Sarah is profoundly deaf and has a young daughter aged 7, who has severe asthma. The daughter often has asthma attacks and will collapse, and Sarah will not be aware of these until she sees her.
Sarah is worried about not hearing her daughter if she is having an asthma attack and this has resulted in previous trips to the hospital for emergency treatment. Sarah also finds it difficult to summon a taxi to the hospital as she has no car and, due to her deafness, no speech. She also does not have sufficient English to use a Textphone and lives alone with her daughter so has no-one else to assist her.
The daughter was given a pendant alarm so that she could press the button on the lanyard worn around her neck in the event of an asthma attack.
A DDA system was set up in the home which consisted of a button for the daughter to wear which, when pressed. would trigger either a vibrating wrist pager (worn by her mum) or a portable flashing beacon (placed nearby where mum is) so that Sarah would know to attend to her daughter. For night-time, a vibrating pillow shaker allowed Sarah to be alerted to her daughter’s needs. The range of the radio-frequency equipment is 50 metres, so it covered both house and garden, giving the daughter more freedom to play.
To cover the concerns regarding calling a taxi, a Personal alarm service was also installed. Careium set up the system so that Sarah was able to activate the unit in an emergency, and uses the pendant as a clicker to instruct our contact centre operators to what she needs. For example: by giving one click on the pendant, a taxi for the hospital is called or if she gives two clicks, an ambulance is called.
Since the sensors have been installed it has allowed both mother and daughter much more peace of mind and freedom and given both a huge amount of help in the case of an emergency situation.
