Repeated Calls

tristessa

Do any of you use any of the special phones/services that help with repeated calls?  My mother is in MC and wants a phone.  I want her to be able to call me and some of our family but she's prone to repeatedly calling and directing a lot of her anxiety through phone calls (calling asking for rides/exit seeking stuff).

I've seen a few that help with repeated calls but was hoping to get feedback from someone who actually uses one of them before I pull the trigger.

Thank you in advance!

SusanB-dil

Hi Tristessa - sorry, not familiar with any of the 'repeated calls' programs.  However, i do have some friends with young-ish children/grandchildren. Too young for a full-fledged-do-everything phone, but just old enough to have something. I think around Jr High or so.  What they have is a special plan that their child can only call certain numbers that the parent has to program into the phone.  Same for any apps or web-services. The child cannot access anything the parent hasn't first approved, or at least knows about. It also allows parent to check what's up when the child-phone alerts the parent-phone. Hope this info might help...

abc123

What stage is your Mom? You might want to rethink getting her a cell phone. It can cause a lot of unnecessary stress for her and you.

Marta

If you decide to still get her the cell phone, you could just block her calls on your end until you are ready to talk to her.

RobinFR

We are going to try telecalm.  You can have it in your house and it can be moved to AL, MC etc.  you manage it though mobile app.  You can limit which numbers can dial in and which numbers can be dialed out.  It has features to stop repeated calls, go to voicemail in quite hours (where you can record your message).  We are doing this to eliminate scammers and to limit repeat calls.  The quiet hours sounds good as well.  The system uses the phones you have and works over the internet.  It’s a service so monthly subscription but we will eliminate the phone service through the cable company so it should end of being around the same money.

Dave Cahail

We got my mother a landline phone as she could not remember to charge a cell phone let alone use it correctly. But even with a landline phone, we did have a probably about a year ago of her calling us numerous times per day. I finally had to block her for several weeks and would only call her on a limited basis. I was still though in regular contact with the ALMC staff about it.  Fortunately she stopped making numerous calls and we are back to normal with her. I think part of it is also her losing the ability to reach out call anyone much anymore. 

One thing to consider is whether the state you are in has a patient's bill of rights. My mother is in Washington state and we discovered that we are not allowed to unplug her phone as a means to control her numerous phone calls. We initially did this and told her the phone broke or the phone line needed to be fixed but then the ALMC staff informed us we couldn't do this so we plugged it back in. Thus the need to block her calls on our end instead. Just be aware of your LO rights in your state.