Paul* came into one of our sessions not really knowing why he was there. He’d been told to attend after a referral from the Jobcentre. Before that, he’d tried a beginner’s digital skills course at college, but his health got in the way and he couldn’t finish it. Now he’d been sent somewhere else, with a bit more urgency behind it, but without much explanation.

As we started chatting, it quickly became clear this wasn’t really about computers.

Paul hasn’t worked for around ten years. Since he was young, he’s had different jobs, but things didn’t always work out, often linked to struggles with alcohol. He told me he’s not drinking now, which is a big thing in itself. But it doesn’t just reset everything else. It doesn’t suddenly make life straightforward again.

On top of that, he’s a full-time carer for his wife, who isn’t able to leave the house. His world is already quite small and structured, built around care, routine, and getting through each day.

So when we started talking about learning digital skills, he stopped and asked:

“What’s the end point?”

It was such a simple question, but it said everything. Was he expected to start applying for jobs straight away? Was he meant to be putting together a CV? Should he be online every day searching and logging activity? No one had really explained it to him.

For a long time, he said he’d been “left alone”. But things have changed. He’s now on Universal Credit, and with that comes a completely different kind of pressure. Everything is online, everything is monitored, and there are expectations attached to it.

And if those expectations aren’t met, there can be consequences. We talk a lot about the cost of living at the moment — food, bills, energy, but there’s another side to it that you don’t always see. The cost of keeping up.

So much of life now assumes you can just log on and get on with things. Fill in forms, check accounts, search for jobs, respond to messages. But that only works if you know how, and if someone has taken the time to explain what’s actually expected of you.

Sitting with Paul, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to engage. It was that he didn’t know where to start. And when you’re already managing your health, caring for someone else, and trying to stay afloat, that uncertainty can feel huge. We didn’t get very far with digital skills that day. But that didn’t feel like a failure.

Because what Paul really needed first was clarity. To understand what he’s being asked to do, what applies to him, and what support is actually there. His next step isn’t jumping straight into job applications, it’s going back and asking those questions, properly.

He left still unsure about some things, but with a bit more confidence to speak up and ask. Not with learning how to use a computer, but with someone sitting alongside him and helping make sense of it all. And that is our aim, to sit along side someone until it starts to make sense.

*Paul is not his real name. Names have been changed to protect the privacy and dignity of the person we continue to support.