Dave Worley writes about the event held by the Carer’s Allowance Digital Service team, which was designed to boost confidence in their partner organisations to refer users to the digital route.
In July 2015, the Carer’s Allowance digital service team hosted an event for partner organisations that advise users applying for Carer’s Allowance. The aim of the event was to increase digital take up, by helping the organisations become more familiar with the on-screen service and encourage users towards it.
Before the event, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), National Partnership Team carried out a survey of the organisations’ employees. This showed that 63% of those who took part preferred referring users to the paper route. Most attributed this to feeling more comfortable themselves with the paper form.
Age UK and Citizens Advice were amongst the twelve that attended the event, where the team demonstrated the on-screen service.
Robert Devereux, DWP’s permanent secretary, also attended the event. He said;
it was good to see DWP continuing to forge strong partnerships with the carer organisation community, to ensure our digital services work well for customers, and to see that the session produced useful insight to help us improve the service further.
A survey of attendees following the event indicated they felt more confident about the digital service and were therefore more likely to direct users to it. This should help increase digital take up, ensuring more users get the benefits of online services.
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