About Telecare

Telecare is a technology-based system designed to provide safety & reassurance for older or vulnerable people, their families and carers.

If you decide to apply for Lancashire Telecare, we will first assess your needs, then install various sensors around your home. These sensors can monitor all sorts of problems or dangerous situations that may occur such as:

• A flood from a bath or sinks around the house
• Parts of the home being too hot (e.g. fire, cooker rings left on etc) or too cold (e.g. heating not switched on in winter)
• A build up of carbon monoxide escaping from a faulty gas boiler or fire

Other Telecare sensors can indicate problems such as:

• Having a fall
• Having got out of bed, fallen and not being able to summon help
• Not getting out of bed (or a chair) for a long time
• Having wandered outside the home at an inappropriate time

Every Telecare sensor is linked to a "home hub unit" which, if an alarm is triggered, will automatically send an emergency call through your telephone line to our 24 hour monitoring centre. The trained operators will first try to speak to you to find out what the problem is, and quickly send out appropriate help if needed. This could mean contacting the emergency services, sending out our mobile response service, or simply getting a nominated relative, friend or neighbour to visit.

Monitoring & Response Service

If an alarm is triggered:

In the event of an emergency, or if you trigger your own pendant, trained operators will respond within seconds. They will have details of your needs, your doctor’s address, and contact details for any relatives, friends or neighbours nominated by you. The operator will also be aware of which individual sensor has triggered the alert, such as pendant, fall detector, smoke detector etc. They will immediately attempt to communicate with you using the two way speech function on the base unit (which works even if you are in a separate room).

If required, the monitoring centre operators will act promptly by summoning the appropriate response and will stay on the line until help arrives.

The actual response will vary depending on the situation. It may simply require a neighbour or relative to call on you to check all is well, a visit from one of Lancashire Telecare Service’s visiting responders - or it could mean the summoning of emergency services.

If a visit from one of Lancashire Telecare Service’s visiting responders is required, they will make an assessment of the situation as well as keeping the monitoring centre informed - allowing the centre operators to keep relatives updated. This also applies if you need other services such as admission to hospital.