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Husband's aunt, 92, often is unable to place a call. We even have tried speed dialing.
With the time change she thought her sitter was an hour late and got hysterical.
Her speech comes and goes.
An alert system of this kind would be a great help.
She had a jiggerbug phone at one time but was calling fire & rescue all the time.

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geaton777,
Thank you very much for your advice. I was afraid the alert system would not be a good fit.
He very much wants to keep her at home due partly to poor staffing at facilities and lockdowns, etc.
We are fast approaching 24/7 caregivers.
We do have Nest cameras in place.
Right now she has carers 7a-7p when she goes to bed.
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Geaton777 Nov 2021
Many people have concerns about facilities, but I'm going to guess your husband has not visited any new ones recently. They are much better and upping their "caregiving" game. He should make appointments with several and also vet them on Nextdoor.com, a non-anonymous neighborhood intranet of your actual neighbors. You can ask them to give references or provide input and he will gets lots of accurate and current feedback. My MIL is in an awesome place: non-profit and faith-based run by the Presbyterian Church (and she is not Presbyterian). Good and great places exist. He just needs to do some research.
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Our family uses one for my 2 aunts, one has mod/adv dementia and is mostly immobile and the other has all her cognition and memory but is physically frail and slow moving. They are 99 and 102. The non-dementia aunt wears the alert necklace. There's a special phone system set up so that if she falls, the system calls her on the speaker phone to ask if she needs help. If she doesn't respond then the operator calls their local 911 and the relative or any other designated people get an alert.

Honestly I don't think a system like this would work for someone with cognitive impairment since your husband's aunt would need to keep the alert necklace on and understand who is talking to them through the phone. My aunt with dementia does not wear the necklace because she'd take it off and not know to talk to the operator when spoken to. If his aunt's speech "comes and goes" and she's not able to communicate her need or emergency, then she'll be having EMTs at her house every day.

I think he must now consider a different solution than her living alone. Keeping her in her home will mean more and more people will need to orbit around her daily as she is less and less able to do or remember how to do things for herself. She not only cannot learn or adapt, she is actively forgetting things she used to know. Basic things that are important to keep her safe.

If transitioning her to MC at a reputable facility is an option, he should not hesitate to consider this for her. She will get all the care she needs, plus the bonus of social exposure, activities and events, and your family will get peace of mind.
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