A community organisation is offering computer training for patients to help them with things like making doctors’ appointments as surgery phone lines remain busy.
It is also equipping them to have online consultations with their doctor when appropriate and to be able to prove their vaccination status through the NHS app.
The Hangleton and Knoll Project is also offering computer training for all kinds of other people taking their first steps online, boosting their confidence or trying to improve their IT skills.
The community organisation’s chief executive Jo Martindale spoke about the free training at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council tenant and leaseholder reps this afternoon (Tuesday 17 August).
She told the council’s West Area Housing Panel: “We’ve had a lot of feedback from people that the (doctors’) phone lines are really busy.”
The hour-long training sessions take place every week at the St Richard’s Community Centre, in Egmont Road, on the Knoll Estate, in Hove.
To book a session, email hakit@hkproject.org.uk or call 07422 665761.
The Hangleton and Knoll Project has also teamed up with several other organisations, including local doctors’ surgeries, to make “social prescribing” more widely available.
Social prescribing is aimed at helping people with their health and social, emotional or practical needs, with many schemes focused on improving mental health and physical wellbeing.
It may save patients from taking unnecessary medication and instead address their needs in a “holistic” – or more rounded – way.
The aims include giving patients greater control over their own health and it can include activities with therapeutic qualities such as arts, cookery, gardening, learning or exercise.
The Hangleton and Knoll Project is working with organisations such as the Hera Arts and Health Partnership which has links to the Brighton Health and Wellbeing Centre, a doctors’ surgery in Hove, through its charitable Robin Hood Health Foundation.
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