Opposition councillors said that the move was a false economy which would “cost lives”
Elderly Lancashire residents who use a currently free service to help keep them safe in their own homes will have to pay for it from next year.
However, County Cllr Gooch said that the system had developed two “fatal flaws” – in that it was no longer affordable and also needed a complete overhaul of the equipment on which it relies because of the forthcoming digitalisation of the nation’s telecoms infrastructure. “[That] give[s] us the opportunity to offer service users much better equipment to monitor them through…behavioural detectors and trackable, wearable technology – some of it even [being] ingestible.
“[For] a lot [of] elderly people I know who have telecare in its current form, actually that’s their only lifeline…and without it, when they’ve had falls, they would have been there for a day or two days before someone [found] them. I think that doing what we are doing.is actually going to cost lives,” County Cllr Ali said.
Those users who already have some other form of social care support will have the cost of telecare incorporated into that wider package and their contribution towards it will be determined on the basis of their ability to pay. However, all new telecare users in future will face the full weekly fee, irrespective of their other social care needs or financial assessments.
“So the question [is] – why didn’t they just phone their daughter?” Deputy council leader Alan Vincent – who said that the introduction of telecare charges was one of many “difficult decisions” that County Hall was facing over its finances – told members that when his own mother had fallen, she had “crawled back to the phone” to ring him instead of using her alarm.
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