Community Equipment Services & Assistive technology

Norfolk County Council

Community equipment

All County Councils have a statutory requirement to provide community equipment services for people with social care needs, to enable them to stay living at home as independently as possible.

NHS Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group has a statutory requirement to provide similar equipment for people with health care needs.

Norfolk County Council, Suffolk County Council and NHS Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group work together to provide an Integrated Community Equipment Service (ICES) for Norfolk and Waveney. Nottingham Rehab Services Ltd (NRS Healthcare) is our service provider for the delivery, collection, repair and servicing of community equipment within Norfolk and Waveney.

Equipment provided

Working closely with occupational therapists and other clinicians, ICES loans equipment free of charge to enable people to stay living at home independently, reducing the need for hospital or care home admissions. The provision of equipment is often key to facilitating hospital discharges.

All equipment loaned will be provided on an individual basis to people who have been assessed as needing it.

Here are some examples of what our equipment can help with:

  • Getting into and out of bed
  • Getting in and out of the bath, or up from the toilet
  • Getting washed and dressed
  • Getting up out of a chair
  • Carrying things between rooms

Getting equipment

If you're finding some areas of daily living becoming difficult and believe you have a condition you need help with, contact our social care team or speak to your GP. A trained person will carry out an assessment to see if you are eligible for support.

If you're eligible

We may provide you with equipment free of charge, although this isn't guaranteed.

You might also want to think about electronic equipment (known as assistive technology) which can help you feel safer and more secure in your home.

If you're not eligible

We may direct you to find help via friends and family, charity funding, or recommend that you buy your own equipment. If you're looking to buy your own items, we've produced a guide to finding your own assisted living equipment.

Assistive technology

What is Assistive Technology?

Assistive technology is a range of electronic gadgets that can help you to live independently in your own home.  This includes things such as:

  • Sensors/detectors that link to a monitoring centre (via your rented community ‘pendant’ alarm).  For example smoke, low temperature, falls, and property exit sensors
  • Global Positioning System (GPS) location devices that use a mobile network to raise an alert to a carer or monitoring centre, eg the buddi GPS device
  • Triggers/sensors that can support a person or their carer in and around the home.  For example pendant buttons, door contacts or motion sensors linked to a pager

Who is the service for?

This service is for adults over 18 years living in their own home (this excludes residential/care homes).

The Assistive Technology team will carry out an assessment to see if you would benefit from having any electronic gadgets that would help you to stay independent and/or provide support for your carer.

How much does it cost?

The assessment is free, and many of the gadgets are available on free loan.  However as part of the assessment we might suggest some other gadgets that we do not provide that we think would be useful.  The person carrying out your assessment will be able to suggest places where you can buy these directly.

How to contact us

If you already have ongoing support from Adult Social Services please speak to your social worker about referring into our service.

You can also contact our Customer Service Centre to ask for a referral to the Assistive Technology team.

Contact

Telephone
0344 800 8020 0344 800 8020
E-mail
information@norfolk.gov.uk
Website
https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/care-support-and-health/equipment-and-adaptations
Scan to visit this website
Parent Organisation
Norfolk County Council

Last Updated: 23 January 2023

Actions

Save to Shortlist
Skip back to top of page