Personal alarm systems for old people

tenpole

This is something I am looking at for father in law after he spent 36 hrs collapsed on the floor. So far the best seems to be Ageuk for a £70 base unit and pendant and £3.50 a week service charge.

I will look into council social services after advice from here.

MarkFromCornwall

I've set up a Lifemax 1225 SOS Emergency Phone (about £100) for my mother. There's a phone with a big red button and a pendant worn around the neck. It doesn't connect to a call centre so there is no ongoing service charge. Instead you programme it to call whoever you want, eg. a family member, neighbour or friend. It can call several numbers in rotation until it gets through to someone. We've not had a real emergency yet but have had a few false alarms which let us know that it works. You need someone who is moderately technical to set it up but the elderly person really only needs to know to press the button and how to cancel it.

Steve_xx

My friend has a situation with his elderly Mum, where he needs for her to be able to easily contact him at anytime.


He got her a Doro 334 mobile phone which has 4 buttons on it that can be pre-programmed. There is an additional 'emergency' button on the back of it. It operates like any other mobile phone, except that you can only pre-program four number and there's no keypad, but it does contain a SIM card. They cost about £130. He found it a problem as Mum fumbled in her bag she would invariably press the 'emergency' button, not realising that she had done so etc etc.


The emergency feature had to be de-programmed because of this.


So, he ordered two SIM cards from a company called Vectone and put one in his Mums phone and one in an old mobile for himself. You can make Vectone to Vectone calls for free and you don't even need to put any money on the SIM to activate it. So now Mum can call him at anytime and for free and he can call his Mum anytime and for free. Of course you don't need the expensive Doro phone in order to do this. Any old cheapo mobile will do the job. But because he'd already bought the Doro phone he figured it would be easier for Mum to just have to press the one button to call him.

Sarah-A_2

MonitorGO is a good alarm for those who still like to get out and about. It's built on a mobile phone and it has fall detection and location tracking as well.

merchsolutions

Thanks hope fully some use full information.

MrGumby

tenpole wrote: »

This is something I am looking at for father in law after he spent 36 hrs collapsed on the floor. So far the best seems to be Ageuk for a £70 base unit and pendant and £3.50 a week service charge.

I will look into council social services after advice from here.

The Saga unit looks very similar and has a similar ongoing fee but without any charge for the base unit, if my understanding is correct.

iain5722

Hopefully this is still relevant as the original post was a while ago but we recently got a monitored alarm service for my mum from a company called Appello, worked out a bit cheaper than local council. She has only had to press the button once (I guess less is better) but when she did they were very good in contacting the ambulance and also phoned me to make me aware.:T

MrGumby

We went for a Lifemax 1225 phone to replace the existing phone rather than a service like those from Saga, Age Concern or the council.

We now regret our decision and have had to give up on this phone. The pendant is badly designed and far too easily triggers false alarms.

The main reason was that my mother-in-law decided she'd rather call a member of the family than a call centre. It cost a lot less too (one-off less than £100 - keep in mind that you don't need to pay vat). You program it to call a succession of five numbers when the button on the pendant is pressed. The pendant acts like a DECT handset, with its own microphone and speaker but no keypad. Call quality via the pendant is excellent.

One benefit is that the pendant can be used to answer incoming calls. You also get a big-button phone with a big display and audio feedback of numbers as the keys are pressed. You can set it to announce incoming numbers too, but then it doesn't start ringing until the number has been announced. It can also function as a room monitor but we haven't tried that. The pendant is rechargeable - the charger is kept on her bedside table and the pendant popped into it each night.

It isn't all good though. There is an SOS button on the phone as well as the pendant but hands-free microphone pickup on the phone is poor to the point of being almost unusable. The directory on the phone isn't the easiest or most intuitive to access (should be a single button press) - we decided not to try and teach mil to use it. Setup isn't as easy as it could/should be, not helped by rather poor instructions, but we got there in the end.

Keep in mind that, ideally, you should install a key safe on the wall outside, for use by emergency services. The best (and most expensive) is perhaps the Supra C500.

MrGumby

MarkFromMullion wrote: »

I've set up a Lifemax 1225 SOS Emergency Phone (about £100) for my mother. There's a phone with a big red button and a pendant worn around the neck. It doesn't connect to a call centre so there is no ongoing service charge. Instead you programme it to call whoever you want, eg. a family member, neighbour or friend. It can call several numbers in rotation until it gets through to someone. We've not had a real emergency yet but have had a few false alarms which let us know that it works. You need someone who is moderately technical to set it up but the elderly person really only needs to know to press the button and how to cancel it.

The pendant with this is badly designed and far too easily triggers false alarms. We gave up on the one we bought for a parent.

MrGumby

iain5722 wrote: »

Hopefully this is still relevant as the original post was a while ago but we recently got a monitored alarm service for my mum from a company called Appello, worked out a bit cheaper than local council. She has only had to press the button once (I guess less is better) but when she did they were very good in contacting the ambulance and also phoned me to make me aware.:T

Hello. 10 months on, are you still happy with the service? I feel the level of service provided is the most important aspect of the many available pendant alarms