Hello everyone and welcome to the Care & Repair Lanarkshire May Newsletter.
2023 continues to be a busy year with a lot of demand for the services we are providing. Please let anyone who you feel would be able to access the Care & Repair projects know to get in contact with us.
FIRE DETECTION
Fire detection remains a high priority for the Care & Repair Team. We know that there are still people in Lanarkshire with limited or no fire detection at all – this puts these people at risk from fire and smoke inhalation. Installing fire detection is also not cheap!
Funding to assist clients in Lanarkshire with the installation of fire detection has now been exhausted. Due to this we are no longer able to install fire detection free of charge.
The new legislation is designed to keep clients safer in their own homes by interlinking the alarms and ensuring you have enough alarms in the home to cover the whole house. We know that this change is expensive for clients, so to help ensure that as many clients as possible can afford to change their fire detection, we have decided to offer the supply and installation of devices at a discounted rate for a limited time.
Our Costs: Heat, Smoke and CO detectors are £18 each inc. VAT.
Installation is £12 inc. VAT for the entire install.
All devices installed will be compliant with current Scottish Legislation and fitted by our trained Care & Repair Small Repairs team.
COLD CALLERS – COMMUNITY ALARMS
Telecare alarms, community alarms, alert alarms, these are just a few of the names that the safety devices that are installed in clients’ homes are called.
In South Lanarkshire – no matter what you call them, this is basically a device installed in a client’s home which connects 24/7 with a person in the control centre in Hamilton via a mobile sim or an analogue telephone line.
Clients can press the red button on the box and speak to someone at any time to raise an alarm or to get help. Clients can also press the button on their pendant and speak to someone as well. Other devices such as fire detection and fall detection will automatically contact the Control Centre if activated. If you have been assessed as requiring this equipment by Social Work, then all equipment required is supplied to you by South Lanarkshire Social Work Department and installed by the Care & Repair Service free of charge.
Once the equipment is installed there is a charge payable to South Lanarkshire Council of £2.20 per week.
We have recently been made aware of companies cold calling clients and saying that they are offering similar services to the Community Alarm. We understand that this will cost around £500 to be installed and have a high monthly fee as well.
We are advising clients that, if they are contacted by a company offering this service, they should contact their SLC Social Worker to see if they would be eligible for telecare equipment to be installed free of charge via Social Work.
Please note:
• These companies do not offer the same service as the Community Alarm Service in South Lanarkshire.
• Care & Repair never cold call you to sell you a service.
COMMUNITY LED SUPPORT
The Care & Repair team recently undertook training to learn about Community Led Support in South Lanarkshire:
The Community Led Support (CLS) programme supports Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland to put their work right at the heart of communities, using the ethos of the Integration agenda as a means to deliver Self-Directed Support.
https://www.ndti.org.uk/projects/cls-in-scotland
The Team took a lot form the training and realised that they are already participating in CLS in Lanarkshire.
PROJECTS
➢ Community alarms & peripheral devices including key safes.
➢ Small Repairs
➢ Fire Detection
➢ Dementia enablement
➢ Safe as Houses – Under 5s – Home Safety Project
➢ Safe as Houses – Clients over 60 and living with a disability – Home Safety Project
➢ Safe as Houses – Domestic abuse and victims of crime – Home Security Project