In-home cameras to aid supervision of elderly

Last spring, the district committee of Backa in Gothenburg decided to explore how it might expand supervision within the district’s elderly care with the help of surveillance cameras, Sveriges Radio (SR) reports.

“The cameras are used as a compliment to supervisory visits which take place overnight,” Annika Ljung, section chief for Backa’s home-help services (hemtjänsten), told SR.

By providing a range of services, from help with medication to housework and personal hygiene assistance, the publicly financed home-help service is designed to allow elderly residents to remain in their homes rather than move to assisted living facilities.

Ljung explained that the cameras allow Backa’s home-help service “to supervise more often then we could otherwise” by simply looking at monitors connected to the cameras, rather than carry out a late-night visit to a client’s home.

Use of the cameras is still in a pilot phase in which four clients have agreed to have surveillance cameras installed in their homes, with each client specifying where the camera should be placed.

“Most often it’s pointed toward the bed so that you can see that the person is still lying in their bed,” said Ljung.

Officials in Backa intend to evaluate the surveillance camera experiment later in the autumn.