A care manager's experience
 For those of us working with older people who
have mental health needs, we were excited by the possibilities
of using Telecare to help our clients remain in their own
homes for longer and more safely.
Mrs Gable lives alone in a ground floor flat. She is 87 and
fiercely independent. Mrs Gable has lived in Kent for many years
after moving here with her family as a young girl.
Mrs Gable now has a significant level of dementia and no longer
recognises her home, her family and can't understand why things get
moved around her house, as she forgets moving them herself.
This has led to her becoming suspicious of everyone. Various
support workers have had walking sticks raised at them and shouted
at to leave her alone.
Mrs Gable has an old electric cooker that she uses to cook
potatoes and boil water, but she had begun to forget about pans on
the stove. It was only by luck that no serious fire had broken
out.
The future for Mrs Gable living at home would have been bleak. A
risk assessment indicated severe risk of harm from fire if the
cooker remained in her home, but severe risk of malnutrition if it
was taken away. That was before the use of Telecare
equipment
in her home.
Traditional care support has been ineffective for her, and meals
on wheels were not accepted, despite weeks of trying various
approaches.
Monitoring was almost impossible due to Mrs Gable's reluctance
to let anyone into her property for long. Risks to herself and
others would ultimately force us to consider the Mental Health Act
1983.
However, for Mrs Gable, Telecare has addressed the risks of her
staying in her own home effectively, and since 2005 she has
remained in her there with a minimal amount of physical
intervention.
Mrs Gable was happy to have a smoke detector fitted which is
connected to the lifeline unit. The smoke detector has been well
used and the fire brigade have attended numerous times in the past
two years.
The fire brigade now send a community fire safety officer to
each review meeting we hold, and we jointly reconsider the risks
each time. On one occasion they have attended and a fire needed to
be put out, but the speed of referral to them from Telecare meant
that no property was damaged and no harm was done to Mrs Gable or
others.
On most of their call outs they have found only smoke, and Mrs
Gable not sure how to respond to the problem (sometimes not even
aware of the smoke) but always pleased to see the men in uniform
come to the rescue.
It is worth noting that this places a cost on the fire brigade
and we have had to find ways of reducing the risks where possible,
not just accepting them.
However, Telecare has allowed this process to take place whilst
ensuring the safety of Mrs Gable and her neighbours - a situation
we could not have supported without the Telecare
system. |