Community Alarm consultation
This consultation is closed. It ran from the 20 February - 17 May 2013.
Manchester City Council undertook an eight-week consultation to look at proposed changes to the way Community Alarm customers contribute to the cost of their service and how the service is funded. The information below was made available to help people and organisations give their views on the proposed changes:
The proposed changes
There were two proposals for consideration:
- To charge Manchester City Council customers who use the council community alarm service run by the Directorate for Adults, Health and Wellbeing (this is referred to as the "in-house provision"); and
- To withdraw funding for non-Council community alarm customers who are funded via the Supporting People grant
Currently, the in-house Community Alarm Service is means-tested. We are proposing that all customers who have a community alarm will pay a contribution towards the cost of both the equipment itself and, where appropriate, the monitoring and/or response service.
We are proposing two levels of service for the in-house provision:
1. Monitoring-only service
The proposed cost for this service will be £2.83 per week.
When the customer presses their alarm or a sensor triggers, a member of staff from the in-house Community Alarm will call them to offer advice and reassurance. The monitoring-only service is only available for those customers who are able to provide the names of two people who can respond, i.e. family, friend, neighbour etc. Where necessary, Community Alarm staff will contact the nominated person on their behalf.
2. Monitoring-and-response service
The proposed cost for this service will be £4.68 per week.
When the customer presses their alarm or a sensor triggers, a member of staff from Community Alarm will call them to offer advice and reassurance. Where appropriate, Community Alarm staff will send out a fully trained Response Officer to assist them, eg. if they have fallen and are uninjured.
These services are available for anyone who wishes to pay for them.
If you already have a range of services to support your care needs, the charge will need to be included at your next reassessment and a review of your ongoing care needs will be undertaken. This will only apply to those people who have been assessed as having substantial or critical needs. Please note where there are two customers at the same address the proposed charge will only apply once.
To help us make decisions on how we deliver and charge for services, we asked for your views and comments about your current service and the proposed changes.
You can download a copy of the questionnaire form we used to consult.
An information booklet about this consultation is available to download.
Important Notice
Please note that the Community Alarm consultation was, following feedback from stakeholders, extended to Friday 17th May 2013 to allow more Manchester residents and Registered Social Housing Providers to tell us what they thought of the proposals.
If you would like to request a copy of this questionnaire please email supportingpeople@manchester.gov.uk
If you are unsure who your community alarm provider is, not clear about which questionnaire to complete or have any concerns or queries whatsoever, please let us know and we will do our best to help you.
In addition, we also held Provider events in early May 2013 to talk about the proposals in more details and to hear your views.
The results of this survey will be available shortly after the consultation completion date and will be posted on　this website.
Thank you for your time in completing a questionnaire and helping Manchester City Council to improve the services we provide.
If you have any queries or require any further information regarding the consultation exercise, including requesting information in a different format, please contact our helpline on 0161 277 1865. This line will be available Monday to Friday between the hours of 10.00 am and 4.00 pm.