Several services provide monitoring for elderly living alone

Dear Savvy Senior: Are there any services that check on elderly seniors who live alone. I worry about my 84-year-old father falling or having a medical emergency, and not being able to get to the phone to call for help. He won’t wear a lifeline help-button. — Desperate Daughter

Dear Desperate: Depending on where your dad lives, there are checkin call services, volunteer visiting programs, and a variety of technology options you can turn to that can help you keep tabs on him. Here are several to check into.

Daily check-in calls

To make sure your dad is OK every day, consider signing him up with a daily check-in call-service program. These telephonereassurance programs run by police or sheriff ’s departments are in hundreds of counties across the country, and are usually provided free of charge. Here’s how they work: A computer-automated phone system would call your dad at a designated time each day to check-in. If he answers, the system would assume everything is OK. But if he doesn’t pick up or if the call goes to voice mail after repeated tries, you (or whoever he designates) would get a notification call. If you are not reachable, calls are then made to backup people who’ have also agreed to check on your dad. If no one can be reached, the police or other emergency services personnel will be dispatched to his home.

To find out if this service is available in your dad’s community, call his local police department’s nonemergency number. If the police or sheriff ’s department in your dad’s community doesn’t provide a daily check-in call program, there are a number of companies that offer similar services for less than $15 per month. Some to check include the CARE senior calling program (call-reassurance. com), CareCheckers (carecheckers.com) and IAmFine (iamfine.com).

Volunteer visiting programs

Another option is volunteer visiting programs, which are usually run by churches, community groups or social service agencies. These programs provide volunteers who will visit an older adult in their home usually for an hour or two once a week, providing companionship as well as the reassurance that someone is checking in on a regular basis. They also can alert you if they notice your dad’s health or living conditions start to decline.

To find out if these services are available, check with local churches or the area agency on aging near your dad. Call the Eldercare Locator at 800-677-1116 for contact information.

Technology solutions

Technology offers a number of ways to help keep your dad safe at home, and help you keep an eye on him from afar. For safety and peace of mind, there are medical-alert systems, which provide a wearable button that would allow him to call for help if he needed it. Some of these systems (such as Bay Alarm Medical, bayalarmmedical.com) also offer wall-mounted buttons that can be placed near the floor in high-fall-risk areas such as the bathroom or kitchen.

There are also wireless sensor-monitoring systems (such as Silver Mother, sen. se/silvermother) you could put in his home, which will notify you when something out of the ordinary happens; and video-monitoring cameras (such as the Nest Cam, nest.com/camera) that have built-in motion and sound detection, which will alert you when something is detected, and two-way audio that will allow you to talk and listen to him.