Who are Hope Services?
How do Hope Services use ICT?
What difference has ICT made?
What was learnt?
Want to find out more?

Who are HOPE services? 

HOPE Services is dedicated to helping homeless people and people with drug and alcohol problems in Bassetlaw.  They aim to give homeless people a  sense of worth and direction.

HOPE is an enterprising charity, staffed mainly by volunteers HOPE recognises the importance of ICT, but as a means to an end not for the sake of it!

How do Hope Services use ICT? 

In 2000 HOPE Services bought its first second-hand PC from Computers For Charity.  Prior to this HOPE managed their finances by hand.  This single PC transformed the way HOPE worked.  They were able to record financial information in a spreadsheet which not only saved valuable staff time but also enabled them to store information for funding bids.  In 2002 after being successful with funding they  bought 9 more PCs.  Two of these were for the HOPE offices and the seven others were for f a new internet and training suite.

Hope services formed a partnership with North Nottinghamshire College who supplied a development worker to deliver a programme of training entitled SPEED (Special Project for Essential Education Development) .  The courses were tailored by HOPE to address basic computer use, keyboard skills, and word processing and using the internet to search for jobs.

HOPE worked closely with the ICT Officer at Bassetlaw CVS in the development and installation of the computer suite and also its ongoing maintenance.

What difference has ICT made? 

The use of ICT has enabled the organisation to not just make routine tasks more efficient by using computers, but also to record and collate statistics that have been invaluable when applying to a number of funders.

Both the internet suite and the HOPE office computers are maintained by Ian Bower at Bassetlaw CVS, generally on a phone call basis, but with hands-on support whenever necessary.

29 people enrolled on the Speed course and success can be measured by these people having gained a basic understanding of the computer skills needed to progress further towards training and possible employment. This would not have happened without the use of ICT.

Hope Services works on the basis of explaining how to fix a problem so that HOPE staff can fix it themselves should it occur again.

What was learnt? 

• That the use of ICT allowed the timely and proper management of grant funding and quarterly returns.
• Just how useful ICT can be when moving from paper based systems to simple computerisation and onto using specialist packages.
• That management information reports can be put together quickly and easily.

HOPE did not wait until they could not cope but planned their ICT expansion.

They are now looking for a database that will allow them to record of information about the users of the centre.  The database will need to work from any location on the office network.

Want to find out more? 

Contact name: Ian Holdsworth, Development Manager, HOPE Services

HOPE Services
Rear of 124 Bridge Street
Worksop
Nottinghamshire
S80 1HT

Website address: www.hopeservices.org.uk
Telephone: 01909 531294

For more information on putting together an ICT strategy, take a look at these Knowledgebase articles.