Digital Pioneers
Digital Pioneers: Establishing our Community of Learning
It was recently announced that thirteen projects have been funded as ‘Digital Pioneers’ through the new Digital Inclusion programme hosted by the Scottish Government’s Digital Health and Care directorate. As programme partner, SCVO design and facilitate a Community of Learning with the projects awarded over the course of the fund.
What’s a Community of Learning?
A Community of Learning is a forum for coming together to share learning as projects deliver their work. It aims to create a safe space to share good practice, challenges and opportunities. ‘Digital Pioneers’ is a learning fund, and it’s important that funded projects feel comfortable not only sharing their successes, but also when things may not go as planned. Projects project a richness of learning that isn’t always possible to capture in traditional monitoring forms but where it can be explored in a space where people feel comfortable sharing and engaging in mutual learning.
The Community of Learning will meet as a group every month over the next year, alternating between online and in-person sessions. We are using our recently published paper ‘From pillars to practice: developing a framework for embedding digital inclusion in health and social care’ as a framework for this programme. As the Community of Learning progresses, the learning will contribute further insights to deepen understanding of the different pillars of digital inclusion in a mental health context and in a housing context. By July 2024 we will be able to identify tried and tested models that support effective digital inclusion in mental health and in housing.
Illustration by: Tessa Mackenzie
What do projects want from this experience?
As a programme, we have an idea of what we hope to learn from this Community, but reciprocity is an important ingredient in making it a useful and mutually beneficial forum for everyone involved. As part of our first session together we explored what the funded organisations would like to get from our time together.
The main things that the projects told us they wanted was…
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A creative and inspiring space to collectively solve problems.
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Practical resources and examples to help organisations embed digital inclusion.
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Support for evaluation and measuring impact of their work.
Including different voices
During our first session together, we also started what will be an ongoing dialogue about the different groups of people each project works with, and how we include lived and living experience in the programme. By the end of the 12-month funding period it is our hope that we have been able to develop models that reflect the lived experience of those who will benefit from them. and that are designed to include people across mental health and housing contexts Members of the Digital Pioneers community highlighted that they would like to invite people who access their services to join some of the sessions, so we are excited about making that a feature of future sessions.
Illustration by: Tessa Mackenzie
Across the two work streams (mental health and housing) there were a lot of similarities related to the people who will be involved. However, one interesting difference was that the mental health projects are more likely to have services for people affected by drugs or alcohol, and the housing organisations are more likely to have services specifically for older people. We will continue to explore this as the Community of Learning develops.
Illustration by: Tessa Mackenzie
Next steps
The next Community of Learning will take place online in September where we will be developing personas to guide us though our subsequent sessions unpicking each of the pillars of digital inclusion. We will continue to share our learning and insights as the programme progresses, so be sure to check back soon for an update!