HelpAtHome

An app that allows Vulnerable people to request help and people who want to assist to help them

Comment

PLEASE NOTE THE VIDEO LINKED IS NOT RELATED TO THIS APP

Inspiration

On hearing that people were going to be locked down I thought that an app that they could use to alert others that they were vulnerable would be a good idea. People who would like to Assist could get a list of vulnerable people and filter them by post code to find people near.

What it does

Using a form with large fonts and input boxes (so it is easy for older people to use) a vulnerable person can request help and their request is added to a database. People who would like to assist have a separate page that allows them to filter the list of requests by postcode. Each request can be accessed and comments left regarding what help was given. A button to mark the request as complete can be used to notify others that the vulnerable person's request has been met.

How I built it

I used Angular and Firebase, with Firebase Hosting and the domain name helpathome.me

Challenges I ran into

I was pretty excited about it at first and told a few people about it on social media and got a lot of positive feedback. Then a friend told me that I needed to be careful with publicly available data. So I asked a question an stack exchange legal. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/50076/i-have-created-an-app-to-help-isolated-people-in-corona-virus-lockdown-do-gdpr?noredirect=1#comment98249_50076

It was confirmed to me that for legal reasons this was a bad idea and I hadn't even considered that I might be putting people at risk by potential sharing their information with not so nice members of society. This forced me to remove the functionality of the app and to display a message that it is not functioning.

A couple of days later a leaflet came through the door from my local neighbourhood corona virus support network. I contacted them to see if the app could be of use and even though they said they could not use it I have volunteered to help them with an internal database they are building.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud of the speed at which I put it together. It showed me how far my Angular development has come since I started using it less than a year ago.

What I learned

I was called naive online by the people answering my legal question at stackexchange. And perhaps I was. It did not cross my mind that this would be used by anybody for negative reasons but perhaps I need to think of the wider impact of such an undertaking next time,

What's next for HelpAtHome

I can't see how the project can go any further. If I had the resources and time then perhaps some kind of vetting process for people wanting to assist with requesters to ensure they are good people. But that unfortunately is beyond my capabilities right now.

P.S Please note I can not make my submission without a youtube video. As I don't want the public to see this and think that it is working I have not created a video. To get the submission through I have included a link to a video I created about a charity project I worked on years ago.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates