Get Connected Impact Evaluation

IES worked in partnership with NIACE to evaluate the SCIE (Social Care Institute for Excellence) Get Connected funding programme. The funding was offered to organisations in the social care sector to improve access to ICT for service users, family carers and staff, so as to enhance the quality of life offered within the service and improve opportunities for learning. At the time, most social care providers made very limited use of ICT and this imposed constraints for service users and family carers to access technology such as email or social networking; similarly it limited the ability of providers to enable staff to access technology for the purposes of training or development. The project examined the impact that this investment had on staff, service users and carers/family of service users. The factors that help with implementation were also examined, and feedback provided to assist with later rounds of this funding initiative.