Category Archives: Social care

Digitally excluded: The 90,000 Norfolk households not going online

Dan Grimmer

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.

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This social care crisis is hitting very close to home

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.

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Use bus lane fines to ease “poverty” of unpaid carers, campaigner says