Trafford Housing Trust launch new community support tool

Published by Melanie Hughes for Trafford Housing Trust in Housing and also in Communities

As part of Trafford Housing Trust’s TrustCall Community Alarm Service for anyone who lives in Trafford, The Trust has now launched a new emergency response service called m-Care.

m-Care is a new service which works through your mobile phone, meaning you can take it with you everywhere and alert the Response Centre Team around the clock in case of emergency.

Anyone who uses a mobile phone can use m-Care simply by pressing a speed dial number on their mobile handset to contact the 24/7 Response Centre. The service can be set-up from just £1.50 per week and is designed to help all ranges of vulnerable people in the community.

When an m-Care call is made from a standard mobile phone, it is viewed as an ‘alarm call’ at the Response Centre and will be managed in that way. Waiting in queues or engaged lines will not be a problem when using the service. The team will contact your next of kin or the emergency services and also provide a team of responders who can come out to assist you if necessary.

The customer can also choose to send an SMS text message, which may be a preferred option for those who are hard of hearing and the Response Centre will deal with the call in the same way.

Vulnerable young people may also be more protected as an ordinary mobile phone, which many young people already have anyway, does not have the same social stigma as a ‘panic button’ or another emergency device.

Fran Gudger, TrustCall Manager, said: “TrustCall has allowed many people to remain independent and this new product is an extension of that. m-Care is designed for the next level of people who are still independent but may be worried about becoming vulnerable.

“Our response team has a fantastic record having answered 96% of calls within 30 seconds and responded to over 90% of emergency call outs within 20 minutes, we aim to carry this on with the introduction of the m-Care service.”

If required, it is possible for a caller’s location to be made available to the Response Centre Operator. This feature can easily be integrated into the solution utilising readily available mobile phones with inbuilt GPS location features.

The service will be provided by TrustCall and upon signing up to the m-Care service, one of the TrustCall team will call round to collect information, medical details and also help the user set up m-Care on their phone.

TrustCall and m-Care operate 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year.

If you would like any further information on m-Care then call 0300 777 2777 or e-mail cathwright@traffordhousingtrust.co.uk