Transcript
CERI BISLEY
I'm a community services worker for Mental Health Matters Wales. We're based in Bridgend. We're a charity that supports people with mental health issues in the Bridgend Borough. And we deliver a number of different services, one of which is the well-being centre here.
We try and sort of encourage all of our service users to use the equipment, whether that's the iPads, the tablets, the laptops. If they ask us a question, we say-- perhaps sometimes on purpose-- I don't know that. Should we Google it? Should we have a look? And sometimes I genuinely don't know the answer to the questions. And it's just a way to sort of encourage them to get familiar with the equipment, because that's primarily, isn't it, a lot of the issues.
The equipment we receive from Digital Communities Wales, in total, there's a laptop, a tablet, the iPad, the wireless keyboard, the Bluetooth speakers. And the service users use them in a variety of different ways. Sometimes it is just for shopping or searching the internet. They've used it to register for courses, to look at things. On the NHS websites, they tend to use a lot here, because we encourage-- obviously, it's all about healthy eating, and mindfulness, and well-being, and referring on to other agencies. So they use it for that.
Plus, we've had a couple of service users who have registered with courses in the local further education colleges. And one of our service users regularly does his coursework when he was enrolled on those courses. So he used the computers for that, used Excel and some of the other Microsoft packages.
MAN 1
How I got into this technology was fairly straightforward. I enrolled in a night school in the tech and doing simple spreadsheets, which they teach you. And I also bought comprehensive books in Open University, which I enrolled later on a course, which I managed to pass.
CERI BISLEY
Through Mental Health Matters Wales, through our well-being centres and our community cafes, I guess we reach in excess of 500 service users across the county. And that's Kenfig Hill, Maesteg, Pencoed, Bridgend, and Cefn Glas as well. And certainly high in percentage, I would say probably getting on for 80% of those, wouldn't have access to any other form of equipment, or get online, or anything like that if it wasn't for the equipment that we have here.
We support people in the community with mental health issues. And it is harder at times to engage some of those service users with the world wide web, just by nature of its technology. We do support them and sit with them. It is more difficult, certainly with people with learning disabilities. For them, a lot of the time it's just, they've talked themselves into they can't do it.
And once they realise how easy it is and how straightforward-- certainly when they see the iPads, and how user-friendly it is, you know, because it's all apps, and it's all pictures, they just are blown away by it. It's really exciting actually.
MAN 2
It was like, because I can't call my brother. Because since my brother's abroad, and I don't want my bill to be sky high, so I use social media like Facebook to keep in contact with him.
MAN 1
These people are angels in my sight. And they serve the local community. They do it absolutely free, with no praise or commendation from anyone. They spare their time for the general good of the community.