LONEALERT is delighted to announce it has selected two charities to receive dozens of its devices to protect their volunteers - Beacon Centre for the Blind and Young Women’s Outreach Project.
We are giving away 30 Man Down devices - worth £250 each - as part of the LONEALERT In The Community campaign to keep charity volunteers safe.
LONEALERT asked for nominations of charities to receive the devices - which automatically send an alert if the user is distressed or injured - and have now selected their worthy winners. Both charities will receive 15 devices.
Beacon Centre for the Blind, based in the West Midlands, works to support people with visual impairments and will use the Man Down devices to protect volunteers who run its home visiting service.
Becky Sinar, Beacon’s Volunteer Co-ordinator, said: “We carefully recruit, train and induct volunteers who are suitably matched to service users with a visual impairment. These volunteers visit service users in their own homes to give them support with general tasks within the home: reading and auctioning post, sorting cupboards, writing letters, companionship, going for walks, assisting to the shops.
“Without this service the service users would not be able to complete these tasks as many of them have no family and are very isolated – even more so with their sight loss.
We currently have about 28 active ‘Home Visiting’ volunteers out in the community. These volunteers give their time and support in order to support the charity, the individuals and give something back to the community.
Volunteers often raise concerns about what would happen if there was an incident while they’re out due to the fact they are Lone Working with vulnerable people. The Man Down devices will certainly reassure our volunteers while out In the community.
The Young Women’s Outreach Project, based in Gateshead, has also been selected to receive Man Down devices to support its work with young women and mothers.
Charity spokeswoman, Caz Moir, said: “Our experienced and qualified staff work to support young women and mothers through issues that are affecting their lives, empowering them by building their self esteem and confidence and supporting them make positive choices about their futures.
“We provide targeted youth support, in groups and one to one, counselling, parenting and peer support for young mothers and support for LGBT+ young women.
“We also offer support to young men and fathers with a view to building a project similar to ours to address the needs and gaps in support for young men.
The LONEALERT devices will aid us in our one-to-one and outreach work across the project, including those who undertake home visits with young women and men, making first contact and providing information about the services we offer.
It is not always possible for us to be sure of the environment that our team will be entering and a system like this will help us to ensure their safety whilst carrying out vital parts of our work.
The Man Down devices have been developed using LONEALERT’s patented technology to keep lone and vulnerable workers safe. They feature a panic button for the user to raise an instant alarm in the event of an emergency, integrated GPS and a fall sensor which detects if the user is in ‘man down’ condition. If the wearer does not respond, an alert is raised so help can be sent to the user’s exact location.
LONEALERT’s Man Down devices are used by dozens of internationally renowned companies to keep their workers safe, ranging from Thames Water to Weetabix and McCains.
Mathew Colley, Sales & Marketing Manager at LONEALERT, said: “The Man Down devices have been developed with lone and vulnerable workers in mind, which makes them the perfect solution to protect charity volunteers who also find themselves in similar situations.
We wanted to give something back to the people who go above and beyond to help others, often putting themselves at risk to do so. We are delighted to have selected two very worthy charities to receive our Man Down devices to give volunteers peace of mind that they can raise the alarm and help will be sent should they need it.
