is to find individuals who have multiple barriers to accessing the Help Scheme and have ‘triggers’ in their life that make them extremely isolated. He has helped individuals not just to access the Help Scheme but also to help them get back into society.

For example, one gentleman Doug helped was feeling very lonely and isolated since his neighbour moved away. He didn’t get out and about much, but told Doug that he wanted to make new friends. After helping him to access the Help Scheme, Doug made sure that the gentleman had an emergency action plan in place in case anything happens to him and put him in touch with nearby community groups to help reduce his isolation.

Brian Goodwin, Village Agent Manager and Jan Hawkins, Village Agent – Rural Community Council of Essex

Brian and Jan both work for the Rural Community Council of Essex and are involved in delivering the Communities Programme. They did everything they could to help a frail and vulnerable elderly gentleman whose TV had gone blank at switchover, working closely with Tom Pugh from Carillion, who also won an award for the support the three of them gave to the gentleman.

Brian contacted the Help Scheme contact centre on the gentleman’s behalf, but the centre couldn’t help because Brian didn’t have specific details of the individual. Brian made the decision to ask a village agent (Jan) to go and see the gentleman to assess the situation. This was out of Jan’s area, but Jan was happy to help. This was a difficult case due to payment for the Help Scheme, and through a lot of communication between Jan, Brian and Tom Pugh from Carillion, they provided a solution for the gentleman.

As well as sorting out the gentleman’s access to the Help Scheme, Jan became extremely concerned about the gentleman’s living conditions and care package. Because of Jan’s role as the village agent, she has now contacted social services to make sure the gentleman’s care package was upgraded to suit his needs.

Do you know anyone who deserves an award for the work they are doing on behalf of the Help Scheme to support eligible people?  Nominating is simple – just send your completed nomination form to charterawards@helpscheme.co.uk. If you don't have a nomination form, please contact Debra Allcock for a copy.