Trends and Friends: Access, use and benefits of digital technology for homeless and ex-homeless people

Trends and Friends
to-face contact and conversation, people also valued immediate, personalised information via
digital technology and some offered succinct suggestions for how service providers might
improve their service using digital technology. While by no means a replacement for the
one-to-one interpersonal work, digital technology nevertheless has considerable practical
potential, which is far from being fully realised.
Recommendations
1. Improving internet access at homelessness services
The majority of respondents were reliant on support services to access the internet and
many were frustrated by the experience. Internet access has the potential for significant and
meaningful emotional and social benefits in terms of maintaining and engaging in positive
social networks and culture and improving skills and confidence often necessary for a longterm
move away from homelessness. In addition, practical tasks associated with state, health
and statutory services are increasingly only accessed online. Respondents relied on mobile
phones and desktop computers at services to access the internet. If access at premises of
support services was inadequate some respondents relied on their smart phones for access
and so risked expensive data charges as well as experiencing the frustration of navigating
sites on a mobile phone. It is therefore in the interests of clients and providers alike to improve
access to the internet at services. As well as improving internet connections (for example,
by switching from cabled internet to a far less restrictive and more ubiquitous availability
of WiFi) this might also include reviewing current protocols for blocking online content.
The widespread availability of WiFi at homelessness services would be enormously popular
among service users as well as having potentially transformational effects in lifestyles and
employment prospects.
2. Library access for homeless people
One of the more concerning findings emerging from this research is the manner in which
homeless people are often excluded – either deliberately or indirectly – from accessing
computers, the internet and other services at some local libraries. Having a fixed permanent
address for membership for lending accounts, for which debts might be accrued, is a
reasonable requirement. For those members who wish only to access computers, however, for
which you pay before use, or newspapers it seems an unnecessarily excluding hurdle. Public
use of computers, or computer access-only accounts, for which no fixed address is necessary,
is an achievable modification to the system which would allow homeless people to make use
of computers and the internet more freely.
Excluding people on the basis of carrying sleeping baggage or for other characteristics
associated with being street homeless seems unfair and reinforces social exclusion, poor
self-image and the practical, financial and social frustrations of life as a homeless person.
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