Did the riots affect telecare service usage?

Steve Hards

Here are a couple of questions for English telecare services – just out of curiosity:

  1. Did riots in your locality affect your ability to respond to alerts?
  2. Did you notice a change in pattern of alerts from riot-affected areas? (More? Less? Timing?)

Please leave a comment if you have an observation to share.

4 thoughts on “Did the riots affect telecare service usage?”

  1. Skyguard looks after Telecare clients as both private individuals and on behalf of Local Authorities. Suprisingly, we haven’t noticed any unusual or distinct changes in alarm patterns since the riots started. I’m pleased to say that our ability to mange and respond to alarms has been unaffected also.

  2. We didn’t notice much of a rise in missed CareCalls in evenings, however I did get two calls, one from a user who thanked me for the service because he had rioters in his street and became worried of a break in, so by not responding to his medication reminder his family were notified and came to see him immediately.

    Also had another woman ring complimenting us on the system, it had also notified them of a distressed relative and they were able to visit her. Nice to know our services helped!

  3. It is encouraging to see that telecare services in the UK are robust and resilient to many outside influences – to riots we could add blizzards, floods, pandemics, storms, electricity, IT and telecomms failures. One reason may be the requirement for accredited monitoring and call handling centres to have formal disaster recovery procedures in place to demonstrate their commitment to carry on providing a high quality service at all times. The UK telecare industry has also managed to maintain a reputation for sharing, and more recently publishing, through their trades association (the TSA) good practice so that service providers learn from each other.

  4. I agree with you Kevin and believe that a combination of personal care and telecare can cater for all scenarios.

    In times when social workers aren’t able to make visits (such as in adverse weather or even in times of the rioting as it would put their own safety at risk) that you can still be assured that they are safe and well due to Telecare.

    Even if its not alongside a monitoring centre, the family will know that they are fine!

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