Ken gets the GO ahead to GO home!

Eighty-six-year-old, Ken Jones, lives with his wife at their home in Nottinghamshire. 

Ken suffers from gout and had a knee replacement some years ago. In May 2021, the pensioner had a fall and fractured a bone in his leg. He was admitted into the Queen’s Medical Centre to treat his broken bone and ensure he was fit and well enough to go home.

Once he started to get better, Ken was moved into a rehabilitation unit. He was supported by a fantastic NHS team, who collectively focused on improving Ken’s mobility and building his confidence, strength and stamina. He walks independently with a stick, so it was important to ensure that he could do so comfortably, minimising the risk of future falls.

Ken likes to spend time in the garden and walks regularly to the local shops, which are five minutes away from his home. He didn’t want to lose his independence, and was keen to continue doing these things on his own. However, there was of course the concern as to what would happen if Ken did fall while out and about on his own.

His hospital social worker made a referral to Nottingham on Call for a ‘GO’ mobile care alarm. This device, which is linked to NOC’s 24-hour call monitoring service, enables a vulnerable, or older person to get out and about, with the same confidence and reassurance that they have in their own home.

Unlike most care alarms, the GO allows you to leave your home and take it with you wherever you go. You wear it as a pendant, or you can even attach it to your house keys as a keyring. It will work across the entire UK and all alerts will be monitored and responded to quickly, whether you are one mile or 100 miles from home.

The alarm will pick up a ‘hard fall’ as it is built with a falls detector. When it registers a fall, the alarm will automatically alert the call centre team. It has two-way speech capability, enabling NOC’s telecare operatives to talk directly to the customer, and they can talk back to them. If no response is given, the team will use the alarm’s GPS location service to identify exactly where the customer is. At that point, the team will send the emergency services, or a nearby family member, to that location.

We hope that nobody will need to use the alarm. But if you do need to use it, at any time of the day or night, then the NOC team will be there, on the end of the line to help.

Ken’s GO alarm was delivered and installed within four days of NOC receiving the referral.  It has enabled him to return home. He said: “It gives me the peace of mind and a bit more confidence that I’ll be safe while I’m in this rehabilitation period.

“After that it’s just going to give me a safety net and will help me to live my life as normally as I can, for as long as I can. This is about independence for me, but it also makes my family feel better that I’ve got that extra bit of reassurance when I got out on my own.”