News tagged 'community outreach programme'

In March, three more transmitter groups in the Meridian TV region switched to digital – Midhurst, Whitehawk Hill and Rowridge.

Lead organisations Action in Rural Sussex, Community Action Hampshire and Age Concern Isle of Wight ran 12 advice points over 4 days during the two stages of switchover. Friendly, knowledgeable staff and volunteers, together with colleagues from Digital Outreach and Carillion, helped over 1,500 people with enquiries, giving them reassurance and practical support.

A big thank you to all the staff and volunteers who helped support so many people, and congratulations to the lead organisations on organising such a fantastic set of advice points.

The photo above shows Mrs Ayles practising re-tuning with volunteer Rowena Tyler at the Chichester advice point.

Here are a couple of stories from the advice points.

‘B’ is thrilled with support received

'B' was having problems with her TV, and her friend recommended that she pop down to the advice point, as she had been in herself the day before and said the team had been very helpful.

Hollie Watson (Community Action Hampshire) sat with B while she explained what her problem was. She had brought her remote control with her to show what buttons she had been pressing and talked Hollie and the volunteer through
what she thought she had to do, but she said nothing was working. She had mentioned that as she was on the verge of paying someone to come and do it for her as she was convinced she was doing something wrong!

One of the volunteers supporting the Romsey Advice Point, Roger, is also an Age Concern volunteer and had been conducting home visits to help people with re-tuning and other things around the home. He could see that B was quite distressed and offered to go home with her to do the re-tune. The volunteer wrote down very clear instructions for B, and when the second stage of switchover came, she was able to re-tune by herself.

B was thrilled. She had worked as a volunteer herself in the past and appreciated the support she had been given so much that after the switchover, she sent a letter to of thanks to Hollie to thank Roger, saying “I cannot tell you how much I appreciated his help and time, given so generously”.

Roger gets advice so he can help re-tune friends' TVs

Roger visited the Lymington Advice Point to enquire about the help he had given to a friend in adjusting and re-tuning her televisions. He had managed the main TV, but was baffled by the second. A different brand of television make and range of cables had confused him; he eventually found the re-tuning menu but was unable to complete the process even though he had tried several times.

Asking Roger a few questions, the advice point staff found that his friend had a main TV aerial and a separate Sky dish which was acting as an aerial for the second TV. The team suggested that Roger could look to see if it was possible to connect the TV using a normal aerial cable and connectors and then convert it with a digibox. They reassured Roger that he could also phone Digital UK if he needed further advice. Roger was very enthused and said he wanted to try and do it himself and would come back and let the team know.

Roger returned at the end of the day to share his success – just as the team were helping their last customer of the day, who turned out to be another friend of Roger’s! This lady had been in twice before about re-tuning and had been unsuccessful – so he offered to help her too.

The Hannington transmitter was the first in the Meridian TV region to switch to digital this year, with many households in Hampshire, Berkshire and Surrey being able to receive digital TV for the first time.

Lead organisation Community Action Hampshire organised advice points in easy to access community venues in Basingstoke, Andover, Newbury and Alton. They were held over four days – two at stage one of the switchover and two a fortnight later at the second stage.

Over the two switchover dates, staff and volunteers gave help and reassurance to over 550 people. Most of the enquiries were about re-tuning, equipment and TV signal, and the advice point staff did a great job of building people’s confidence, with several people coming back to the advice point delighted to report they had managed to re-tune successfully!  

Thanks to everyone who put in so much hard work during the first switchover of the year – here are some of the stories from the four days.

Mrs Pruden – Blue Onion cafe, Andover

Mrs Pruden, a grandmother in the Andover area, visited the advice point at the Blue Onion cafe on the first day of switchover.  The next day, she came back to the cafe and told staff that she had managed to re-tune her TV herself by following the advice they had given.

Later, Mrs Pruden received a call from her son, whose son had said to him: "Dad, I think you should call Granny as she has no idea how to re-tune and we should drop round and do it for her". When Mrs Pruden told her son that she didn't need any help as she had sorted it out herself, he asked how she could possibly have done it. She said "The man at the Blue Onion told me what to do". She returned to the advice point two weeks later to tell the advice point staff of her delight at being able to show to her son and grandson that she was quite competent.

Christine -  Newbury Library

In early January, the Community Council for Berkshire (CCB) visited the Eight Bells for Mental Health Drop In as an end user event. The drop in provides a place for people with mental health issues to meet for lunch and activities.  It was at the end user event that CCB met Christine, who is 58 and mobile but has learning difficulties and mental health issues which cause her to feel anxious about change. She attends the Eight Bells for Mental Health drop in four days a week and finds it provides great support to her. Christine told CCB that she was very worried about the switchover but did not have her Help Scheme letter with her at the time. CCB advised her to come to the advice point, which she did.

Christine has a digital TV in her living room but an analogue one in her bedroom which needs converting. She brought her letter to the advice point and the staff rang the Help Scheme for her as she was nervous of doing so. They arranged for an engineer to visit on 14 February. Christine was delighted and thanked everyone.

‘Sandra’ – Basingstoke Library

One lady visitor, ‘Sandra’, who can hear but cannot speak, saw the advert in the local paper and came in to the advice point with her TV manual and a picture of her remote control. Because of her medical condition, Sandra had not been able to phone the advice lines and she didn’t have a textphone, so she had previously not been able to communicate with anyone about the switchover.  She wrote down her questions to the staff, and they spent as much time as was needed working through her queries. She was very pleased to have been able to get some help at the advice point, and went home to re-tune her TV.

Pat – Alton community centre

Pat, an older lady, came in to the advice point to ask about retuning her telly. She was quite upset and not feeling confident to do it on her own. The Advice Point team gave her demo on the TV and talked her through the re-tuning leaflet. A short while later, Pat returned and was upset because the instructions in the booklet didn’t work for her set-up. The team advised her to either come back to the advice point with the manual for her TV so they could write down the exact instructions, or phone Digital UK so they could talk her through the process while she was in front of her TV.

The team noticed that Pat had only gone as far as the bustling community centre café, where she stopped to talk to another visitor, the mother of Miranda who was the lady on reception. One of team spoke to Miranda about their concerns for Pat as they were unsure she could confidently manage on her own and to find out if there were any local volunteers who could help her. It turned out that Miranda’s mum is a friend of Pat’s and is always helping her out, and the team could hear her in the café telling Pat that it wasn’t that complicated and not to worry.

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



2011 was a very busy year for everyone working on the digital TV switchover. Transmitters covering 10.5 million homes across the Anglia, Central, STV, and Yorkshire TV regions switched to digital, and preparations began in the London and Meridian TV regions too.

Our partners on the ground did a brilliant job of engaging their local networks of community groups and volunteers, making sure that people who might struggle with the switchover were given the support and information they needed to cope. It’s thanks to them that we managed to reach so many people and achieve such great results.

We commissioned and trained well-known, trusted local voluntary and community sector organisations in each TV region who:

• briefed over 2,000 organisations about switchover and how they could help the people they support
• trained nearly 4,000 individuals so they could cascade the information and advice within their organisations, networks, volunteers and service users gave talks about switchover at over 4,500 community events and activities, reaching nearly 300,000 people
• ran advice points in 81 locations at the point of switchover, providing help and reassurance to over 10,000 people  
• gave one-to-one, face-to-face support to over 100,000 people.

To reach those who do not attend events and activities in their community and are more isolated, volunteers managed to engage an amazing 57,000 trusted individuals who knew their local communities extremely well and could identify and support those who needed some help to access the Switchover Help Scheme.

In postcode areas where responses to the Help Scheme were lower than expected, volunteers raised awareness at a really local level in nearly 5,000 community venues - such as GP surgeries, Post Offices and local businesses – having a friendly chat with staff and leaving behind leaflets and posters. Volunteers also went out to speak to almost 200 small, informal groups to talk to them in person about the Switchover Help Scheme.

A really big thank you to all of our partners who put in so much effort to support their local communities during 2011. Despite it being the busiest year yet for digital switchover, we met or overachieved on all our targets, supporting hundreds of thousands of people to prepare for the switchover. The hard work and commitment of our lead and second tier organisations, and the thousands of very local voluntary and community sector organisations and volunteers, ensured we reached the people who needed help and advice the most and supported them through the process.

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.