If you’re operating a care home facility, your top concern should be the welfare of your guests. You need to provide quality care for residents, and you cannot do this without investing in building security and safety measures.
Keep reading to learn why you need CCTV for communal areas of care homes and the top security solutions you should consider installing for your property.
CCTV for Communal Areas in Care Homes – Why It Matters
There are many reasons why care home property managers should provide CCTV for communal areas in care homes. Below you will find some of the top reasons why this is an essential installation in your care facility.
Evidence of Staff Neglect
In recent years, many scandals have come to light, showing the poor treatment of elderly citizens in care homes. To ensure your facility is not tarnished with the stain of such a scandal, you need visibility on how your staff is treating residents at all times. By installing business surveillance cameras for your communal areas, you will be able to supervise your staff at all times, and they will be aware that their actions are not private.
Preventing Intruders And Incidents
While your guests enjoy communal facilities on the premises, you need to ensure they are safe and secure. Installing CCTV for communal areas in your care facility will provide visibility of who is on the premises. Additionally, you will be more aware of any incidents occurring on the property. If someone is damaging the property, or a resident slips and falls, you can spot this on your surveillance monitors and address the issue as soon as possible.
Preventing Theft On-Site
When it comes to any resource on the property, you need to prevent theft. Care facilities house medications and equipment that are extremely valuable, and these resources must be protected. To spot any theft on the premises, whether committed by staff members or intruders, you must incorporate surveillance into your security strategy.
Other Ways to Secure Your Care Facility
Below you will find some of the top security solutions to help secure your care facility and provide more health, safety, and security on-site.
Access Control
Cloud-based access control is one of the leading security solutions that can help you to ensure that no unauthorized users can enter your building. Cloud-based access control allows care facilities to do away with keycards and fobs, along with keycard and fob replacement costs.
Here are some of the additional benefits you stand to gain by implementing cloud-based access control:
- Remote management – you can ensure agile, responsive, and convenient security with the cloud-based access control’s remote operation features. Using a mobile device, you can check the status of door locks on site. You can also lock doors and view access logs. This feature ensures rapid procedures in an emergency evacuation by allowing for building-wide unlocking.
- Contactless entry – your staff can enter the building conveniently using the wave-to-unlock feature. If they wave their hands over the access control reader, this will trigger remote communication with their mobile devices via BlueTooth communication to unlock the door. This is a more hygienic and convenient access control solution for your facility.
- Open API integrations – you can establish a fully-integrated security system using the open API integrations of your cloud-based security tools. Additionally, you can apply software integrations to expand the features offered by your access control system.
Alarm Systems
Alarm systems are essential in your security strategy. To meet health and safety codes and regulations, you need to implement fire and carbon monoxide detectors that notify you when the premises have become unsafe. Equally, you need alarm systems to notify you when the premises have become unsafe due to an intruder or human factor.
This is why you should consider investing in glass break and gunshot detection alarms, ensuring that you can notify authorities and plan a security response instantly for these events. Opt for a cloud-based alarm system. Your off-site employees will receive a mobile alert regarding the alarm trigger, allowing them to participate in your emergency response plan.
Visitor Check-In
You must implement visitor management to keep accurate visitor records in your facility. Keeping correct visitor records is essential to your security investigation should an incident or crime occur on-site.
While you must ensure that all visitors register with the system before entering, you must also ensure that visitors have a convenient way to enter the building and visit their relatives and loved ones.
To make visitor logs more reliable and visitor check-in more straightforward, you can automate the visitor management process. To do this, you can integrate visitor management software with your access control system. The software provides users with digital registration forms to complete on their mobile devices. Once they have provided their personal information, they can enter the building using temporary access credentials stored on their mobile devices. The system automatically logs their entry and exit times to provide reliable visitor records.
Summary
You must consider security a priority when running and operating a care facility, you must consider security a priority. Elderly citizens are among the most vulnerable people in society, and by becoming a care provider, you have assumed responsibility for their security and safety. By implementing the security tools, technologies, and practices listed above, you can ensure that your facility is safe for the elderly.