The London Telecare Group and JCA Design have produced a new poster that, with generous support from the Adshel and ClearChannel advertising agencies, will be displayed in several thousand London locations. London-based telecare services are also encouraged to order A3 or A4 posters tailored with their own local call centre details.

©2008 JCA/London Telecare Ltd
The new London poster leaves me speechless. Has the government spent £xM on PTG & POPP just to rename the “lifeline” buttons as “telecare”?
Many people across London have not been left speechless by our posters but, I am pleased to say, have been encouraged to phone our 0800 number for a local service.
The London poster campaigns have been successful from their inception several years ago and are the only example of marketing telecare (lifeline) services directly to the public. Our current image has created an enormous amount of interest, including from locations outside London.
At £250 per authority per campaign they are great value. Measure it with the £500 per person new to telecare services allowed in the PTG!
However, it is not for me to comment on behalf of the government regarding the success of PTG and POPP schemes. Perhaps Barry’s question would be better directed to CSCI or CSIP for the latest results.
Lifeline..telecare….telehealthcare….who knows??
I’m sure that the poster campaign is valuable, but concerned that it promotes the impression that “telecare” is limited to “lifeline” as does Doug’s text above. I am aware that a poster needs to have a simple message & a compelling image. It’s just a shame that the promise of new assistive technologies is being reduced to the “lifeline” of yore.
Let’s not beat each other up over this when we can put the blame for this terminology matter where it really lies – with the Department of Health.
As I recall, throughout the time of the Telecare Policy Collaborative there was general agreement that telecare was a step on from community alarms in that alerts did not need to be triggered by the person in difficulties. It was a matter of concern (to put it mildly) to some of us at the time when Building Telecare in England, the document associated with the PTG, was published (July 2005) and decreed (page eight) that telecare “can be as simple as the basic community alarm”.
This inclusion on the part of the officials involved was deliberate, but just why was never clear. (I had left the Department by that time.) The most likely explanation is that it was that they were doubtful that councils could or would deliver on the PTG aspiration of increasing the number of telecare users by 160,000 in two years unless people newly provided with community alarms were included. How right they were! But only right in one way – right problem – but wrong solution!
Now of course, with the Association of Alarm Providers becoming the Telecare Services Association and councils and other organisations renaming their alarm services as telecare services, the distinction has been irretrievably lost.