Making a place for technology in communities: PlaceCal and the capabilities approach

Figures & data

Figure 1. ‘WHO Age Friendly Flower’, adapted by MAFN.

Table 1. Models of difference.

Models of difference	Manchester City Council Public Health	WHO Age Friendly Cities	PlaceCal
Capability	Citizen	‘Active-ageing’	Community Technology Partnership
What is the person or group actually able to do and be?	Programmes focussed on increasing equality of opportunity in place	Older people actively design and change services in collaboration with agencies and experts	People actively design and change digital services in collaboration with technological partners
Social	Service user / customer	‘Age Friendly City’	Digital inclusion training
Disabilities considered to be at least partially socially determined	Individuals identified as vulnerable are connected with care networks	Services work together to consult with older people and make the city better for them	Teach disadvantaged groups to use the internet so that they can access pre-existing commercial platforms and centralised information sources
Deficit	Patient	‘Disability Threshold’	(Software) user / customer
Individuals negatively judged against a pre-defined norm	Target clinical interventions more effectively e.g., hospital admissions of frail older people	Physical barriers to service access removed	Follow technical standards for websites and documentation so that people are not excluded ‘automatically’ (a11y)

Figure 2. Internet users by age group (Office for National Statistics, 2019).

Figure 3. An example of the shared Google Calendar for one day in one area.

Table 2. PlaceCal roles.

Role	Description of role	‘What I want to be and do’
Secretary	Active resident, health and social work connector roles, neighbourhood teams, etc	Enable local groups to publish information; be able to curate local information to create an active local identity
Citizen	People who live and/or work in neighbourhood, special focus on over 55s	Find out relevant information about where they live; be more connected to what is happening
Group Manager	General manager of community groups and centres	Publish up to date information about their organisation; be supported by local health workers and other organisations
Group Admin	Person who actually manages and inputs into the diary	Easily and quickly upload information about what's going on; be able to spend more time face-to-face with service users
Social prescriber	GPs, services and family members who want to give advice to socially isolated people	Access to high quality hyperlocal information; be able to help people live better lives not treat them as patients
Developer	PlaceCal team member, web developers of organisational sites, third party app developer	Embed local information in their own website; be able to share information easily across a range of organisations
Commissioner	Organizations paying to generate information about areas in order to fulfil (generally health and social care) commissions	Enable their staff to create good shared resources; be able to deliver service outcomes within a complex system

Figure 4. CTP approach schematic from the PlaceCal ‘Commissioner’ handbook.

Figure 5. A selection of the current community information needed to find out everything going on in the area.

Figure 6. Dr Honeyman at work using PlaceCal (right hand screen).

Office for National Statistics (2019). Exploring the UK's digital divide -- Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/articles/exploringtheuksdigitaldivide/2019-03-04

 Google Scholar