Page 240 - Handbook of Electronic Assistive Technology

Chapter 8 • Assisted Living 229

dialler and an automated emailer. Significant design work went into ensuring that the
environment was intuitive to use.
As well as being a functional clinical facility, the ‘Smart TLU’ also functioned as a dem-
onstrator, playing a key role in facilitating other developments within Tayside and else-
where in Scotland. It was presented at various scientific meetings (Linskell, 2005, 2006a,b).
Unfortunately, the facility was not able to be used in the way envisaged, largely because
it was fully based in a community setting, yet the users were still in-patients and their
activities had to be governed by hospital practice and regulations, which meant that estab-
lishing effective working procedures proved too challenging. After a period of nonuse the
facility has been adopted by Dundee City Council and their outtake service is now using it
to explore ways of preparing very long stay patients for discharge from hospital.
Building on the success of the initiatives within Tayside, and in response to poor experi-
ences in the use of conventional technologies to support clients with challenging behav-
iour, three smart house projects were commissioned between 2006 and 2007. The projects
were contracted by three different registered social landlords: Abertay Housing Association,
Servite Housing Association and Perth Housing Association, on behalf of NHS Tayside,
Dundee City Council and Perth City Council. The projects were designed for adults with
learning disability and challenging behaviours in a supported living environment. The chal-
lenge was to provide these individuals with tenancies where their level of independence
could be increased beyond that which had previously been envisaged by the augmenta-
tion of care with smart technology. Supporting individuals with challenging behaviours in
their own tenancies represents a different challenge to supporting them in a group-living
or residential care environment. The three projects differed in the type of accommodation
provided and the nature of the client management issues (Linskell and Hill, 2010):
1� Six client flats and a staff flat spread over two floors within a new, mainstream
residential block. Some of the service users had previous experience of living in
group-living environments and had a range of learning disabilities that made them
vulnerable. All had the eating disorder Prader–Willi syndrome. Main system elements
included activity monitoring in flats (all doors and windows), front door, flood and
smoke sensors, zoned heating, mains control and distributed carer alert.
2� Four client bungalows and a staff bungalow spread over two blocks on a new housing
development. These individuals were all being resettled from long-stay hospitals, had
never lived independently as adults and were a danger to themselves and their carers.
Main system elements included access control, distributed personal attack warning
system and door, window, flood and bed monitoring.
3� Six client flats and a staff flat in a dedicated block. These individuals represented
a potential danger to themselves and their carers. Main system elements included
access control, flat front door monitoring, movement monitoring within flats and
in corridors and a distributed personal attack warning system. There was also CCTV
monitoring of all shared internal spaces, which was also fed to the carer portable
units, described later.