New Silver Alert program initiated by partnership
For The Vista
Fairfield Glade Director of Safety Michael Williams and the Fairfield Glade Resident Services have partnered to creat the Fairfield Glade Silver Alert Program
Silver Alert will be the response for What to Do when a senior goes missing. In a retirement community like ours, caring for & keeping a cognitively impaired person safe challenges every assumption about what a person might or might not do.
Without any warning someone who has never shown a tendency to wander might leave their home on foot going who-knows-where only to become disoriented and lost in a matter of minutes. Family caregivers & institutions can keep a watchful eye, but the very mobile cognitively impaired adult manages to slip past the safeguards, perhaps even get in a car & be gone in a flash.
It happens a lot, so much so that 41 states have passed Silver Alert Legislation. Modeled after the Amber Alert system for locating missing children, Silver Alert is aimed at mobilizing law enforcement & other community resources to locate missing impaired seniors as quickly as possible to prevent serious harm to their health or safety.
In August 2009, TN enacted the Silver Alert legislation. Local police or sheriff departments are the gatekeepers for Silver Alert. In east TN, Knox, Blount & Scott counties have all had occasion to issue a Silver Alert.
When Fairfield Glade Public Safety determines a need for an alert, the Fusion Center in Nashville, operated by the TBI will be notified to broadcast an alert.
Public Safety and community agencies will begin a search immediately to locate the missing senior. It is imperative to begin the search as soon as someone goes missing. Time counts just like with heart attack or stroke. The missing person must be found quickly (within the first half hour). As time goes forward chances for survival diminish greatly.
So how will the Silver Alert program work in Fairfield Glade?
Please contact Fairfield Glade Resident Services (FGRS) at 931-456-7272, M-F, 9 AM until Noon to request an appointment in your home with Cyd Riede, Care Consultant. Riede, is a nationally trained and certified consultant in dementia/Alzheimer’s care.
She will fill out a one page information form and take a picture of your cognitively impaired family member to submit to Public Safety. This confidential information will be placed under lock & key at Public Safety office.
Cyd will then make sure you have Pubic Safety’s phone number of 931-484-3785 (24/7) programmed into your phone, and a printed copy of the number to use for your home & car, to report if your family member goes missing.
Silver Alert is part of Fairfield Glade Public Safety C.A.R.E. (Community Action and Resource Education) initiative.