Contrasting telecare stories (UK)

First the goodnews story: a young mother who has blackouts is saved by her 5-year-old son calling her telecare monitoring centre My five-year-old hero saved my life.

Next, following the dreadful news of the young severely disabled woman who apparently starved to death, unable to summon help when her carer mother died suddenly, the UK national paper The Telegraph highlighted that she had no panic alarm. Disabled woman who starved to death had no panic alarm at home. In reality, of course, given the extent of the daughter’s impaired abilities it is unlikely that she would have been able to use a conventional community alarm without considerable switching modifications and even then she may not have been able to use it. However, a safety confirmation system, such as provided by Alertacall, would have picked up that there was a problem within 24 hours maximum. [Disclosure: Alertacall has advertised on Telecare Aware.]