Chubb Teams With CriticalArc to Help Protect Charity’s Lone Workers

Hutt Street Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, offers life-enhancing support services to almost 2,000 homeless people every year. This work involves meeting clients sleeping rough, or with a history of mental health issues and in these situations even experienced case workers can be vulnerable.

Hutt Street Centre started working with CriticalArc with the aim of giving all its case workers a panic button in their pocket and the reassurance that they could get immediate help if ever they were working in potentially dangerous situations.

Hutt Street Centre is working with CriticalArc and Chubb, a large Australian security systems integrator organisation, to reduce this vulnerability with a robust emergency response solution. If a lone worker gets into difficulty, they have two easy options. Either they can use the SafeZone® app on their smartphone to raise an immediate alert or they can summon help using a wearable Bluetooth duress button – in both cases, it’s a discrete action that won’t escalate tension.

Going a step further, if users are anxious about meeting a specific client or going to a particular location, they can use SafeZone’s unique Check-in timer function. When a time slot is set for anticipated meetings the system gives a warning five minutes from expiry, and this can be a helpful interruption point to conclude meetings with challenging clients. But if the timer is not cancelled and expires, SafeZone will automatically raise an alert so that Chubb’s monitoring centre can action a predetermined response plan.

SafeZone fundamentally transforms an organization’s ability to manage its staff safety and security in emergency situations. And the added capability for Hutt Street to direct alarms into Chubb’s resilient 24/7 monitoring centres ensures a consistent and fast response to protect Hutt Street’s most important asset, their people.

“Chubb’s integration of SafeZone at our Monitoring Centre’s has established a new benchmark for organizations to protect their staff, streamline operations, and is easy to use and quick to deploy.” – Joshua Simmons, Managing Director – Chubb Monitoring Solutions

Meanwhile, at the monitoring centre, Chubb operators using SafeZone Command can see real-time alerts and monitor individuals who have requested assistance. This means they can involve emergency responders or external agencies immediately if an incident warrants escalation.

The SafeZone solution is now being offered to thousands of other businesses and government agencies. The mobile app will play a pivotal role in helping many organizations, community healthcare workers, and critical infrastructure firms support their existing lone workers, as well as enabling them to expand the range and scale of assistance they can offer to enhance the safety and wellbeing of their staff.