technology
Eyes in the sky
South Australia to run CCTV
pilot in aged care homes.
By Conor Burke
T
he South Australian government
has announced a trial of CCTV
installations across at least five
aged care facilities in the state over a
12-month period.
The government will invest $500,000
in the Australian-first trial. It will be
administered by UK firm Care Protect,
which runs its own facilities as well as
providing CCTV monitoring in a number
of homes in the UK. This will be its first
foray into Australian facilities.
SA Premier Steven Marshall said:
“In the shadow of Oakden and the
Commonwealth aged care royal
commission, protecting South
Australia’s most vulnerable is one of my
government’s highest priorities.
“This CCTV pilot will strengthen the
safeguards in place for our frail, older
population, provide greater transparency
than ever before, and hopefully give loved
ones greater peace of mind that their
loved ones are receiving quality care.”
HOW IT WORKS
Care Protect has been providing “smart
technology camera systems” to aged
care and mental health facilities in the
38 agedcareinsite.com.au
UK, owning and operating four facilities
itself, which is where the original
CCTV technology was trialled over an
18-month period.
Scott Sterling, Care Protect’s business
development director here in Australia,
told Aged Care Insite that the UK was
experiencing similar problems to those
faced here, and this technology was born
of the need for improvement.
“We’ve seen a lot of horrific things
happening,” he said. “There were scandals
all over the place, and a system like this
can prevent that, or at least bring it to
attention very fast.”
Cameras are installed in communal
areas, which then record continuously
over 24 hours. Cameras are also installed
in bedroom areas. In the UK, these
cameras are only switched on with
consent by the resident, next of kin,
or when given under a ‘best interest
assessment’ where the decision is made
by a social worker.
Once the bedroom cameras
are switched on, they lie dormant
until triggered by changes in movement,
sound or light. These cameras can also
be set up to have “motion windows”
so that if a resident falls out of bed in
the night, for example, four seconds
later the hub in Belfast is alerted
and can then alert staff at the facility
via smartphone.
The information recorded is
immediately streamed to a secure offsite
facility and “military grade” cloud server.
The footage is reviewed by a team of
healthcare professionals, independent of
the facility, who are registered nurses or
trained social workers.
They are also subject to background
checks and are registered with the
secured industry authority, giving them
licence to view CCTV footage.
They will review recorded footage and
categorise it by severity on a ‘traffic light’
system: green for good, amber for okay
and red for poor practice.
Families can also have access with
consent via an app. They would be able to
log in and see bedroom footage of three
minutes in every two-hour window.
“The biggest reason we use this in
the UK is from a quality assurance
perspective,” said Sterling.
“We had a good rating [for our homes]
in the UK from the regulator, the Care
Quality Commission. But once we
installed the cameras, we saw that we
were providing sub-standard service.
“We were very quickly able to clear
that up. Any client facility that we
have, we spend two hours a day, every
single day, retroactively reviewing footage
of communal areas and bedroom
settings, and compile a monthly report,”
he said.