Blocking unwanted calls to vulnerable elderly relative

Change the phone number works for a while
Then the scammers appear again !

The bt phone doesnt do this. The dr would have to annouce him/herself and then the call would be accepted or declined by the recipient

Yes you can permanently accept or block numbers.

It's so irritating when hospitals call from withheld numbers. It's probably to stop people from calling that number back, but there needs to be a way of doing it where you can save a number. Maybe they can block inbound calls instead. People don't and shouldn't trust withheld numbers.

You probably need to suggest to your trust that they use a single local number to make all of their outward bound calls on.

its what our trust does - it doesn't matter if you get a call from e.g. an outpatients clinic or a district nurse it's the same telephone number that calls you, if you miss the call and try to call back the number you get a recorded message saying 'someone from NHS TRUST is trying to call you and will call back'.

it means people can save the number as a safe number and stops all the issues of people increasingly not answering a withheld number.

So I looked up the facility on Talk Talk it's called Call Safe:

CallSafe is the perfect way to stop nuisance callers. It’s completely free and you can use it to screen and block unwanted calls. Every time you get a call, CallSafe checks to make sure it's someone you want to hear from. The caller is then either:
Approved and put straight through to you.
Blocked so that your phone doesn't ring.
Screened to confirm who they are.

One low tech option would be to simply change her number… after my father in law fell for a scam, the calls were like a tsunami…. He’d obviously been added to some sort of “suckers list”

We used Truecall to stop Mum being pestered by scam callers and giving them her bank details. She had dementia so wasn’t good with new technology and would not have been able to use a more basic system where she had to press a button.

Mum did not know we had installed it, we hid the unit under a cabinet and set it up while she was out. I had the app on my iPad and set it at the highest level. I went through her address book and input the numbers of all her family, friends, doctor, dentist, cleaners etc into a Trusted list. Only calls from these numbers were put through. Any with held numbers were blocked and all other calls that were valid got put through to a recorded message of me telling them that mum only accepted calls from family and friends and that anyone else who wished to speak to her had to contact me first - I gave my mobile number. The instruction book from Truecall was very clear on how to set up the system.

I could log in and check her call log to see the numbers of any rejected calls just in case I had forgotten to add someone to the Trusted list. I could also see all her call records, who called her, who she called, number of with held numbers etc. i think we paid a small monthly fee to access this. It was a brilliant system and well worth the money to keep mum safe - no need for her to have six insurance policies for a Sky dish that she did not have!

In the three years it was in place, I only had one caller who phoned me after listening to my message and they had no issue nor were offended by my intervention.

Try getting in touch with your local trading standards department, a lot of them work in partnership with Truecall and can install a unit free of charge/at a heavily reduced cost. I work closely with our local department and they’re keen to get them installed because it reflects positively on them with councillors etc.

The Truecall units work as they block callers who are dialling en mass. They can be really effective even on their most basic setting and hospitals etc can still get through as the caller can press a number to get through. I believe there’s also a setting where the call can be diverted to a nominated caller who can “approve” the call.

Please don’t do this. I’m a hospital doctor. It is a nightmare contacting people for urgent appointments and information when their phones block the unknown number call.

There is not always time to send a letter.

My mum has a function on her phone, she's with Talk Talk. If it's an unknown number, you have to press 1 to accept. The problem is, she's got dementia and doesn't understand what the phone is asking her to do.

Age UK have good advice on this, worth ringing their helpline.

I despise scammwrs so much. Good luck.

I've used Truecall for my mum and that is working well.

I’m shocked, that’s so bad 😲🧐

For us it paid for itself very quickly in avoiding more charity donations / random insurances and also the time spent dealing with the bank trying to get money back

We’ve also had to get advise from True Call a couple of times and found them easy to deal with

https://www.truecall.co.uk/category-s/117.htm

We use a TrueCall Secure for my grandmother who was getting almost constant scam calls, and was getting very distressed as she believed many of them

Google TPS, telephone preference service. It didn’t take long for the calls to stop for us, and if they did get through I would threaten them with TPS, they shouldn’t be calling once registered. You can do this with landline and mobiles🤗