Caerphilly County Borough Council Completes Telecare Upgrade to Guarantee 21CN Compatibility

Sheltered housing and home users receive future-proof telecare and communication systems from Tunstall to support well-being, independence and long-term needs

[UKPRwire, Fri Feb 15 2008] Caerphilly County Borough Council has successfully completed a major upgrade of its telecare scheme equipment and home units to ensure 21CN compatibility and support the well-being and long-term needs of service users.

The 21CN upgrade has been carried out by leading telecare specialist Tunstall, ensuring all the telecare and communications systems used by the borough’s 157 grouped housing schemes and by home service users are fully future-proof ahead of migration to BT’s IP network.

21CN is BT’s new digital network, which is being rolled out across the UK from this year. However, the network can affect the transmission of tone-based protocols between social alarms and monitoring centres, which could result in failures including dropped calls, incomplete data being transmitted to the monitoring centre, or alarm activation not raising an alert - all of which would pose a serious risk for telecare service users.

Val Parsons, telecare services manager at Caerphilly said: “Legally, we had an obligation to our service users to ensure we protected them against any problems caused by equipment incompatibility with 21CN. In our opinion, if there is even the slightest possibility that the equipment will fail, then we had to do something about it.

“Thanks to our proactive approach to telecare, we have turned a negative into a positive. We took the initiative and most importantly we have improved the service we are providing. We now have a sound platform in place; we can address clients’ needs quickly and efficiently and promptly react to changes. We are telecare ready and looking forward to the future.”

Caerphilly upgrades were driven by a BT programme which originally prioritised South Wales. The latest announcements from BT indicate that any area of the UK could be subject to upgrade. The TSA is advising members to press ahead with, or even accelerate, their 21CN planning, as migration may come much sooner than originally anticipated to a particular area.

Caerphilly has one of the highest levels of sheltered housing stock and designated older persons dwelling schemes in Wales. As a result of the upgrade, service users in Caerphilly are also benefiting from an improved telecare service, which provides advanced person-centred care round-the-clock, supporting greater well-being, independence and quality of life for older people in the borough.

The council’s grouped housing schemes have been equipped with Tunstall’s Communicall Connect, an advanced, telecare-enabled communication system which provides constant communication and effectively manages risk by linking with telecare sensors which raise an automatic alert if an incident occurs. This provides valuable peace of mind and reassurance for carers and residents, whilst at the same time maximising independence and quality of life.

Caerphilly has also upgraded its telecare packages for home users and made its telecare service available to anyone over the age of 75. By delivering customised telecare packages to meet individual service user needs, the council is providing more timely and preventative care to older people and those with long term needs and helping them remain independent for longer.

Bookmark this release: Del.icio.us - Digg - Furl - Blinklist - Reddit