Looking back on a year with Nottingham on Call

Our Annual Report for 2020-2021 is now available! We are very proud to say that we have continued to provide a quality service to our customers during what has been such a difficult year for everyone.

We’ve picked out a few stats for you, but if you fancy having a read of the full report, please click here.

Nottingham on Call currently supports around 11,000 clients living in the city of Nottingham, Gedling Borough Council, Ashfield District Council, Stockport and Tameside areas. 

In 2020-21 we received 491,803 calls, of these 445,866 were alarm calls (91%). We keep a record of all calls and actions that we take. A selection of calls we received last year are below:

 - 3,530 No Response Calls

 - 4,991 Where Clients Had Fallen

 - 7,245 Medical Assistance Calls

 - 6,102 Requests for Assistance

 - 1,932 Smoke Alarm Activations

 - 513 Reports of Housing Repairs.

In some cases, our clients needed us to contact the emergency services on their behalf. We made:

 - 8,165 calls to the Ambulance Service

 - 621 calls to the Fire Brigade

 - 428 calls to the Police.

Our Emergency Response Service

If our customers live in Nottingham and the surrounding boroughs, we can send one of our officers out to check on them if they have a non-medical emergency. We will first try to contact a nearby friend or relative, who has been nominated as a key-holder and can access their home. If we cannot get hold of them, we will come out ourselves.

If a client experiences a long delay for an ambulance, we can also send an officer to support them and, in some cases, stay with them until the emergency services arrive.

In 2020-21, we completed 1,638 emergency visits to our customers’ homes.

Assessment Service

We have a thorough assessment service, which enables our knowledgeable team to identify possible risks that each client is facing. They will then use this information to help us recommend a piece of equipment that would suit each individual customer.

Installation and Maintenance

Our installation and maintenance service has changed somewhat during the pandemic, to protect our clients and staff. We have continued to carry out installations, but have adapted our working practices to limit the amount of time spent in people’s homes. We carry out our profiles over the phone, where possible. We can also offer self-installs, thanks to advances in the technology that we are using. We send a pre-programmed alarm, which only needs to be plugged in. A set of audio instructions will then guide the customer through the steps needed to set up the alarm.

Helping hospitals during the pandemic

This self-install process has helped our work with Nottingham’s hospitals, providing a support package for those who are being discharged. In the year from April 2020 to March 2021, we were able to help more than 130 people to safely discharge from hospital with the reassurance of a NOC personal alarm.

Keeping in touch

We also attempt to contact every client annually, to update the information we have about them, just in case there have been changes that we need to know about. When people’s circumstances change in their health or day-to-day lives, there may be a different level of support we can offer, to make life a little easier.

Our achievements

Here is a list of just some of the things our fantastic assistive technology team has achieved over the past 12 months:

• Development and delivery of a self-installation process to support the social work team that manages hospital discharges. This has enabled timely, safe and sustainable hospital discharges, through the provision of care alarm and key safes.
• Implementing a new mobile care offer through the NOC GO!. This mobile alarm means customers can be supported outside their home through an alarm, communication with the call centre, a falls detector and GPS location, if needed.
• Supported the continued digital transformation, joined forces with a digital care alarm partner and promoted digital alarms for self-installation and mobile care. Around 65% of new alarm installations are now digital.
• Maintaining the core business functions of the team, with minimal impact on service delivery.
• Continued liaison and engagement with social care and health partners to ensure maximum awareness and opportunity for a technology-first approach with citizens and patients.

What our customers think of us

Customer satisfaction is important to us and we seek feedback in a number of ways. We are scored from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). We scored an average of 4.7 to the following questions, covering overall satisfaction with our service:

How did the call handler deal with the situation?

How confident would you be in using the service in the future?

Would you recommend the service?

There have also been some very positive individual comments, such as: “Well this little red button has saved my life 3 or 4 times, so I always wear it at home, it's amazing!” and “As a family we are very satisfied with the service provided. Gives us peace of mind”.

Nottingham on Call has some very challenging targets and key performance indicators around call handling times, response times and timescales for installations and repairs. We are pleased to say we have exceeded all the targets set.

For more information on the equipment and services we offer, check out the rest of our website – why not start here?