Milestones Trust achieves breakthrough with the BlueBell radio staff attack system

Milestones Trust is a charity that supports people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and dementia. One of their care homes, Mayo House, in Yate, is a residential home tailored to the needs of residents with learning disabilities, complex emotional concerns and autistic spectrum disorders.

The Objectives

The safety of staff and residents was of the utmost importance for the home and this was the main factor in procuring a new staff attack system. Home Manager Cherie Smith said, “We work with challenging complex people who use certain behaviours that can affect the safety of our staff and visitors sometimes.” A number of issues with their infrared system had been flagged up including the fact it didn’t work through clothing, the body, walls or round corners, issues which created a number of blind spots at the care home. “We were looking for a system that was more responsive to staff movements, hard to reach areas and the garden which the infrared system didn’t do”, she said.

The BlueBell pager

“We wanted to make sure it worked in every scenario we could think of and were amazed at BlueBell’s technological capability,” Cherie said. The BlueBell solution for Mayo House included BlueBell pagers with beacon technology positioned in each room and open areas to monitor locations, including the garden. The system was also able to confirm receipt of every call and location message. The logging and analysis software provided data for key performance monitoring. Moreover, the single alarm and response pager meant that staff no longer had to carry around a rape alarm, walkie talkie and alarm button, creating a more effective working solution for all staff.

The Solution

The benefits of the BlueBell solution have been abundant as Cherie declares: “The BlueBell system has helped us hugely. We can now be assured that if any of our 35 members of staff need to set off their BlueBell staff attack pager, we will know their whereabouts even if they move from room to room thanks to the beacon technology.”

Moreover Milestones Trust has been able to offer a better standard of service when families come to visit. “It’s allowed a resident’s family to stay with them on their own instead of having a staff member present. Families can press the alarm if they need assistance.”

Call Systems Technology’s Care Specialist Juliet Patten is delighted with the collaboration, “We are thrilled to be working with Cherie and the team at Milestones Trust and are proud to be associated with a group that puts staff and resident safety at the forefront of their agenda. We are confident that the BlueBell solution will help all aspects of the care home and look forward to continuing our working relationship with them.”