For many individuals, day-to-day life is lived through a blend of online and offline and interaction conversations started face-to face with friends move to SMS on way home, onto social network site chat later on and perhaps at some point to a skype call. snapshots of a social event taken on a smartphone might be uploaded to the web, shared, liked, discussed and then shown around on a screen at the at the next face-to-face meeting, extending engagement as content and conversation seamlessly shifts between online and offline. Yet the majority of services and support for disabled and older individuals are delivered either offline or online, with strong dividing lines between the two. Blending offline and online support can happen in many ways. It might be driven by a facilitator taking a 'blended facilitation' approach to amplify face-to-face work with young people by sharing it online. Or it might involve using the web to connect people to meet to share ideas and experience offline. Many areas of the country now have hyperlocal online websites- such as London ward based haringey online.
I probably do this very thing and not realise it. Yet I do understand older people likely not participating in the same way?