Why we built the OWL website
Older people in Tameside have been saying for some time that they wanted easier access to information. The “Really Important Questions” group was used in a further exercise to help identify the categories of information that were of most importance to older people. This resulted in the 20 categories of information you’ll see on the OWL web site’s home page. In the initial research to find out what should go on the older people's website, older people were asked a series of questions about how they found information and the kind of subjects they would like to know more about. Once we had a long list of subjects, the older people then put these into more manageable and descriptive categories. We also involved older people in testing the website in terms of usability and the relevance of the information .
The Audit Commission recently published a number of reports under the heading of “Older people – independence and well-being: the challenge for public services” which also found that “older people repeatedly highlight that they struggle to find out what services, benefits or opportunities for leisure and learning are available to them”.
In parallel with this the government has published a consultation document “Link Age – Developing networks of services for older people”. This has encouraged the statutory and voluntary sector to look at ways of working together to provide easier access to information and advice.
Tameside Council is sustaining the initial investment from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) by using its own resources to maintain and develop the Tameside version of the OWL website. It will be happy for other local authorities, local strategic partnerships or other non-commercial forums to replicate its structure in their own locality.
References
1 http://www.tameside-owl.org.uk/forums.htm
2 This methodology is based on unpublished research (‘creating user focused web sites’) conducted in collaboration with the Social Services Research and Development Unit (SSRADU) at Oxford Brookes University.
3 http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/olderpeople/olderpeoplereports.asp
4 http://www.dwp.gov.uk/publications/dwp/2004/linkage/index.asp
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