Would you monitor a fall alarm for a neighbour?

[poshcrisps]

I have an elderly, very vulnerable neighbour who is just about to get out of hospital. He has no family. He has fallen several times.

I've just had a phone call from the hospital asking if I could be the response person for his alarm going off (I'm not sure how this works in practice).

I said yes but now I'm wondering if I've been too hasty.

What would you do?

Yes, if I was home more. I listen out for him now.

It's so easy to get sucked into this role without wanting to do it. Yes, I could have told my friend just to lie in her faeces in bed until it was convenient for me, but I didn't have the heart to do that. Or, just ignored the phone calls from the care button. Or told them I'm not going. Or not do any shopping for her and she would have lost weight due to not eating. Or not collected her prescription medication and she could have had another stroke. Then as the key holder the finger would have been pointed at me, how I didn't even care and what has society come to?

I'm not saying don't be a key holder or point of contact for care line, but be very clear to both the person and their family what you are prepared to do.

These people saying ‘pop her back in the chair’ and ‘that’s awful if you won’t do it, what has happened to good neighbours’ and the suchlike don’t seem to come back and defend their comments 🧐.

@AramintaWildbloode

If you go round then you can call an ambulance if needed or whatever other support.
This may involve calling the GP or carers or whatever.
If they get no answer from you or if you can’t go round they will call an ambulance.
That is pretty much it.

Amazing. But you didn’t seem to finish your paragraph. So you ‘call the GP or carers or whatever’ or ‘call an ambulance if needed or whatever other support’ and then what? Go home?

Also there is zero point in calling the GP, they can't do anything. And there is zero point in calling the carers, as they will only come at their allotted time.

It's 3am, you've been called to your neighbour's home, there is no-one except the paramedics coming at that hour.

Honestly, some people on this thread don't seem to understand how social care and medical care work in the UK, but that's not stopping them putting their oar in...

Also, trying to just "pop" them back in bed, or on to a chair, is very, very unwise. You could be exacerbating a broken hip, or concussion, or internal bleeding. Still, I'm sure all those people advising it know best!

I don't think it's right as a 24/7, 365 day commitment. Also, do they CRB-check people who are doing this?

It would make more sense to do it as a neighbourhood, volunteer-type system, where people could sign up to do specific shifts covering those within 15 minutes walking distance of them. Maybe based on Uber-type technology with a central coordinator. For instance, I couldn't be available to check on neighbours 24/7 due to caring for small children and a husband who often works late/away, but I could be available fairly regularly on a Friday evening or maybe a weekend morning in case there were any call outs. They'd probably get more people willing to help if they made the level of commitment clear and manageable.

I have volunteered to do this. It's happened a couple of times and it's sometimes inconvenient but I couldn't leave her alone on the floor. I'm a teacher and one time I got called out at 2:30am and had to wait with her for the ambulance until nearly 6am. My DH is really shit without sleep so he came over first to help me (it was rainy and windy and she has a really steep drive) but then went back. I think he sees it as my lookout as I said yes 🙄. Luckily I had planning time next morning so I just gave apologies and slept 😂

I will say that I'm only the backup contact, so I have no idea how many times you'd be called out if you were 'first responder'. If it's tricky to manage longer term, I think you'd have to get Adult SS on the case to see if a home could be arranged for him.

I'm in Australia and have been first responder for neighbours. I'd known them, though not intimately, for years. They were turned down by nearer neighbours. Their immediate concern was how things should be managed should she be hospitalised as she was carer for her DH. All relatives were overseas.
The circumstances of the deal were very tightly defined so that her DH would immediately be taken into respite care by the Council in such a situation. It was all very formal and recorded on central government systems.
I'm retired, strong and healthy so have less immediate demands on my time and was happy to be involved.

I see them about weekly in an ordinary and social way.

Since then one of their children has moved back to Oz and I'm no longer first responder on the records, though both neighbours and children hope, trust and know that I will always step up if I'm at home.

What's the takeaway from this? Check the small print and be aware of your own capabilities.

Also, part of my commitment was in the spirit of paying it forward.

Tbh I’m with your husband on that one. He got up and helped you at first, and then presumably went back to bed when all you were doing was waiting for the ambulance. Why would he stay up all night - does it need both of you when I assume you could have called him in something happened and you didn’t additional help? And you were the one who said yes!

Don’t do it OP. People are very good at volunteering others to do things when it doesn’t involve any work for them.

My mum agreed to this and ended up becoming some kind of unofficial carer - eventually we think she was ‘falling’ just so she could press the alarm and have some company, as mum would go round and chat with her and make her a cup of tea etc. Usually she would recover and decline hospital once the paramedics showed up and let mum put her to bed etc

All very well but my mum had 4 small children at the time, worked as a nurse and was exhausted by all of it. Eventually she had to contact this lady’s family and say she wouldn’t be going round any more.

It depends what you feel you can manage

We havem cameras in the house for this. We can see if the person is up and about or has accidentally pushed the alarm. Really helps

sounds like a good idea but I think that would be a step too far for my DF. He is very independent and has no cognitive decline so I would see this as an invasion of privacy. He also lives in quite a big house so would need one hell of a lot of cameras!

Social services should be doing this.

say no or you will be pulled in so much more.

you will also have to be responsible for making arrangements for cover when you are on holiday away for the weekend etc.

it sounds small but it’s not.

it doesn’t stop you being a nice kind neighbour but this isn’t you responsibility

Social services can't come out within a few minutes to do the first check on someone. The point of having immediate contacts living very locally is to do that first check, rather than leaving someone for hours on end for some hapless social services employee to get there. Not too mention the cost of having thousands of people on call for this.

When my late husband had an alarm, it was less of an issue. If he'd needed an ambulance it would have come very quickly, and our neighbours were very comfortable being the first to check on him.

It's unfortunate that now we can't rely on paramedics arriving quickly, so it's become more of an issue for contacts.

ETA that social services do, in general, fund or subsidise these alarms (or did... ours was paid by them, and the only thing we had to pay up front for was the key safe). That might vary by local authority though.

This is very naive. There have been massive cuts to social funding, it can take weeks to organise a care package for someone who is bed blocking in hospital. Do you really think every time the button is pressed social services should be rushing out? The bar with SS for elderly care is very low and every reason will be given as to why the person does not qualify for it, or that they already have 'care' as someone has agreed to be a contact on the care line.

Exactly. The OP agreeing to do this will actually result in her neoighbour having less care provided by the state.

I’m not being naive - I am speaking from experience.

my DM was asked to do this. It was the start of a slippery slope and she ending up sucked into appointments, haircuts, shopping etc.

in the end she had to refuse and social services had to take this on.

Social services are not responsible for responding to care button alerts. If that was the case there would be no need for people to ask neighbours to be contacts.

Mmhmm. In my experience of being a responder to a family member with a call button, if the person says they need help the operator calls you to go to them to wait for an ambulance, because it takes hours and hours these days for the ambulance to come, and in the meantime someone needs to be putting blankets on them, getting them food and drinks, cleaning up when they inevitably wet themselves. Plus the operators would call me if the person who fell needed something other than an ambulance, they would literally call me at 2am to say, “she says her hot water bottle has fallen out of the bed and she’s cold, can you pop over and put it back for her please?”. That happened every night, on top of all the other calls. I lost my job because I couldn’t manage both and couldn’t leave my grandma without care, and social services wouldn’t provide it if there were nearby family members. Luckily when I was caring for my dad he didn’t fall so much and was a bit more independent, so I could manage it on top of full time work, but it was still hard. Now I have a young family I would have no choice but to turn down any such requests, because I know what it entails and I simply couldn’t do it, even if I didn’t have my own health issues.

My mums neighbours (6 homes with longstanding residents) have a window thing. If the window isn't opened in the morning, someone will investigate and contact a relative. All but one have adult children and grandchildren who can be contacted. In fact, most of the adult children are known to each other as we played out as kids, and some of the grandchildren know others from school. It's a lovely sense of community.

Move round the corner to where I live now. And the neighbours wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

I know which I prefer.

And to answer the op, I'd say yes.

As I said before, there is another option. Careline has a service which sends round a falls team, it is a higher tier than basic and costs a bit more but it is well worth it. However, we know how tight fisted some people can be so they may resist. The team is experienced and trained in lifting people with appropriate equipment, random neighbours or friends should NOT be doing this, it could cause more damage. They assess the person and situation and call an ambulance if necessary and file a report to GP and Social Services. The service will contact a relative/friend too but they are not the main response. This has to be the best option.

No i wouldn't because my job wouldn't allow me to monitor it all the time so i might only get the alarm after around 4 hours and i would hate to think of my neighbour lying on the floor hurt for that long.

Absolutely not. I would watch and help out unofficially, but I wouldn't do anything that was likely to reduce the amount of professional care and support a neighbour could access.