Case Histories › Banbury Homes

Added security for lone workers on emergency calls

Banbury Homes is responsible for 1600 homes across a two to three thousand square mile area of rural Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire,

Problem

Sixty-three of its staff are lone workers who travel widely in the district, some working through the night between 6pm and 8am, responding to emergency call-outs to 700 of the association's properties where the tenants who are elderly or have physical or learning difficulties and have alarms installed. In the past, staff have been threatened by drug dealers, abusive neighbours and dogs.

Solution

The association's community support manager, Barry Pearce visited the Autopage conference stand at the Sheltered Housing Studies Centre in Harrogate to discuss ways of providing back up for his field staff, and in 2004 a Lone Star lone worker communications system was installed at the association's headquarters.

Mr Pearce explained: "Now before staff leave on a call-out, they log on to the system giving details of where they are going, including code numbers of the areas they will be working in, or specific addresses, and a time frame when they expect to finish. If they don't call back later to log off, then a visible and audible alarm is triggered in the office and a response procedure put into action." This could be the day manager attending the situation or the night-time security firm attending.

"We're so pleased with the Autopage system," Mr Pearce said. "The staff feel much safer. It's so simple to use and logical - all you need is a mobile phone and after a while logging on becomes automatic. It's like putting on your shoes before you go for a walk.

"It works so well, we're now rolling the system out across the other housing associations in our group and capacity has been easily increased to handle another 250 field-based staff."