Council’s Bronze Award for first major milestone in digital telecare switchover

Orkney Islands Council has successfully achieved a Bronze award from Digital Telecare for Scottish Local Government in recognition of progress made on the switchover to a digital Telecare Service.  

To achieve Bronze status, the Council - as the provider of the Telecare Service - had to connect to a fully operational digital alarm receiving centre (ARC) and successfully connect and test an end-to-end solution. Reaching this stage is the first major milestone in the transition to digital telecare and sets the foundations on which the rest of the digital telecare transition will rest.  

Orkney Health and Care Service Manager (Community Care), Helen Sievewright, said: “Receiving this Award marks a significant achievement for the Council in the requirement to move from an analogue Telecare/Community Care Alarm Service to a digital one and is testament to the hard work of the project team.  

“Now that the digital alarm receiving solution (ARC) is in place, we can move towards the first phase of testing with alarms and peripherals, and aim to achieve the next Implementation Award, Silver in due course.”  

Nationally, analogue telephony is being switched off in 2025 so there is a need to update to digital to enable the Council to continue to deliver the Telecare/Community Care Alarm Service to its 815 service users.  

The aim is to transition all service users from analogue to digital alarms before the end of 2025.  

Project Manager, Raema Lyon, said the team had worked hard to overcome a number of challenges to reach this stage in the transition and achieve the accreditation.  

Raema explained: “Current telecare/community care alarm solutions in use in Orkney use analogue technology. They send signals between the alarm device and the alarm receiving centre (ARC). However, analogue signalling does not function optimally over digital phone lines, hence the need to move over to a digital service to ensure the reliability of the telecare system.  

“The Council is now about to embark on testing different suppliers after completing a comprehensive options appraisal and assessing the needs of the services.”   

Raema said it is vital that the transition is carried out as seamlessly as possible, with service continuity and an uninterrupted Telecare/Community Care Alarm Service.  

“One of the biggest obstacles we faced as a local authority was when service users could move across to a digital line without the Council being informed. This opened the potential for a service user to be unaware of potential for gaps in their Telecare/Community Care Alarm Service. We overcame this by signing a data sharing agreement with BT and other agencies. The upgrade will take time and the safety of our service users is paramount. The digital transition is in the early stages and key advice to telecare users is please do not move across to a digital line before contacting Orkney Islands Council.  

“Signal blackspots is another area we continue to tackle with the purchase of a signal analyser and work continues on this particular challenge. Resilience around power outages is also being carefully considered as part of the project with key messaging to be shared as soon as possible with service users.  

Congratulating the Project Team, Chair of the Integration Joint Board (Orkney Islands Council and NHS Orkney), Councillor Rachael King said: “The Bronze accreditation demonstrates a collective commitment from all involved to work towards ensuring a safe and seamless transition for our telecare service users to a full digital Telecare/Community Care Alarm Service by the end of 2025.   

“Through the Digital Transition Programme, our ultimate aim is to further enhance the current offer through our telecare/community care alarm response services, improving the overall experience for members of our community. It’s great to see that our positive steps towards our ambitions have been recognised with the Bronze Award.”