The telecare service in Cheshire East Council helps people with care needs to remain in their own homes for longer by making use of new developments in assistive technology.
The telecare service in Cheshire East Council offers assistive technology to people who are at risk when they are alone at home. Assistive technology is equipment which is installed in someone’s home and sends an automatic alert to a call centre when a problem is detected.
“The effect of that,” says Jon Wilkie, the Project Manager for Assistive Technology at Cheshire East Council Adult Social Services, “is that people can stay at home longer. They can remain in their own home, which the vast majority of people are very keen to do.”
A new generation of telecare
Staff from Cheshire East Council Adult Social Services carry out an assessment to find out an individual’s particular needs and the specific risks they face. They then discuss what technology may help and how it can be installed in the person’s home.
Alarm pendants and buttons are the traditional forms of telecare. These are activated when an individual presses a button to alert carers that they need help.
“The beauty of more recent developments in telecare is that you don’t actually have to initiate something yourself, it’s automatic,” says Jon.
Fall detectors are one example of how telecare has developed.
“You clip the fall detector onto your belt and it is activated by a combination of tilt and impact,” Jon explains. “So if you trip over and fall, the unit knows that something’s wrong and it’ll give you six seconds to get yourself up. If you’ve not be able to move in those six seconds, the alert will go through to the call centre or the nominated phone number to signal that there’s a problem.
“Another example is a bed sensor that would be placed under the mattress in a bed. Generally, it would be used where there are concerns about someone falling in the night time. People aren’t likely to wear the fall detector when they get out of bed to go to the toilet, but that can be when people fall. So you would allow somebody, say ten minutes depending on their routine and habits. If they’re not back in bed within those ten minutes, then an alert is produced.
“It can give somebody some peace of mind that somebody’s there for them should they need it, and they don’t necessarily need to initiate that contact.”
This also importantly offers peace of mind to people who are important to the person using the equipment such as family members, carers, and friends.
Improving assessments
Telecare is also helping to improve how Cheshire East Council assesses the risks people face by using equipment such as the Lifestyle Monitoring System. The monitor uses a range of sensors installed in the house to detect movement and build a picture of how someone is moving around. This is particularly useful if carers or family members are concerned about what is happening to someone when they are on their own.
“Before we used this technology, the care manager or the social worker would do an assessment. Part of that process would involve talking to relatives and carers about how they felt that person was managing when they weren’t there,” says Jon. “This technology gives us the opportunity to get a picture of how people are functioning in their own home when support isn’t there.
“We’ve had a number of situations where there have been real concerns about somebody being at risk because they are not sleeping at night or leaving their property during the night time. Often we’ve found through this system that they’re okay and the risks are not there. However, there have been some situations where the system has shown that someone’s been up all night, so it’s no wonder they’ve been having falls and feeling tired during the daytime,” says Jon.
Supporting people to stay in their own homes
This sort of technology helps Jon and teams support people to stay at home when that is their wish, and where it is appropriate.
“We’ve worked with a number of people who’ve been on the cusp of going into residential or nursing care and this has been the last opportunity to assess whether their needs can be met in their own home and it’s shown that they could remain at home,” he says. “Often, we’ve identified the risks through the lifestyle monitoring, and then we can put in pieces of technology to manage those risks.”
Independence and peace of mind are two of the main benefits Jon sees in telecare. It allows teams to think more imaginatively and put in place systems that are personalised.
“We were working with a young man with learning disabilities and autism, and somebody needed to be with him all the time to make sure he wasn’t having a seizure. His autism meant that he found it very difficult to tolerate other people being in his space. Through using telecare we were able to manage the risks of his medical diagnosis without staff being in his personal space. The effects were really positive, it meant he could do what he wanted to do, and stay where he wanted to stay,” Jon says.
Telecare offers real benefits for families of users too, who may be making extra calls or visits to their relatives to check on them.
“We installed an epilepsy sensor recently for a woman who has nocturnal seizures,” Jon says. “She’d been in one of our short break services where we have telecare technologies and because she had a diagnosis of epilepsy we supported her with an epilepsy sensor at night time and the family were amazed. They said, ‘we didn’t know that these sensors existed, we think it’s brilliant’, so she has a sensor fitted in her bed at home. The sensor will alert her parents (who are her primary carers) in the next door room at night time instead of mum or dad listening out for sounds of a seizure and having to be on duty at night time.”
Better quality support
Some people have concerns about telecare. Jon finds the best way to reassure people is to sit down with them and explain the benefits.
“They’re sometimes worried about relying on technology too much; what if it fails, what if it doesn’t work? With the lifestyle monitoring, there can be concerns about people literally seeing what they’re doing and people giving away some personal privacy or freedom,” he says.
“We offer reassurance about the reliability of the technology we use and explain about the information that lifestyle monitoring produces. We also tend to couch our explanations outside the technology because it really isn’t about the technology itself; it’s about how this supports somebody and how the technology informs us about how to effectively support someone through a personal budget and or equipment as appropriate. The benefits really are the outcomes for that person which might be more independence; it might be that we’re reducing or managing the risks the person faces which enables that person to stay at home for longer.”