As complete security providers, we understand that security needs change as your family grows. Of course, certain aspects of security remain constant at all times. Providing basic security against emergencies remains one of the most important goals of any security plan. However, securing your home and your loved ones involves taking a unique approach based on your home’s inhabitants. In this post, we aim to show you how you can use these different approaches to provide complete family security.
We’ll begin with a look at the basics. As we mentioned above, securing any household involves taking certain steps. In particular, we address life safety and the threat of a burglary in any home we work in. From there, we’ll look at some more specific avenues we take based on a home’s inhabitants. First, we’ll focus on providing security for elderly residents. Then, we’ll share some ideas for creating security for school-aged family members. Finally, we’ll wrap up our discussion with some ways you can keep young ones safe by tracking their movements throughout your property. Now, let’s get started with the “building blocks” of any home security plan.
Monitored Life Safety and Burglary Security
One of the most important aspects of installing security in any home lies in connecting the security devices we install to our monitoring services. Doing so allows you to experience the certainty of an emergency response to events that threaten your home, your valuables, and your loved ones. We connect all of these security devices to a centralized home security system. From there, we connect this system to our own central station for monitoring.
Preferably, we create this monitoring connection using our cellular dialer powered by Alarm.com. This dialer acts as a dedicated communication path between your alarm and our central station. Therefore, phone outages will not affect your monitoring. Furthermore, this dialer also allows you to control your security system using a smartphone app. Additionally, your Alarm.com dialer creates unique security advantages including the ability to receive customized alarm event alerts. These alerts can include notifications for activity such as alarm activations and system arming and disarming events. Finally, the Alarm.com dialer also acts as a smart home hub, allowing us to connect smart devices to it for additional security. We’ll discuss several benefits to adding this service throughout this article.
Monitored smoke detectors, such as this model by System Sensor, can create a fire department response to a fire at your home.
Monitored life safety devices include smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide detectors. Having these devices installed ensures a fire department response if any one of these detectors catches an issue. This can save your home or even the life of a family member. We also install sensors on doors to help you “lock down” your home in your absence. Finally, additional sensors such as motion detectors and glass break detectors catch thieves who attempt to use unorthodox ways to enter your home. For more information on this equipment, check our our Guide to How Alarm Systems Work. Now, let’s look at securing any elderly residents in your home!
Security for Elderly Family Members
Providing peace of mind for families with elderly loved ones at home represents a large slice of our home security business. Fortunately, we have a few effective ways we can create this security and peace of mind. For starters, we offer monitored medical pendants that can create an ambulance response to falls or other emergencies. These waterproof, wireless devices provide an invaluable measure of life safety and security for elderly customers.
Additionally, Alarm.com offers a unique piece of equipment to help you check in on elderly family members. The Alarm.com Wellcam combines several types of security in one piece of equipment. For starters, this device has a camera that can provide video alerts upon detecting motion. The Wellcam also creates motion-detection alerts based on expected activity. For example, if your parents generally enter their living room by 8am, you can receive an alert if this does not happen. This makes it easy to catch unexpected breaks in routine.
Finally, the Wellcam has a built-in speaker with the ability to provide two-way voice communication. This allows you to call in to the device and speak with residents of your home. If you sense something wrong, you can listen in on your home at any time and communicate with anybody inside. These unique security features make the Wellcam one of the most powerful security devices on the market! Now, let’s address the topic of creating security for school-aged family members.
Adding Security for School-Aged Children and Teens
Smart home security makes it easier than ever to provide security and important alerts for families with students. For starters, we recommend installing Alarm.com smart cameras to monitor your main entrance. This allows you to receive instant video alerts when they return home. In turn, these alerts even allow you to see if your kids bring home guests that you didn’t expect to show up! Finally, these cameras can also create alerts when your kids fail to return home on time from school. At that point, you can investigate the situation to see what caused the unexpected absence.
Furthermore, we also recommend installing smart locks to eliminate key-related security issues. Many of us remember the days of keeping spare keys “hidden” around the front door or with neighbors in case keys go missing during the school day. Obviously, this practice brings with it the threat of someone using your hidden or lost key to enter your home down the road. In fact, smart criminals even copy and return spare keys where they found them. This allows them to commit a crime later without you ever knowing someone else obtained a key.
Smart keypad locks can eliminate the issue of lost keys for good. Now, kids returning from school can enter your home without needing to track down a key. Furthermore, your smart lock allows you to control your lock and track usage remotely. Therefore, you ensure your door gets locked upon your kids’ return from school. At that point, they cannot unlock and re-lock it without you knowing! If they do unlock the door and leave without re-locking it before you get home, you can create an alert for that activity as well. Next, we’ll finish up our post on complete family security with a look at providing security for younger children.
Tracking Children’s Movements with Your Home
Any alarm system we install has security contacts on all exterior doors. Additionally, we also install these sensors on windows in most applications as well. Moreover, adding these contacts in creative locations allows us to provide superior security for families with young ones. Several months back, we created a post detailing Unconventional Uses for Contact Sensors. In that post we discussed several places you may want to add alarm contacts on your property. Doing so allows you to receive alerts when children enter dangerous or sensitive areas of your home.
Adding extra security contacts to important areas of your home allows you to receive alerts when your children wander where they may not belong.
Adding a contact sensor to any door, drawer, cupboard, or fence places new locations under the watchful eye of your security system. Alarm.com customers can create notifications alerting them to a contact sensor’s activation even when your alarm is disarmed. This means that pool owners with young children can receive an alert if someone opens their pool gate. Parents can also add contact sensors to bedroom closets, liquor cabinets, and medicine cupboards. The ability to receive contact sensor alerts at any time provides parents with both security and peace of mind. For these reasons, we recommend talking to your security provider about adding these contacts in any area of your home that requires extra security.
Putting Your Complete Family Security Plan to Work for You
We hope that this post helps you create an effective complete family security plan! Moreover, we encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have. We will happily answer any security-related inquiries. Additionally, we also provide free site surveys to both new and existing customers alike. During our visit, we can address any security issues that you currently know of. Furthermore, we can make our own suggestions based on our observations of your home and its residents.
Perhaps you have a security system in place and want to add some of the features described in this post. Or maybe you have very little security at this time and want to work up a plan from the ground up. Either way, we’re happy to help you secure you home and your family. Together, we can create a plan to keep your home, your most treasured possesions, and your loved ones as safe and secure as possible!