Product Code: , Price: £1000-£5000
SOUND AND MOVEMENT MONITORING
Windows for Children is a therapeutic home for severely damaged and troubled children, in Chatham, Kent. Run by Director of Care, Madge Booth, it provides a refuge for children, aged between 4 and 11 years, who have suffered from various forms of abuse. The home is dedicated to providing a safe, comfortable and normal environment for these children, and the level of care provided is second to none.
In 2002 the home approached Easyline Communications to provide a tailored system to monitor the children on a 24 hour basis in the home. After much research and many discussions, Easyline installed their SaMM (Sound and Movement Monitoring) system. Within weeks the combination of highly sophisticated software and readily available monitoring hardware was installed, to provide the home with the most secure system available on the market today.
In the main office of the home is installed a high-capacity, high resilience PC, linked to every room, door, window, and corridor in the building. With a simple mouse click the carer can listen to the sounds in any room, and speak to the child by intercom if necessary. The system will automatically display any movement between rooms, within rooms, and indicate door openings and closings. CCTV cameras monitor the exit routes, which can be viewed from the PC screen.
The system has an on-screen animated character, a wizard called SAM, and the children are encouraged to interact with him in the office during the day. At night SAM can be programmed to say “goodnight” to children individually by name, and in their own rooms, using installed speakers, accompanied, by a comforting phrase. The system can then help to ensure that the child is at ease, by listening for the replies of “goodnight SAM”. The children the sleep peacefully, knowing that SAM (actually a Carer) is floating around the home looking after them. Recordings of the children sleeping, automatically provided by the system, can be later used to help in psychiatric work; for instance in the analysis of their nightmares, as recorded by the system. Key to the security of both carer and child is the recording of secure log of all activities visible or audible to the system. No one at the home has access to the log, and in the event of an incident, the police can examine its contents, secure in the knowledge that they have not been tampered with.
Madge Booth says “the SaMM system provides the best monitoring I have ever experienced, and I dont understand why it is not mandatory for every type of residential institution for children, the elderly and the vulnerable. With an application like this, rapid backup is the key to its effectiveness, and Easyline is a superb supplier with a service that is second-to-none”. Madge