Blackwood Homes and Care Awarded Platinum Digital Telecare Implementation Award

We are delighted to confirm that Blackwood Homes and Care have been awarded the Platinum Digital Telecare Implementation Award in recognition of the recent completion of their analogue to digital telecare transition project.

To achieve Platinum, a Telecare Service Provider must have successfully rolled out a live digital telecare service to 100% of service users and is operating successfully without serious issues or call failures for at least 8 weeks. This remarkable achievement is the final major milestone in the transition to digital telecare and Blackwood is the first Housing Association to achieve this award.

Blackwood’s journey to achieving Platinum has been unique. Over a decade ago, their aim was to go beyond merely replacing box and button equipment in care homes. This led to the development of a custom platform, CleverCogs, that integrates care homes, home care, alarm services, and housing into a single environment.

Across Blackwood’s services, they currently serve over 500 customers using CleverCogs. Blackwood’s diverse customer base includes individuals who require support and reassurance as well as those who were previously frequent 999 callers.

This platform is used to deliver services, utilised by staff, and provides internet access for their customers as part of the broader Digital Strategy. A key focus was digital inclusion. It was necessary to ensure that connectivity brought into customers’ homes for infrastructure purposes also allowed them to access the internet.

In their care homes, it has fully replaced the traditional pendant and pullcord system. Customers now benefit from alarms triggered through motion sensors, eliminating the need to manually press a large red button.

In their 24/7 Response Service, CleverCogs employs video calling to triage alarm calls from a central point. This enables their Responder Team to connect with a customer, visually assess the situation, and take action, rather than relying on the traditional method of physically traveling to the customer’s home in cases of no response.

Blackwood’s next innovation involves exploring radar and AI technology to geo-locate presence and identify patterns of behaviour through sound, such as recognising when someone might be crying, shouting for help, or sounding distressed.

We extend our wholehearted congratulations to Blackwood Homes and Care for their outstanding achievements throughout their journey from analogue to digital. We look forward to continuing our collaboration as they pioneer innovative, person-centred services that set new standards in the industry.