St Mungo's Recovery College

The ultimate aim for St Mungo’s Recovery College is to get their clients back into employment and help them build confidence and independence. There is an urgent need for clients to have internet accessibility, access to computers and skills to use modern technology in our accommodation services.
They currently provide 5 IT/Digital programmes for their clients and have a Digital Inclusion Coordinator working full-time at their Recovery College to help facilitate this. The programmes are Active Citizenship, Foundations of Digital Confidence, Be More Digitally Confident, Wonderful World of Apps and Digi-Wellbeing. As a result of Covid-19 all learning has moved online, however the long term aim will be to reopen real life college locations.
Staff, volunteers, corporates, community groups and experts have all come together to offer their time to help train clients and develop their digital skills with the end goal to provide access to digital pathways into employment.
They want to use Game Changers to showcase the essential work St Mungo’s are doing to improve digital skills amongst their clients, but also to highlight the urgent need for more awareness, more materials, more funding and more volunteers to ensure their Digital Inclusion programme flourishes.
St Mungo's fund their work through donation and other sources.

Context: A lack of basic technology or digital skills is a huge barrier for homeless people seeking reintegration to the workforce or wider society. These figures (taken from Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index 2018) highlight the importance of digital skills for people to survive in the modern world:
- There are 4.3 million people (8%) in the UK with zero Basic Digital Skills.
- 16% (8.6 million) of the UK are not able to fill out an online application form.
- 18% of the UK adults claiming benefits (1.2 million people) have low or no digital capability at all.

Stakeholders involved: Staff, volunteers, corporates, community groups and experts
Service users

Key learning points: NEI.

Evaluation: No

Information sources: https://www.mungos.org/our-services/recovery-college/
https://www.mungos.org/app/uploads/2020/09/Recovery-College-Autumn-Term-Prospectus.pdf
https://www.mungos.org/st-mungos-recovery-college-online-for-our-clients/

Read the full analysis: https://www.mungos.org/game-changers/digital-inclusion/