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A British company founded in 2004
Don't be tempted to use poor imitations of this service - they do not work. This is why...
The 5 golden rules
- It must only take 2 seconds or less for a resident to signal I am okay and the process must be as easy as possible and suitable for people with impaired hearing and eyesight.
- For residents to want the service they must be given more freedom and control over the amount of contact they get than with morning calls.
- It must be easy for a resident to talk to someone if they want to and easy to tell someone if they don't need the service because they are going away.
- Any service should be supported by a company with real expertise in this area who understand the needs of all the different stakeholders.
- Any system to check a person is safe should incorporate a real test that someone is awake and cognitively functioning never rely on movement sensors.
Safety Confirmation works extremely well because it obeys the 5 golden rules and has been developed over years with feedback from thousands of people.
You should not use any other service that doesn't obey the 5 golden rules because it is likely to be disruptive for your residents and damage perception of your services. This is why...
Automated safety calls do not work
Fully automated telephone calls made to residents at pre-agreed times each day in every single one of our tests and partner's tests have been an unmitigated disaster.
The resident gains nothing in the way of freedom, feels they have lost human contact and is often unable to follow the automated prompts in order to confirm they are okay - particularly people with poor hearing or eyesight.
In trials of this kind of service we have consistently seen less than 60% opt in and more than 50% of those who actually have opted in not being able to use the service properly.
Using pull cords creates confusion
We strongly recommend you do not routinely request residents to use their pull cord alarms to confirm to a monitoring centre they are okay because this confuses the resident as to the purpose of the pull cord alarm, the resident has to typically wait for a response which is highly frustrating and it creates confusion at the alarm receiving centre as to the purpose or priority of the call. The process of confirming safety should always be clearly separated from that of requesting help in an emergency.
I am okay cards are not reliable
Some organisations are still asking their residents to put a printed 'I am okay' card in a window or outside the door in the morning to denote that the resident is okay. This system, although it seems straightforward is often dangerously ineffective.
Quite often the same resident groups do not have weekend cover so when the support staff check the cards on Monday morning it is impossible for them to know how long the card has been in that status. It's possible someone put the card out on Saturday in confusion and are in fact seriously unwell or incapacitated, some residents are even known to put their cards out the night before. It is difficult to audit the I am okay card system. It is impossible to manage remotely and potentially represents a security risk signalling whether someone is potentially in or out of a property.
Bed sensors or movement detectors provide little proof someone is okay
The use of a bed sensor or movement sensor to detect that someone is up and about safely in the morning is in our opinion high risk, unnecessarily complicated, expensive and prone to failure. Just becomes someone has got out of bed (of fallen out of bed) or is moving around within their property it does not mean they are safe.
People who are highly confused will often be moving round in their property, a bed sensor or movement detector would yield a false positive. In practice few people in a confused state press their I am okay button because it is in effect a simple cognitive test. Safety Confirmation often 'saves' people with temporary forms of dementia created by urinary tract infections which would otherwise not be detected by bed sensors or movement detectors.