Scotscare, a charity dedicated to helping Scottish citizens living in London is successfully deploying Lookout Call, an automated lone worker alarm system to help protect all its out reach staff that work throughout the city.
Scotscare provides help to first and second generation Scots living within a 35-mile radius of Charing Cross station. It offers financial assistance and support to people who are out of work, to families on a low income, to students, the elderly and the disabled. The charity also assists with accommodation and has a number of properties available for young working people and the elderly who cannot afford London property prices.
Scotscare does not offer financial help to the homeless directly, but does help them to find temporary accommodation. They have three hostels for the homeless, located in Lewisham, Barnet and Whetstone.
The organisation originally ran a “visitor system” for carrying out client assessments, but in 2005 policies were reviewed and all assessments were carried out at their premises in Covent Garden. In 2007 the client assessment process was reviewed again and the charity decided to operate an outreach system for assessments of the elderly and young families.
Why Lookout Call? Part of the restructure involved a complete review of the organisation’s health and safety policy, and the decision to adopt Lookout Call’s lone worker alarm system was a part of this process. The use of Lookout Call has now been integrated into Scotscare’s overall health and safety policy and is used by all outreach staff.
“Our outreach teams have to travel to some of London’s poorest suburbs so they were really pleased that our policy on lone working was revised,” says Shona Keenan, Managing Director for the Trust. “It is now compulsory for all outreach staff to use the system if they are visiting a client. Lookout Call is excellent value for money and I was ready to place an order as soon as I had seen a demonstration.”