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Careline provides equipment that supports our
most vulnerable people to stay in their homes independently. It is
a critical service that is supported by wider health and adult
social care partners. The council charges a fee for residents to
have a care alarm function in their home with a pendant and smoke
alarm that can be utilised in the case of an emergency or fall. The
care alarm activation registers with our call centre provider who
will then notify next of kin or emergency services.

The way careline services are delivered is changing due to the
digital changeover happening with established phone lines. Analogue
hard wired alarms are increasingly difficult to source and a move
towards digital equipment known as chiptech is necessary. This is
compounded by the severe difficulties in supply from our analogue
alarm provider which has left us in a potentially critical state
where no equipment can be given to those in need.

We need to move to a different supply source urgently and to
receive the necessary equipment in a timely fashion will source
that equipment through the EPOS framework. Using this framework
will prevent a potential saving of £1,876 per year via
another framework - but this framework will take longer to source
equipment.

The decision is to source up to £160K of equipment over the
next 3 years from EPOS and forego this small saving to ensure life
saving equipment can be provided urgently for our most
vulnerable.