Workshops by eurAV

DiSeRA Workshop and Talk Activities, Ireland

EurAV has, at every opportunity, presented the DiSeRA project to target group members and stakeholders. We used a portable projector to show a DiSeRA Presentation Aid Powerpoint which consisted, mainly, of pictures rather than words as we found that senior citizens, in general, engage more readily with a presentation that is more conversational rather than reading from a slide. (See Presentation Aid uploaded in PDF format). In addition we created a banner pull up which was visually engaging and prominently displayed the website. In July and August, with the project drawing to a close, we undertook a series of workshops with both senior citizens and stakeholders involved in their support and care. The main focus of this campaign was around National Care Homes Week in August. Our research for DiSeRA had revealed a vulnerability among elderly people in care homes. Many of those who are compos mentis communicate with smartphones and tablets and, often without family around, can be even more vulnerable to disinformation, misinformation and malinformation that their counterparts at home. EurAV had developed a relationship with a number of nursing homes to promote the eight DiSeRA radio ‘podcasts’ that make up the core resource. It meant that we had access to schedule workshops with residents. Two care homes in Dublin and two in the greater Drogheda area were visited and workshops delivered by Declan Cassidy.

The workshops were valuable from a feedback perspective in that they enabled the creation of a ‘safe’ environment where senior citizens were able to ask questions and relate their own experiences. As a result of this, a number of issues were identified as being common which, we believe, present a strong rationale for the development of a further iteration of DiSeRA which takes into account that many elderly people now use smartphones and tablets, with all of the additional vulnerabilities that these imply.