Cook Stop and Silent Call Can Make the Difference
If you are the adult child of a Connecticut senior who has hearing loss, you may be struggling to find ways to keep them safe without asking them to give up their independence. It is a balancing act that can easily lead to tension in the family.
As an adult child, your aging parent’s hearing impairment can make you fear for their safety. Especially if their hearing loss keeps them from being able to hear a smoke alarm if it goes off. Fortunately, there are newer technologies that can help.
Kitchen Safety Tool
If one of your concerns is that your loved one’s home will catch on fire and they won’t be able to hear the smoke detector sound, this tool may be of interest. Since a large percentage of home fires begin in the kitchen, it is an important room to focus safety efforts on. Many kitchen fires occur when a senior is cooking something on the stove and they walk away and forget about it. If the home has working smoke detectors, the alert can help them get to the pan in time to put the fire out or to safely escape. But when their hearing loss prevents them from hearing that alarm, it can lead to real problems.
The CookStop device was developed just for that reason. Once installed, it continuously scans the room for movement. If none is detected in a pre-determined amount of time, it turns off the pan on the stove to prevent a fire. If the occupant returns to the kitchen before the time is up, the timer resets itself and the countdown begins again.
Smoke Detector for the Hearing Impaired
Another option is to install a Silent Call smoke detector. This system works around a senior’s hearing impaired to alert them to danger. It can be set up to flash a strobe light and/or send a vibration out to alert the home’s occupant that a smoke detector has been triggered. It even has an option you can use that will shake the bed in case the senior is sleeping when the alarm goes off.
If you would like help customizing a home safety system for a senior that lives with hearing loss, please call us at (203) 235-TECH (8324). We’ll be happy to help develop a system that best meets your loved one’s needs.
