Uncharted waters

The role of social alarms has been very poorly researched, despite their increasing provenance and the variety of claims made about their benefits. Indeed, apart from within the communities of service providers and older people in Great Britain, the United States and a handful of other countries, social alarms are generally little known and only occasionally are they considered within broader service or social policy frameworks.

The reason that social alarms are poorly documented is because they have been seen as, at worst, irrelevant and, at best, as tools that are used as a means of helping fulfil objectives that relate to other services. Academics and practitioners who are concerned with housing, social welfare and healthcare have usually viewed social alarms as a kind of adjunct to their work, peripheral to the mainstream and, therefore, not worth much attention.

This book remedies this by bringing social alarms into focus. An approach was taken that, in the very first instance, was concerned to gather basic information from within Great Britain, Ireland and other countries. This information was then built upon through more focused work that was concerned with the operation of social alarm services; establishing user perspectives; exploring the extent to which claims made for social alarms had been, in reality, fulfilled; and considering the implications of recent technological developments.

The ways in which the methodology more specifically responded to the objectives of this book are noted below.

Establishing the position of social alarms in Great Britain, Ireland and Internationally

Gathering information in relation to the first two objectives took place over many years. The objectives were, as noted in Chapter One, concerned with establishing the position of social alarms in Great Britain, Ireland and other parts of the world. In Great Britain, Ireland and to some extent the United States, this involved an exploration of their evolution and of the services provided, and consideration of their place within social policy frameworks. This work, when broadened to include other countries, then explored different themes and enabled the making of international comparisons.

A range of different approaches was taken to gathering information, this in several cases involving case study visits and original survey work with service users in Great Britain, Ireland and beyond.