Key Safe

You’re safe; you have a key safe – a digital lock on the outside of your house to help the carers get-in.

I heard this week that since Grenfell there has been a thing about the safety of key safes and they are now considered unsafe, perhaps providing too tempting a means of entry to the property of the mostly older people who use the technology.

I had thought that they might have been designed to prevent people wrenching them off the wall and getting at the key inside.

Have the code – you have the key and you’re inside.

How on earth can we hope to facilitate independence when this is a risk?

It is perhaps a folk-myth.

A tale told by the tabloids to create the sort of fear that sells more papers.

Who knows?

You could say, I am perpetuating the lie.

I’m not trying to.

I am just asking.

How do you provide a means for carers to gain entry to property where a physically dependent older person is unable to open the door? You might think a key that is passed-on would be the answer, yet, carers work in such complex systems of team and handover that Morag passing the key to Janice who hands it to Tim every day of the week at say, 8, 12 and 6pm would be virtually impossible.

If this is a thing, it will likely, disproportionately, like everything else, make life more difficult for those who are poor, those who can’t afford to have their door systems re-wired with sophisticated voice or fingerprint recognition.

For some, the council will pay, for others, the challenge of coping alone will increase, all with implications for the health and social care system which like a sagging safety-net picks up the pieces as it becomes ever less efficient and effective.

Key safes, who’d have thought they would be the next big threat?

See Shoe Event Horizon.