The solution and result

Gemma Glennon, Age Friendly Housing Manager at Southway Housing Trust, discusses why they chose Appello Careline for their monitoring service and their positive experience with this.

What were your reasons for changing your monitoring service?

We were having many issues with our previous monitoring provider. But the main one was making sure the information they held was current, as the only way we could do this was via email. We just couldn’t get a system in place that worked for everyone. This meant things like keysafe details, which we change regularly, were often not up to date at their end, so you would get people calling through with an emergency and they were given the wrong codes.

There had been some significant issues which ended up costing us thousands of pounds. It was just too much of a risk. When people are there and they need help, we can't wait an hour for someone to break the door in.

This tied in with a value for money exercise that we carry out every three years, which is a commitment we make to our tenants. We do have options to extend contracts if we're happy with these but we didn't do that with our previous provider – we’d had several meetings with them to discuss what needed to be improved but unfortunately that didn't happen.

Why did you choose Appello Careline?

Appello just has a great reputation. I think everybody knows who they are, they're seen as a market leader. Although we don't have Appello telecare equipment, the name in itself has a good reputation, so I thought we could trust them. I'd never heard any negative feedback.

When we factored in what Appello offered, it sounded like it would solve quite a few of the issues we’d been having. They actually weren't the cheapest but Appello's online management portal, AppelloSBR, was a huge selling point for us. It gave us the reassurance that we could physically go in ourselves and update that information – we know it’s up to date because we’re doing it, so we can be as in control of that information as we can be.

How have you found the online management portal, AppelloSBR?

It's been great. We've had no issues with incorrect keysafe numbers being handed out. We haven't had any incidents where the fire brigade has been called out when we've been doing fire tests, which was another issue with our previous provider. We've had lots of movement with new tenants and nothing has gone wrong with that.

It's a very user friendly system. The team use it a few times a week. I perhaps use it less often but I don't have to think much about how to use it, it's pretty self-explanatory. A couple of us have used the system or similar systems before, so that's helped. But we had a training session with Appello when it was installed, which was really easy and straightforward. We also have a guide we can refer back to.

What has been your experience with Appello Careline so far?

We've had no issues whatsoever. With our previous provider, I used to get a lot of complaints from the care providers about difficulty getting hold of people or difficulty of getting keysafe numbers. But I've literally had no complaints from them since we've had Appello.

We were all on the same page from the outset. David Lloyd, Implementation Manager at Appello, did all the technical stuff, the onboarding. He managed it all for us and did everything he said he would do. It feels like it's a really well organised process.

We almost don't notice it's there because we're not thinking “Oh, why is this happening, why isn't this working?” It's going so smoothly that it's just there in the background and we don't really need to give it too much thought.

Would you recommend Appello?

Yes, I would absolutely recommend Appello. We've really had no issues at all, it's been fantastic.