Category Archives: Social care
Digitally excluded: The 90,000 Norfolk households not going online
Older people can lack the confidence to go online, according to Norfolk County Council research.
More than 90,000 homes in Norfolk have no or very limited access to the internet, either because of lack of connections, not being able to afford it or not having the confidence to use it.
Research has shown that almost a quarter of the county’s homes are defined as “digitally excluded”.
A similar study in London showed just 15pc of households there were unable or unlikely to use the internet.
The Norfolk County Council research showed homes where people were unlikely, or unable, to use the internet included “significant” numbers of older people, families on low incomes and those living in social housing.
This social care crisis is hitting very close to home
Away from work, it’s adult social care I’ve been thinking about. In fact, that’s been at the forefront of my thinking for some time.
In 2015, my mum was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer – a disease which, within months, had claimed her life.
I’ll never have to worry about social care for my mum. But it’s another story for her mother – my grandma.
A couple of years before mum was diagnosed, she and my dad took the decision to bring my widowed grandma down from Middlesbrough to live with them.
Obviously my parents did not factor in that one of them might not be around to look after her. Some of the final months of my mum’s life were spent worrying about where her mother would live once she was gone.
When mum died, my father tried again to get grandma, who will be 100 in four years, into residential care. We were told she could go on the waiting list for a care home.
Use bus lane fines to ease “poverty” of unpaid carers, campaigner says
Ease “poverty” of unpaid carers
A wounded military veteran’s daughter has claimed unpaid carers are being forced to skimp on food and heating because they get no help with transport costs.
Faith-Jason Robertson-Foy wants Aberdeen bus lane fine revenues used to subsidise cheap fares for those looking after family and friends.
But she says politicians and social care chiefs have failed to act because they don’t understand the poverty faced by many people in her position.