Two things get muddled the moment a family starts looking for reassurance about a parent living alone: the personal alarm and the daily check-in. They sound similar, they're sold to the same worried sons and daughters, and people often end up with the wrong one — or think they have to choose when they don't. They solve genuinely different problems. Here's the honest difference.
What a personal alarm (telecare) is for
A pendant or wristband with a button. Press it — after a fall, a funny turn, feeling unwell — and it connects to a 24/7 monitoring centre who can speak to your parent and send help. Some add automatic fall detection. This is emergency kit: its whole job is the moment something goes wrong. If your parent is at real risk of falls, or has a condition that could turn suddenly, this is the right thing, and nothing here replaces it.
Its honest limits: it only works if it's worn and pressed. Plenty of older people take the pendant off, leave it by the bed, or won't wear "an old-person alarm" at all. And it tells you nothing on an ordinary day — by design, it stays silent until a crisis.
What a daily check-in is for
A daily check-in answers a completely different, quieter question: are they okay today? — without waiting for an emergency. Once a day your parent signals they're alright, and you simply know. It's reassurance, not rescue: it won't summon an ambulance, and it isn't meant to. What it removes is the low, daily not-knowing between calls.
Its limit is the mirror image of the alarm's: it isn't for emergencies. A missed check-in tells the family to look in — never the emergency services.
So which does your parent need?
A rough guide:
- Real risk of falls or a sudden medical event? → a personal alarm / telecare, first. Non-negotiable for genuine emergency risk.
- Basically well, but you carry that daily "are they alright?" → a daily check-in.
- Both true? → have both. They don't compete; they cover different hours of the same worry.
The mistake is buying an emergency alarm to soothe an everyday worry (so it sits silent and you still fret), or leaning on a check-in where a real fall risk needs a monitored alarm.
Where My Companion sits
My Companion is firmly on the check-in side: a gentle once-a-day tap by your parent — whenever suits them, not at a fixed minute — a calm "all's well" for you, and — if a day drifts by — a nudge to them, then a heads-up to the family, step by gentle step. It is not a medical or emergency device and does not replace a pendant alarm or care line; it's a small paid subscription (with a free trial), private by design, and not surveillance — your parent taps by choice, and you see reassurance, not their movements. We're so firm on that line that we wrote why our Help button isn't an emergency button and what My Companion is — and isn't.
If you're still weighing the whole picture, worried about a parent living alone? walks through everything that helps — alarms and check-ins included.