Our retirement living digital inclusion sessions have prevented Bill from feeling isolated from his family.
Tragically Bill, 66, suffered a brain injury when he was just five years old. He has spasticity of the left hand side and has little use of his left side. Bill also has arthritis, high blood pressure and type-two diabetes.
Due to these health conditions Bill has difficulty with his mobility and because it’s hard for him to travel to see his family he has to rely on them to visit him in order to stay in touch. Some of Bill’s closest relatives have a house in Spain and often stay there for a long period of time so Bill doesn’t get to see them as much as he’d like.
As an organisation, we have provided our Retirement Living residents with digital inclusion sessions, showing them the basics of navigating the internet and all its benefits. Since attending these sessions Bill has become interested in using social media to keep in touch with his family and he now has a presence on both Facebook and Skype.
Bill enjoys using Facebook to chat to his family and to also keep up to date with their daily lives. He was previously very reliant on waiting for his family to visit him, but now he is able to chat and share photos with them whenever he likes, in between their visits. Bill uses Skype to live video chat with his family which comes in very handy when his family are in Spain.
Bill told us that he is “…very happy to be able to use Facebook and Skype to be able to chat with his family and friends more often”.