Birdhouse for families or through a care agency: which set-up fits?

Two ways to use Birdhouse

When setting it up as a family fits

• You, a sibling or a neighbour can get to your parent reasonably quickly when an alert comes in.
• You want to choose the sensors, rules and the people who have access yourselves.
• Your parent is not already registered with an Active Ageing Centre or a home-care provider that offers Birdhouse monitoring.

The guide to monitoring a parent without cameras walks through the set-up.

When an agency fits better

• Family members live far away, work long shifts, or are abroad, and need someone local who can respond.
• Your parent already goes to an Active Ageing Centre or has home-care visits, and the provider offers Birdhouse monitoring.
• You run a centre or care service and want to look after many seniors from one place.

Inviting a care agency into a family home

On the home’s People screen, Invite a care agency lists the agencies that have been approved by Birdhouse and offer monitoring with Birdhouse. Search by name or area, add an optional message about the help you are looking for, and send the invitation.

• The agency has 14 days to accept. We email you their answer.
• The agency sees the home only after it accepts.
• Its staff can add agency rules that alert the agency’s own staff. They cannot change or switch off the family’s rules.
• You can remove the agency at any time, and its access ends at once. The agency can also leave.
• Any fee or contract for the agency’s service is between you and the agency.

For agencies: registering and getting verified

Registration is free and takes a few minutes at app.birdhouse.sg/agencies/apply. Active Ageing Centres, home-care companies and other care organisations register the same way, whether they plan to buy hubs for their seniors or to be listed for families. Before an agency can see any home, Birdhouse checks it:

1. The application gives the organisation’s name, UEN, type, address, service area and a contact person, who becomes the agency’s first Manager.
2. Automatic checks: the contact’s email must be on the organisation’s own domain (no free email addresses), the website must match it, and the UEN is checked for format and duplicates and looked up in the ACRA register of entities with a UEN, comparing the registered name and status.
3. The contact verifies their email with a code, and their mobile number by sharing their contact with the Birdhouse staff Telegram bot.
4. Active Ageing Centres are checked by hand against AIC’s directory, because there is no public dataset to check them automatically.
5. Birdhouse reviews the results and approves the application, asks for documents, or rejects it. Only approved agencies can be listed, accept invitations from families, or own homes.

Birdhouse can suspend an agency at any time. Its access to customer homes ends at once, and families who invited it are told.

How agencies run Birdhouse day to day

• Hubs reserved for the agency. Hubs ordered by an agency are reserved for it. When staff claim one, the agency becomes the owner automatically. Anyone else who scans it only creates a request for the agency to approve.
• One overview of every home, with status, alerts and per-person Insights, in the dashboard. Staff can also ask the staff Telegram bot about the seniors they look after.
• Family caregivers. The agency keeps each senior’s caregivers and their contact details. A caregiver who wants the app can be invited by the agency, or can scan the hub and ask, and the agency approves with full or summary detail.
• When a senior leaves, the agency either takes the hub back, which archives the home with its history and resets the hub for its next household, or hands the home over to a family member, who then decides whether to invite the agency back.