Digitalisation and digital solutions can enrich the lives of us all and pave the way towards a more sustainable, innovative and prosperous future. To truly ensure such a future for all, it is timely that discussions on participatory decision-making & digitalisation are the main themes of this year’s Danube Participation Day – an annual platform for stakeholders in the Danube Region.

This year’s event has offered the opportunity to discuss the potentials and challenges of digitalisation for health and home care and social services with Katja Vonhoff from Diakonie Baden-Württemberg, lead partner of the D-Care Labs, taking part in the panel III of the opening day of the 8th Danube Participation Day entitled ‘Accessibility & Digital Skills’. The panel focused on the improvement of access to social services and care through digitalisation and put the spotlight on the importance of media & digital literacy for sustainable democracies and capacity-building for eParticipation.

“Within the D-Care Labs, we aim to create spaces where we can create new solutions for home care. Digitalisation is an important tool as it offers diverse opportunities and knowledge; it can also enable access to services and service provision.” said Vonhoff. In this respect, several initiatives focused on the use of digital tools have been developing in our regional labs – with one solution in the Hungarian social innovation lab focused on the development of a web interface that connects patients and doctors. Two initiatives of the Serbian lab concentrate on a digital solutions: An App that supports skills development of parents with children with special needs and a solution that supports independent living of young people with disabilities.

When focusing on necessary changes that need to be implemented in the Danube region to support digitalisation further, Ms Vonhoff pointed out the need for developing low-threshold access and enabling the learning of (digital) tools – mentioning D-Care Labs partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have held trainings with older persons on the use of digital tools before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and thus enabling them to use the digital tools during the pandemic to stay in touch with loved ones and to use different kinds of new digital offers. Another point was the need for innovation programmes where innovators work directly with target groups to get first-hand feedback on what works. There is also the need to find out how to implement new tools into the society and ensure that we (users) know the limitations of the digital solutions, concluded Vonhoff.