Russet Homes residents take a peek behind the scenes

Published by Barbara H for Invicta Telecare in Housing and also in Communities, Education, Environment, Health, Local Government

Residents at St Mary’s Court, a sheltered housing scheme in West Malling, visited Invicta Telecare’s busy monitoring centre to take a peek behind the scenes to see first hand how the lifesaving service responds to alarm calls.

The visit was the idea of a resident attending a Russet Homes Sheltered Scheme Forum who was curious to know what happened after an alarm cord is pulled or a lifeline pendant pressed. Each of the 11 sheltered schemes owned by Russet Homes offer residents a range of pull cord alarms, alarm sensors - such as smoke detectors, flood detectors - and a lifeline pendant which are monitored by Invicta Telecare.

Following an interesting presentation the residents sat alongside trained Telecare operators to watch them in action. It gave them the opportunity to ask questions and see how the 24 hour service works, what type of calls they receive and how the alarm calls are handled. Most of the group had pressed their own pendant at home in the past when they needed help and were interested to meet the friendly ‘voices’ who helped them.

On the day of the visit Invicta Telecare operators answered 3,773 calls. In the last year they have responded to over 1,252,000 calls and an impressive 99% were answered within 60 seconds. Many calls are from people who have fallen or feel unwell, others can be triggered by smoke alarm detectors which have gone off providing an early warning of a fire and some are from people who simply need friendly re-assurance.

Melanie McAdam, Russet Homes Resident Involvement Officer who runs the Forum which meets every two months and organised the visit, said: “The group just couldn’t believe how many calls the operators received and how busy they were. They were impressed by how they responded quickly to the wide range of calls keeping calm and a sense of humour in what is often very stressful situations.

“We always welcome any suggestions from our residents particularly if it helps them to become involved and find out more about our services. We plan to help the Forum to set up a dedicated team who will put forward ideas for future trips and help organise them on behalf of all residents living in our sheltered housing schemes.”

Russet Homes own and manage over 6,600 properties within Tonbridge & Malling and its Group partner, Invicta Telecare, is the UK’s leading independent provider of Telecare providing services to over 96,000 homes. Both organisations share the same main office at Borough Green and are part of Circle Anglia, one of the leading providers of affordable housing in the UK.