Marija Petrović | 24 Jul 2026

An adult daughter notices an unfamiliar payment on her father’s account. A volunteer helps someone open an administrative message. A care worker assists a resident with a new smartphone.

Each situation begins with an opportunity to help. It also raises a question: how can assistance protect a person’s interests while preserving their authority over their own life?

The boundary between care and control can be difficult to recognise in everyday interactions. Taking over a task may feel efficient, particularly when someone is worried about fraud or frustrated by a complicated process. Yet the way assistance is provided can influence whether the person receiving it gains confidence or becomes increasingly dependent.

Begin with the person’s priorities

A helper may arrive with a clear idea of what needs to happen. The person receiving assistance may have a different concern.

Someone struggling with a banking application might want to understand one unfamiliar notification. Their relative may respond by proposing to manage the entire account. A person asking how to change a privacy setting may find that several other settings have been changed without explanation.

Beginning with a question—“What would you like help with?”—establishes the scope of the interaction. It gives the person an opportunity to describe the difficulty and decide how much assistance they want.

That conversation also makes room for preferences. A person may welcome guidance while wanting to carry out each step themselves. Another may ask someone to complete a specific task on their behalf. These choices deserve attention.

Consent in the small decisions

Respect for autonomy is expressed through ordinary actions: asking before opening a message, explaining why access to an account is needed and checking before changing a setting.

Small decisions can contain private information or have consequences that are not immediately visible. A helper who moves quickly may overlook how much they are seeing or deciding.

A considerate approach keeps the person informed throughout the process. Where possible, they can enter their own passwords, review information before it is shared and confirm changes before they are made.

These practices help make assistance understandable. They also establish a useful expectation: someone providing support should be able to explain what they are doing.

Making room for learning

Completing a task and helping someone learn it require different kinds of attention. The quickest solution may be to take the device and work through the process. Learning usually requires more time.

A person may need to repeat a step, write down instructions or understand how to return to the starting point. An explanation that seems obvious to the helper may contain several unfamiliar concepts.

Patience allows the learner to remain involved. It also provides an opportunity to discover what is causing the difficulty. The obstacle may be small text, confusing language or uncertainty about whether an action can be reversed.

Support becomes more useful when it responds to that particular barrier.

Concern does not remove the need for dialogue

An experience of fraud can make relatives anxious. They may feel that restricting access to digital services will prevent another incident. The affected person may experience the same restriction as a loss of privacy, independence or connection.

These concerns need a conversation in which the person’s wishes remain central. What happened? Which part of the interaction caused difficulty? What support would they find helpful? Can a specific safeguard address the concern while allowing familiar activities to continue?

Older adults differ widely in experience, confidence and support needs. Age alone provides little guidance about how much assistance an individual wants or requires.

Shared responsibility for accessible services

Families and volunteers should not have to compensate for every confusing interface or inaccessible process. Organisations also shape how independently people can participate.

Clear explanations, usable design and accessible support can reduce the need to disclose private information to an informal helper. Alternative ways to complete a task can give people more control over how they engage.

For organisations working in education and social inclusion, this places digital autonomy within a broader commitment to dignity. Assistance should make participation more possible while keeping the person involved in decisions that concern them.

A useful measure of support is whether the person leaves the interaction feeling heard, informed and able to decide what happens next.

The blog entry is part of the “ODYSSEY – Your Financial Security” project, financed by the European Commission.