Key-holding assistants

If you're thinking of becoming a key-holding assistant for someone with an emergency care alarm, this page explains about the responsibilities of key holders and key safes.

How it works

A care alarm allows people to live independently in their own homes while providing peace of mind that if there is an emergency they can get help quickly. 

Anyone with a care alarm can send a call through to us simply by pressing the pendant trigger or the red button on the care alarm itself. Our fully trained operators will take the call, assess the situation and get appropriate help.

Your role

The role of the key-holding assistant is to provide help to the person when they trigger their alarm and contact us. 

This means we might have to phone you at any time during the day or night. When we call, we’ll ask you to either check the wellbeing of the person or give them practical help. For example, you might need to let them into their home if they have locked themselves out. 

If the person using the alarm tells us they need the emergency services (for example, if they have fallen and hurt themselves or if there is a disturbance at their property), our operators will dial 999 immediately. 

We’ll only ask you to check on the person if our operators don’t get a response from them through their alarm or on the phone.

 As a rule, we always ask for at least two nominated key-holders when we install an emergency alarm for someone. 

This means we have a better chance of getting help to a person if, for any reason, one of the key-holders is unavailable (for example, if they’re on holiday). It also means the responsibility can be shared between two or preferably more people, and that there should always be someone available.

 If you’re happy to be nominated as a key-holding assistant, we’ll keep your name, address and contact phone numbers on our computer database. We’ll only use this information if we need to call and ask for your help. 

All the information we hold on our systems is stored confidentially under the Data Protection Act. We will not give your details to anyone else for marketing or any other associated purposes.

What is a key safe?

Key safes are small heavy-duty metal safes that can only be opened using a special code. 

They can be fitted to most properties and are a secure way of storing a spare key to a home. We hold key safe code numbers safely on our system and only issue them to the emergency services and nominated key-holders so they can gain access quickly.