A PILOT project to help isolated disabled and elderly people get online is being launched thanks to a coronavirus response fund grant.

The Wiltshire Centre for Independent Living, which supports more than 2,000 vulnerable people across the county living with physical disability or mental health issues, has been awarded £4,700 to buy fund tablets and training.

The Devizes charity was awarded needed £3,580 to buy laptops for staff forced to work remotely in March. It was while they were trying to support members on the phone or online they found 40 per cent of them had no access to the internet.

“We were really surprised so many didn’t have access to IT,” said CEO Geraldine Bentley. “It meant they were excluded from so much information and help that was going online. We thought it would be great if we could get some tablets and offer them to people on a loan basis to see if they can’t access to IT because of cost or whether it is because they are just not IT literate.

“This is a real issue and it is because of Covid that we’ve had to acknowledge it.”

The charity will launch the pilot next month, with tablets and handbooks loaned to people to help them get on to its online forums and training, as well as use them for shopping, contact with family and catching up on the news.

“If they find them useful, we will be looking at how we can support people to apply to other charities for grants to buy their own equipment. We are really hopeful that once people have it in their own home for a few days they will think it is brilliant,” said Mrs Bentley.

“A lot of our members are employers who employ their own personal assistants to help them at home and we want them to be able to access some of the online training courses we offer to help them with that because we can’t offer them in groups at the moment. We are looking at getting people to join in who couldn’t join in before and that is exciting for us and we think this has huge potential.

“We’ve been really concerned that people might lose their personal assistants but because of the first grant from the Wiltshire Community Foundation to help our advisors stay in touch with people and talk through the issues they were having, no one lost any of them.”

To find out more about the group go to wiltshirecil.org.uk.

Despite many parts of life returning to normal for many people, Mrs Bentley said disabled and elderly people are still feeling the effects of the pandemic. “Disabled and older people we work with are still concerned, there is a lot of fear. Some of the people we work with who go into shops can’t wear masks and although there is an exemption they don’t want a card that says ‘I’m disabled’,” she said.

“A lot of people living in rural areas don’t want to go on public transport, people aren’t getting out of their towns and villages. We meet with the CEOs of all the CILs nationally and across the UK people are extremely anxious about the future and very anxious about the way disability in itself has been handled through Covid because three quarters of the people who have died have underlying health conditions.”

The Wiltshire Community Foundation’s Coronavirus Response and Recovery Fund has raised more than £1.1 million and distributed £750,000 to 190 groups. Interim co-chief executive Fiona Oliver said: “We are very pleased to be able to fund this important pilot. We have done a great deal of work on isolation and loneliness in Wiltshire and we can see this has the potential to change people’s lives

“Our fund is in great demand and over the coming weeks it is going to be needed more than ever.”

To donate to the Wiltshire and Swindon Coronavirus Response Fund or to find out how to apply for a grant, go to wiltshirecf.org.uk.