Why it exists: a person who can communicate may still have no way to say that the people caring for them are hurting or neglecting them, because those people are the ones holding the phone, reading the feed and getting the alerts. The I am not safe card is the patient's own door. It sits on the Emergency page directly under the Get Help Now band, only on the patient's view of that page (a family member, a caregiver-role account or a friend signed in on their own account gets the family's Emergency page and never sees it). Nothing on the card is spoken out loud, and nothing on it alerts the family: it does not use Get Help Now, the alert ladder or the alert history.
The call lines: four buttons, each a real call from the device, in this order. 911 for danger right now. The Eldercare Locator, 1-800-677-1116, to report neglect or abuse: it connects the caller to Adult Protective Services where they live (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern; call or text). The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 988, any time, free (you can also text 988). The Veterans Crisis Line, 988 then press 1, for veterans and service members (you can also text 838255). Each number was checked against its official source; none needs a code, a sign-in or a setting.
The private code: the patient and whoever set the account up share one sign-in, so the private part of the card opens only with a private code the patient chooses on the card itself, 4 to 8 digits on a big number pad, typed twice. It is stored as a one-way hash, never as the digits. Five wrong guesses lock it for fifteen minutes. The only way past a forgotten code is Forgot your code? Start over, which erases the trusted person, the note and the record so that a new code can be chosen; someone who does not know the code can erase, but never read.
My trusted person: one person the patient chooses, with a name, a cell phone and an email. The name, the number and the address are encrypted at rest and come back only to a request that carries the private code. Once saved and open, the card shows Tell [name] to check on me and Call [name]. Tell sends that person a text and an email (whichever they have) that says the patient asked them to check in, with a call or a visit, that it was sent from the patient's own screen, and to call 911 if they think the patient may be in danger. It never says why, and it carries no health detail, no reading, no medicine and no note. The card then says plainly what happened: text sent, email sent, could not be sent, or texts or email are not set up on this deployment.
What is happening: the patient's own note, encrypted at rest and opened only with the code. Lines such as Someone is hurting me, I am being left alone too long, I am not getting my medicine, I am not getting food or water and Someone is taking my money are added with one tap; the patient can also write. It is kept for the patient, and for anyone the patient chooses to show it to.
My private code and the record: every time Tell was tapped is listed with the day, the time and the honest result, for the patient only. Lock now closes the private part until the code is entered again; a new code can be saved there with the old one open.
What the family, the home team and the care team see: nothing. The trusted person, the note and the record are never on the family dashboard, the feed, Notifications, the care-team or home-team dashboards, any report, export, digest, alert or activity line, and nobody in the circle is notified when the card is used. The card and its API answer the patient's own account only; a member account is refused. A unit check in the code (scripts/report-harm-unit.mjs) fails if any other route or report ever reads those tables.
For families: this is not a judgment on anyone. It is the same principle as a safe-at-home visit: the person at the center of the care has a line of their own. If you are the one who set the account up, you will see the card on the Emergency page, and you will see that it is locked. What the patient keeps there is theirs.
Step by step
- 1Open Emergency from the menu and find I am not safe, directly under Get Help Now.
- 2In danger right now: tap Call 911. To report neglect or abuse: tap Call 1-800-677-1116, the Eldercare Locator.
- 3Open My trusted person, choose a private code on the number pad (twice), then add one person's name, cell phone and email and tap Save.
- 4From then on, tap Tell [name] to check on me, or Call [name], one tap each once the card is open with your code.
- 5Open What is happening to add lines with one tap or write, then tap Save my note.