Alertacall in 2018: a year in review

What a year 2018 has been! While we still await the government to publish its much anticipated ‘Social Care Green Paper’, there was welcome news for housing providers following the announcement that all supported housing will continue to be funded by housing benefit and kept outside of the Universal Credit system. Additionally, that the Local Housing Authority cap to supported or social housing in general would also not be implemented – creating much needed certainty for social housing providers as to the future provision of services.

Certainly 2018 was a very busy year for all of us at Alertacall. We have substantially grown our contact centre team as we have expanded to now provide a range of services to over 40 organisations across the UK in housing, social care and health. Plus, with more investment in our IT and Business Development teams there has been a range of exciting new technological developments as we continue to improve our devices and add enhancements to the cloud based daily contact system.

Here are some of the Alertacall highlights from 2018:

• Exciting rebrand to ‘Bring Contact To Life’ – Back in May 2018, Alertacall launched a new logo, new mission statement, new website and new literature – all with the purpose of re-aligning our services under the Alertacall brand and emphasise the benefits in proactive daily contact for organisations in housing, social care and health.
• Multiple housing providers adopt Housing Proactive to improve resident communication and property management – The number of organisations Alertacall work with now stands at over 40. 2018 saw a large number of Scottish housing providers implement Housing Proactive, including the largest housing association in Scotland, The Wheatley Group.
• Launch of WellBeing Proactive service in social care and health – WellBeing Proactive is a preventative, person centered service that uses Alertacall’s unique approach to daily contact to improve wellbeing for people with higher needs, reduce social isolation, save lives, reduce hospital admissions and overall streamline service provision in social care and health.
• Mental health service expansion across the North West – Following the success of an initial pilot of the Housing Proactive service, mental health charity, Making Space, extended the use of the service to cover multiple locations across the North West of England – primarily with the aim to improve tenant communication while also enabling those with higher mental health needs to have a greater level of independence in terms of managing their property.
• Tower block accommodation in Central Manchester to benefit from Housing Proactive – One Manchester decided to extend its use of the Housing Proactive service into General Needs as well as Sheltered in 2018. Furthermore, the new properties are all based in tower block accommodation and was implemented as a direct result of tenant consultation – residents wanted a system which made it easy for them to communicate property issues with the housing team and have contact at weekends, not just during the week.
• Overwhelming positive customer feedback following surveys conducted in 2018 – From surveys conducted this year with individuals who use Alertacall devices in their home, 98% of stated that they were highly satisfied with the service. 83% also highlighted that they found the messaging service useful and felt better informed. This just goes to show that while daily contact services provide a vast range of benefits at an organisational level, residents and customers using the system on a day-to-day basis also view it as a significant service improvement.
• Issued a number of thought leadership pieces around the importance and benefits of daily contact – This year we have issued a range of thought leadership pieces, such as ‘Assistive technology for those with higher needs: the best approaches & the potential risks’ and a briefing paper on ‘How technology can make people isolated and lonely’ aimed at those working in social care. We also issued a practical guide for those in housing entitled ‘Moving on from hard-wired alarm systems’ You can download our papers and presentations from our website.
• Further development of our tablet offering – Following the acquisition of Dodl back in February, our tech team continues to develop the software for Android tablets that makes it simple – “a Dodl” – for people to receive images, videos and other messages from their family members. If you would like to learn more about our tablets, you can get in contact via contact@alertacall.com.
• Alertacall receive A1 D&B credit rating – Given some of the uncertainty in the market, it is also important to draw attention to the excellent A1 D&B credit rating we received this year – demonstrating our financial strength and strong commitment to service to both customers and suppliers.

So here’s to a busy 2019! We already have some exciting project developments lined up to be revealed shortly. All there is left to do now though is to wish Season’s Greetings to all our customers and very best wishes for the New Year.

For more information on any of our services, contact our team on 0808 208 1234 or email contact@alertacall.com.