Alertacall Ltd. has written to directors of adult social care challenging them to increase the amount of PTG funding they have available to spend on people with high-level telecare needs from £500 to £960 — and to do so whilst meeting half their target number of people benefiting from telecare. The press release doesn’t detail how they are to do this, except to say that Alertacall can ‘help release PTG funding… by providing low-cost telecare packages to councils which they could give to people to self-install. In doing so, councils could easily meet half their telecare population target and still have up to £960 available to spend on the rest.’
Comment: This appears to be the most interesting development on the UK telecare scene for some time. The Telecare Policy Collaborative wrestled with, to no real conclusion, the issue of whether it would be possible to get telecare into the general population of older people and also to people with identified care needs. If part of councils’ targets can be met at low cost, allowing more to be spent on people with identified community care needs, this could be a win-win for everyone including users, carers, councils and the more ‘traditional’ telecare suppliers. The downside of this development would be if councils met all their target number with low-cost packages and ignored the opportunity to redesign their care services to incorporate telecare.