Technology Enabled Care (TEC) uses telecare devices to relay information from a person’s home or community to a 24/7 monitoring centre to help prevent unsafe conditions developing and enable a quick response should an incident – such as a fall – occur.

In turn, this enables people to live independently and safely at home for longer and, across South Lanarkshire, around 7000 residents benefit from this service.

However, most analogue telephone services in the UK will be switched off by the end of this year and replaced by digital systems, so the TEC team was set up in 2022 to make sure all of the council’s service-users were transferred to a suitable digital version, as well as carrying out any repairs that became necessary and installing alarms for new service-users.

The transfer was completed and as the new digital technology offers greater capabilities than the former analogue systems, the TEC team has been able to take on more work, such as programming and monitoring alarms.

Eight of the 12 positions in the team have, until now, been temporary as part of the Analogue to Digital project, but to enable the TEC work to be carried out to its full potential and ensure the service can continue into the future, the Social Work Resources Committee agreed this week to make those temporary posts permanent.

Councillor Margaret Walker, the council’s Chair of Social Work Resources, said: “Community alarms have been a comfort and a reassurance to many people across South Lanarkshire for many years now, and continue to be so.

“It is vital that the technology underpinning those resources is fit for the future and so I am delighted that, in strengthening the TEC team, we are ensuring that the technology is able to contribute to the safety of so many vulnerable people in an even greater way and let them, and their families, rest easier as a result.”

The TEC service falls under auspices of South Lanarkshire University Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) and so NHS Lanarkshire will also contribute to the funding of the team.

Professor Soumen Sengupta, Chief Officer/Director of Health and Social Care at South Lanarkshire University HSCP, said: “Extending and enabling greater use of digital technologies is vital to the transformation of health and social care services – and plays an increasingly important role in giving more and more local people the chance to thrive within our communities.

“Our commitment the TEC service is an excellent example of this, and so I would like to thank all of our service users and their families for their continuing support for the important work of all those colleagues who are playing their part in delivering these improvements locally.”