Is a companionship call service right for your mum or dad?

A companionship call service rings an older person regularly, daily, in some cases, for a friendly conversation. Some use volunteers, some paid callers, and some, like ours, a computer companion. If you've never heard of the category, you're the majority: most families find it while searching for something else, usually a worry.

Here's an honest guide, including when not to use one.

What they are (and aren't)

A companionship call is conversation: the garden, the old days, what's on telly, the neighbour's scaffolding. Done well, it becomes a fixed warm point in the day and a gentle early-warning system, because someone who talks with them every day notices when something's off.

What it is not: care. It doesn't wash, dress, shop or dispense medication. It isn't a medical service or an emergency alarm, and any provider suggesting otherwise should worry you. It works alongside pendant alarms and carers, never instead of them.

The main options in the UK

Free befriending services. Age UK's telephone friendship service and local schemes like Re-engage match older people with a volunteer for a weekly call. Genuinely lovely, and free: the right first stop for many families. The trade-offs: usually weekly rather than daily, sometimes a waiting list, and the family typically doesn't hear how the calls went.

Paid human calling services. More frequent, more structured; you'll typically pay per call. Quality rests on the individual caller and continuity varies.

Computer companions, like ours. DailyChinwag rings daily, remembers everything they've told it (the trifle recipe, the neighbour's cat, what the doctor said), emails the family after every call, and flags welfare concerns and scam mentions to the right person the same day. It costs money where befrienders are free. That's the honest trade against daily frequency, a perfect memory, and the family loop.

Who it suits, and who it doesn't

It suits: someone mostly independent but short of company; families who can't ring daily; the parent who won't wear the pendant but will always answer the phone. It does not suit: someone in the later stages of dementia (short trials with supervision only, and honestly discussed with the family first); anyone who needs actual care visits; anyone who simply doesn't want it, in which case, that's the answer.

The questions to ask any provider, including us

Do they know what it is, and did anyone ask them? (If a provider will start without their consent, walk away.) Is it honest about being a computer, if it is one? What happens when they mention feeling unwell, or a stranger asking for money? Can you cancel without a fight? What do they record and who can see it? Our answers are public: hold everyone to the same standard.

The right service, honestly run, buys something families underestimate until they have it: the daily certainty that they've spoken to someone who was really listening, and that you'd know by teatime if something wasn't right.

---