THE way the old world worked has clashed with how the world works now, and some senior Hawkesbury residents are the losers.
A Richmond seniors’ computer group which had run for 17 years closed down on July 8, due to what some tutors described as excessive paperwork requirements thrust upon them.
The Hawkesbury Seniors Computer Group used to meet at the seniors centre near Richmond nursing home on March Street.
When the new Seniors Leisure Centre was built to replace it, opening earlier this year, the centre’s manager, Peppercorn Services, made sure all the community groups using the facilities – including the computer group – complied with the legal requirements and obligations.
Members of the club contacted the Gazette as they were upset the group had decided not to continue under the new conditions.
Jayne Wilson of Glossodia, a tutor for two terms, said the group was great for older people who couldn’t afford commercial IT classes and who just wanted to learn to email their grandchildren and use the internet.
“It’s hard to get young people to explain things from the very start,” she said. “They’re too quick and they can’t slow down. They make older people feel like dinosaurs. The tutors at the club were in their 50s and 60s and their brains go at the same speed!
“It was all working perfectly, but the new people at the centre said ‘it’s my way or the highway’. When the new centre was built, we had to get police checks and do fire drills but no-one asked us how it was run. I was told I had to end the lesson on the dot. It was too controlling. We were also told we had to show up on the dot and not wander around the building.”
Tutor Ray Hart of Wilberforce was with the club for two-three years and said it was more an informal social club which gave computer advice, often one on one, whether it was how to use an iPad or how to send photos by email. They had outings and lunches too.
“I’m a trainer by profession and taught at the community college until it shut, but this club was not a training centre,” he said. “We’d sit down with people and discuss what they wanted to know. If they just wanted to know how to pair their phone with their car, we’d go out and do that. In the new building we had to document the courses – there weren’t any courses – and report what happened at each class.”
Mr Hart said the group had to end “as we lost all the tutors – they weren’t coming due to all the paperwork”. “We also had to become Peppercorn volunteers and have a criminal check. This isn’t what we signed up for. We’re not paid.
“It was very disappointing to see something that had a social aspect being forced to be something that it was not.”
Iris Macdonald of Bligh Park was a volunteer with the group for most of its history, starting there due to a need to learn about computers herself so she could look up books in the library.
“I’m angry as I feel there are a lot of people who are disadvantaged by this,” she said, agreeing with Ray Hart that it was the social aspects of the group that were most important.
“There were people there with issues and they were helped tremendously,” she said. “A blind lady wanted to do her memoirs. Jenny (a tutor) helped her enormously. It helped her get out of herself. When she passed on, Jenny gave the family the USB stick with what she’d done on it, and they were delighted.”
However Peppercorn Services manager Denise Handcock said they had bent over backwards to try to accommodate the group, but ultimately they had to conform with modern legal requirements, as did all groups which used the centre.
“We’re in the new age of groups having to be insured,” she said. “They had no team leader, no public liability insurance and they decided to dissolve it as no-one wanted to take responsibility for the entity.
“They also had to go through Volunteering Australia’s National Standards for Volunteer Involvement, as do all volunteer groups.
“What the group had been doing was fantastic and great, but they had no bank account, no committee, and no record of what they were trying to achieve. They just wanted to be left alone to their thing. I put practices in place because I have to.
“I contacted the library which runs the Tech Savvy for Seniors course and we had a chat to the computer group about it so some tutors could connect with them, and contacted (another Hawkesbury venue) to see if they could teach there but they had no room at the moment.
“I also tried to find them another venue where they could do what they wanted to do but the other places all had the same requirements (as us).
“Many of them have been out of the workforce for 20 years and they don’t realise the world has changed. We’ve cared for them as best we can.
“I’ve given them so many opportunities but they just didn’t want to change.”
Peppercorn Services held a farewell lunch for the group at the March Street leisure centre on Wednesday, July 27.
