Welcome to our newsletter, where we provide you with the latest from Digital Telecare for Scottish Government. In this edition, we bring you a recap of the events within the Digital Telecare Programme over the past month, along with insights of upcoming activities.
If you have any queries regarding any of the content within this newsletter, please get in touch.
Shared ARC Programme Shortlisted for a COSLA Excellence Award.
The Shared ARC Programme has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Service Innovation and Improvement category for the 2024 COSLA Excellence Awards!
The Shared ARC Platform is a revolutionary step forward in the telecare sector that champions a collective approach to implementation. Co-designed with Scottish Telecare Service Providers to meet the pressing needs of the sector, this ground-breaking solution offers a simplified pathway to adopting digital telecare, ensuring a seamless transition without compromising service quality.
Finalists will now be invited to present their projects in person to a panel of judges in August led by COSLA President Shona Morrison, who will decide on a winner in each of the 5 main categories.
Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at COSLA’s Annual Conference and Exhibition, which will take place on Thursday 19th September 2024 at the Crieff Hydro Hotel, Perthshire.
Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership Successfully Implement the Shared ARC Platform.
The ATEC24 service within the Edinburgh HSCP has successfully completed the implementation of the Shared ARC Platform.
Supporting approximately 8,000 residents within the city, Edinburgh HSCP has already reported improvements to their operations, including:
All staff now have access to new phones, laptops, and tablets, enabling remote updates and reducing time spent on administrative tasks.
For the first time, their on-the-ground Sheltered Housing staff can access the new system and apply updates independently, enhancing their ability to serve their community.
By bringing their call handling service back in-house, all call handlers are now based in Edinburgh, ensuring local investigation and troubleshooting for streamlined procedures.
Assess your estate: Start with what equipment progresses (off-site) to your Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), warden call, dispersed alarms, fire or intruder alarm, lift, door entry, barrier or key access. Your ARC should be able to provide a report of phone numbers (often referred to as scheme or UAC numbers). Check what other devices are plugged into a telephone or extension socket and what line number they use.
Collate those telephone numbers: Make a list of all the phone numbers that are supporting telecare services or devices. If your association/partnership has signed a Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) with the BT or TSA then further information can be disclosed.
Contact your telephone line communication provider: Speak to your account manager or customer service advisor and ask for their advice on your migration. Offer to share your equipment telephone numbers and highlight that these lines support telecare users and considered a “special service customer” and request the ask the numbers are ring-fenced or not progressed to digital without prior notice and engagement with your association/partnership.
Engage with Digital Telecare: If you have not already done so, contact or set up a meeting with Sharon Hannah at Digital Telecare.
Let Sharon know you are working to migrate to digital and see if she can offer up some help, support or guidance to get you to Destination Digital.
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership Awarded Gold Two Digital Telecare Implementation Award.
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership has been awarded the Gold Level Two Digital Telecare Implementation Award in recognition of the recent progress of their analogue to digital telecare transition project.
To achieve the Gold Level Two Implementation Award, a Telecare Service Provider must have successfully rolled out a live digital telecare service to 50% of service users and is operating successfully without serious issues or call failures for at least 6 weeks.
Achieving this award is a significant milestone and robustly demonstrates the overall functionality and effectiveness of Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership’s digital telecare solution.
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership Join the Shared ARC Platform.
Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care Partnership is the latest organisation to join the Shared ARC Platform!
Now having officially signed their contract to adopt the Chubb and Skyresponse Cloud Care Control System, they have now commenced onboarding and implementation activities.
Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership Awarded Bronze Digital Telecare Implementation Award.
Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership has been awarded the Bronze Digital Telecare Implementation Award in recognition of the progress they have made on their analogue to digital telecare transition project.
Andy Priest, Manager of the Joint Equipment Service for Aberdeenshire HSCP, said: “It is a great achievement by the telecare team in Aberdeenshire to have reached this milestone and we’re delighted to receive the Bronze Implementation Award from the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government.
Our goal is to continue with our alarm replacement programme at pace to ensure all our community alarm clients benefit from having a digital alarm well ahead of the January 2027 completion date for the switch to a digital telephone network.”
We have seen a recent rise in failed calls that has seen an issue with matching the voice call with the client record.
So far this appears to be affecting a small number of Telecare Service Providers, but if you are seeing the last three digits of the Call Line Identifier as 000 then please get in touch.
The issue involves the last three digits of the CLI for alarm calls being replaced with "000," preventing the ARC system from correctly identifying the associated alarm. This leads to misidentification or unidentifiable calls. The issue has been reported across multiple SIM providers, alarm types, and ARC platforms, with providers in Wales and England seeing similar issues.
CSL, the SIM provider for some alarm devices, are currently looking into the issue to try to understand what factors are causing the CLI to become corrupted and identify potential fixes.
We will provide further updates on this work once results are available. In the meantime, please be aware of this issue and we would appreciate it if you could look at your failed calls reports to see if you can see any of the CLI numbers ending in 000.
Digital Office for Scottish Local Government, COSLA Verity House, 19 Haymarket Yards, Edinburgh, United Kingdom EH12 5BH, Scotland
