Community Lives Consortium

The Consortium are using assistive technology to improve services and the life's of the people we support.

Using Assistive technology for people with learning disabilities is something that not many other people have considered , yet our experience is that appropriate technology can make a significant difference to peoples independence, privacy and dignity.

We have been exploring Telecare and Assistive Technology since 2002.

We are interested for these main reasons

People we work with are able to do more for themselves and receive less intrusive support.

Research shows that too much support for people reduces their independence.

Our service model is too expensive & too inflexible to be made available to the whole range of people who need it.

We believe making Telecare part of the everyday world of Social Care will make the work for our staff more interesting and rewarding.

We have developed a strategy for Assistive Technology that is broken into these areas:

Telecare

A range of shared and individual triggers and/or sensors that will call for assistance if a range of events occur.

Environmental Control

An individually tailored package of equipment and switches that enable people to control their home environment.

Lifestyle Monitoring

Using sensors to record lifestyle activities within the home.

Assistive technology also has helped us to target staff support more effectively. This is important as research shows that more staff leads to people becoming less independent. Targeting support effectively reduces packages of support helping local authorities deliver more effective services to more people.

Research

Having spent 2-3 years attending conferences searching for the perfect solution that would help us to set an Assistive technology service we eventually realised that a perfect solution doesn't exist.

It was also sobering to realise that in terms of assistive technologies being used for adults with learning disabilities, there weren't any examples available, therefore we were starting from scratch.

Part of our research led us to a consultant, Dr Kevin Doughty, a very knowledgeable person who has been at the forefront of Assistive technology development for some years. Kevin helped us to structure our thoughts and supported the early projects that we embarked upon.

Significantly we took the decision not to run pilot projects, but to jump in the deep end and start using technology in real situations. The result of doing this lead us to learning lessons much quicker and overcoming initial difficulties.

From our initial installations in 2005, we now have approx' 60 services using some form of assistive technology.

To read about actual case studies and the difference technology has made, click here.

Night Time Support

Over a period of 3 months we asked our staff to record each time they needed to intervene and provide some form of support at night.

The results showed that in most cases there were very few interventions. On following this up with staff we realised that most support is in place for the 'just in case'.

Using our knowledge of technology we have been able to identify telecare products which will assist staff to identify risk should the just in case happen more effectively.

Where there was a lot of staff intervention we found it to be in services that employed wakeful staff and that their interventions were in the main for similar support need.

The support required was to monitor epilepsy, using 'baby' style monitors, management of incontinence, physically checking on people throughout the night, and in some cases behavior management.

Again we have been able to identify appropriate and less intrusive ways of managing these needs using telecare equipment. This now means that support is provided only when the actual need occurs rather than lots of intrusive monitoring.

The natural by product of using technology to manage risk and target support only when required has been a reduction in some night time support or changing a wakeful to a sleep in.

External Research

We have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to visit West Lothian and spend time with their front line staff. West Lothian are widely regarded as an authority who are at the forefront of best practice in mainstreaming the use of telecare within the authority.

The work we witnessed and discussions we had proved to be invaluable to our own learning and roll out of assistive technology. We owe a big thank you to West Lothian and their team.

To read more about targeting support please click here.

For further information please email Peter Russell, Head of Community Solutions, by clicking here