When you purchase your personal alarm from Careline365, the user will be invited to select around five or six emergency contacts. Your emergency contacts are an important part of the Careline personal alarm service, so you should think carefully about who you’d like to choose. Today’s article will be a quick guide to choosing your emergency contacts.
What are Emergency Contacts?
Your emergency contacts are the people that we will call to come and help you when you need assistance. When you press your Careline pendant, our 24/7 Care Team will receive an instant alert. They will try to speak with you via the loudspeaker in your Careline alarm. They’ll ask you questions about what has happened and whether you are hurt to determine what to do next.
After assessing the situation, the Care Team will begin phoning your emergency contacts, informing them that you have pressed your button and you require assistance urgently.
If your first emergency contact doesn’t answer, the Care Team will simply move on down your list of contacts. The emergency services will also be contacted by the Care Team if they are required.
Choosing Your Emergency Contacts
Next, we’ll share our tips and advice for choosing your emergency contacts. Who should you pick?
Family Members
Most customers choose family members such as their children and grandchildren to be their emergency contacts. In many cases, these are the people who have actually purchased the personal alarm on their loved one’s behalf.
There are lots of reasons to choose family members as your emergency contacts. Firstly, they are more likely to have a key to your home already. In addition, they will usually know more about your medical history and what could have triggered you to feel unwell or have a fall.
Careline Tip: We advise choosing relatives who live close by to be your emergency contacts. The nearer they live, the quicker they can get to your house and help.
Close Friends
As well as your relatives, you might also wish to select some close friends as your emergency contacts. As we’ve stated above, the closer they live to you the better.
Having people you trust as your emergency contacts will boost your confidence even more, as you know that they will be the ones on their way to you if you press your pendant.
Neighbours
When choosing your emergency contacts, you may also wish to add one or two neighbours to your list. It can be very helpful to have people who live so close by ready to come to your aid. If you can leave a spare key with a neighbour – or share your key safe code with them – this is even better.
Within minutes of pressing your button, a member of our Care Team can be on the phone to your neighbours to tell them that you require help. You can read our post on checking on elderly neighbours here and how people in the community can help.
How to Choose Your Emergency Contacts
Shortly after you place your order, we will send you a New Customer Form. Usually, this is an online form, but paper copies are available on request too. On this form, you’ll be able to confirm your personal details and provide contact information for the people you’d like to act as your emergency contacts.
You can also change your list of emergency contacts at any time, whether you want to add a new contact, remove an old contact, or update an existing contact.
Please note: if any of your emergency contacts change their contact details (address or phone number), please be sure to let us know so we can update our records.
Add a Key Safe?
Another potentially important part of our personal alarm system is the key safe. Key safes are metal containers which store your house keys behind a combination lock, with the code selected by you. This is far safer than leaving your spare keys underneath a doormat or plant pot, where thieves will know to look.
We advise that you share your key safe code with our Care Team. This means that we can pass on your code to the emergency services and your emergency contacts when you need assistance. This way, they can enter your home to help you as quickly as possible.
You may have a fall when your front door is locked – which could delay help getting to you. Without a key safe in place, emergency services may have to force entry to your home in order to help you. A key safe can save precious time in an emergency when a few minutes can make all the difference.
How to Order
To order a personal alarm and a key safe, just call 0808 304 4510 or click here to order online.
You can also find out more about our range of Careline Alarms and accessories by reading our useful guide here.
Note: we updated this article on 18/06/21.
