Age UK East London reached a total of 3,131 older Londoners through their project. As a result of this project:
- 76% of survey respondents reported that they were more likely to take part to take part in community events or consultations.
- 20% of survey respondents reported that they were more likely to engage with an elected official, e.g. write to or book a face-to-face meeting with a councillor/ Member of Parliament (MP).
At one of their digital inclusion sessions, the project worker met a British Indian woman born in the 1950s who has lived in East London since 1970 and is currently a full-time unpaid carer for her husband. She was particularly interested in switching to postal voting as she stated that she was not skilled at using computers, and that it was difficult to visit the polling stations in person with her husband.
Following their discussion, the project worker arranged a follow-up meeting to complete the postal voting application together. This personalised support was crucial for her, and she agreed that she would not have proceeded if she was left to undertake this task independently. Now, both she and her husband are registered for postal voting, and she was pleased at how quickly the process was completed.
“Postal voting had been on my mind, but I didn’t know how to do that sort of thing as I am not very good with computers, so I put it off. If you had just said, ‘Here is the website, go ahead and do it,’ I would have just left it... Nobody knows what's going to happen in four years’ time, so postal voting means that I don’t have to worry about how we get to vote.” - Support session participant.