This training has had a positive impact on our workforce giving them a sense of empowerment to digitally upskill and become familiar with systems used within the Trust. During the most recent months the team have pushed one-to-one support for those staff that find our system increasing difficult to navigate due to computers not being a fundamental part of their role. From many of the one-to-one support sessions we’ve had great successes such as many people turning to digital to succeed in their roles and increasing their skills to compliment how they work and has increased clinical and clinic time.
Our accredited Cyber Security has exceeded our expectations which has been one of our teams' greatest successes this year, we’ve successfully trained over 900 MPFT staff members highlighting the importance of keep safe online at work and at home. We’ve had some fantastic feedback from sessions, such as “I just wanted to say thank you for the cyber security training you delivered for Trust Board yesterday. I thought the training was brilliant, I learnt so much from the session”.
Our Team have been working hard on several initiatives to tackle Digital Poverty and inclusion amongst our service users and community. To date we have supported over 1,700 people in the community with their digital skills. Along with the Digital skills support we have gifted 467 SIM Cards enabling people to get online and getting support on health advice from the NHS app which has proved to be very popular with our GP app drop-in sessions.
Lastly, we’d like to share our success of recently winning a bid to work in partnership with Keele University to provide digital training to 300 residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme for Keele in town, this will commence in early 2025.
We have been working with a local Charity, Free I/T Stafford to give old devices a new lease of life and help those in digital poverty.
So far, we've been able to rehome 434 laptops and 32 desktop PC's for community benefit in Staffordshire and beyond. That's at least 456 lives completely changed by the opportunities these devices have created, and in shared cases, those numbers could even be hundreds more.
Some examples so far are:
- 58 laptops to clients of Jobs-22, a Stafford based employment team advocating the HM Government "Restart" scheme which encourages and supports vulnerable, disadvantaged and disabled persons in to work
- 15 laptops distributed to Army Cadets units across the West Midlands, to enable group access to online training and certification for young people
- 70 laptops issued to vulnerable persons across Staffordshire through direct referral from agencies within Staffordshire County Council, including their Children & Families service, Adult Learning mentors, Families Service practitioners, and Early Intervention teams, where they have identified a family or individual they deemed to be living in digital poverty
- 17 laptops delivered to Hearts & Hands Stafford, a fellow charity who work with low income families in the Stafford area and have identified several families living in digital poverty
- 49 laptops to clients of Velocity Training, an organisation that works with community sports enterprises and Pupil Referral Centres in the Staffordshire area, and which supports young people from various backgrounds who may be exiting the care system in to the next stage of their lives, or seeking other rehabilitation or retraining through online sources which aren't available at home
- 18 desktop PC's issued to Boscobel 2078 Air Cadets to enable group access to online training and certification for young people
- We have been working with a local Charity, Free I/T Stafford to give old devices a new lease of life and help those in digital poverty.