A duress alarm for community services, silent help for intake rooms and front counters.
A silent trigger on every screen, answered by the colleagues nearby. No server hardware, it runs on a PC you already leave on. Works even when the internet is down. From A$299/year.
No credit card required for the trial. No additional hardware needed. No IT needed, as long as you have appropriate rights.
A client whose support funding was cut arrives angry, and your intake worker is alone in the interview room with him. She can’t reach a phone without changing the temperature of the room. One keystroke, colleagues are at the door before it turns.
What a community services centre deals with
People arrive at the worst point
Emergency relief, food, a housing crisis, family violence, no money until Thursday. By the time somebody walks into a neighbourhood centre they have usually already been turned away somewhere else.
There is often no appointment and no screen
Most centres are deliberately walk-in and deliberately unguarded, because a barrier would defeat the purpose. That choice is right, and it puts the worker at the desk closer to the risk than most front-line roles.
Half the team may be volunteers
Volunteers, students on placement and part-time workers rotate through the desk. A safety system only helps if someone who has been there three weeks can use it without training.
Where community services usually put it
- The front desk and intake position, including the volunteer station.
- The interview or private room, used for the conversations that need a closed door.
- The coordinator’s or manager’s office, so there is a responder off the floor.
- The emergency relief or food bank counter, where refusals are handed out.
- Any machine used for late or weekend opening, when the building is thinnest.
The most useful half hour you can spend is agreeing what a responder actually does when they arrive. In a small centre the answer is usually to stand beside the worker and change the shape of the conversation, not to remove anybody.
Three colours. Everyone understands them in one demo.
Green means ready
A small dot sits quietly in the corner of every screen. Staff know at a glance the system is live.
Red means help now
One click, hotkey or desk button, and a pop-up appears over whatever colleagues are working on, showing exactly where help is needed. No sound in the room. Nothing the visitor can see.
Orange means responding
The first colleague to respond is recorded, and the person who raised the alert sees their button turn orange. They know help is on the way before it arrives.
- Help is acknowledged. The moment a colleague responds, the person who raised the alert sees their button turn orange, they know help is coming before it arrives.
- No server hardware. Duress Alert runs on a Windows PC you already leave on, and alerts travel over your own network, so they keep working even when the internet is down.
- Easy to roll out. You install it yourself in about five minutes per computer, with the silent-install packages and a rollout guide included. Already a Duress Alert customer upgrading? We help you do it over a secure screen share.
Prefer something you can press without looking?
Add a physical button where it helps, from A$25 plus delivery. Unlike a hardwired button, Duress Alert warns you on screen the moment a button is unplugged, and confirms when it’s back, so you never discover a dead button during an emergency. And if a button ever fails, staff can still raise the alert from the screen, tray icon or hotkey.
A control you can evidence.
Many community organisations are NDIS providers: the NDIS Practice Standards’ core module expects incident management systems and a safe work environment. Duress Alert is a control you can evidence at your next audit, with the incident log to match. Duress Alert’s dated raise, respond, reset history is evidence you can table, not a policy on a shelf.
“Our receptionist hit the fixed button under the desk during a confrontation, and found out later it was broken. With Duress Alert she knows: if it’s green, we can see her.”
Sally Anderton, Legal Practice, VIC
Simple annual pricing
Team Safe
Group Safe
Corporate Safe
Multi Site Safe
Prices exclude GST. Local taxes are added where they apply.
Install and options
- One-off install A$99, includes training and 12 months of support.
- Optional physical desk button, from A$25 plus delivery. It warns you on screen the moment it is unplugged, so you never find a dead button in an emergency.
Start your free 21-day trial, covering up to 25 computers. Configure it and roll it out across your site, at no cost. The trial itself is free. If you go ahead afterwards, we can set it up with you for a one-off A$99. When you move from the trial to a full licence there is no extra effort, everything you have set up simply keeps running. No payment details to start, and you can cancel anytime.
Prices in AUD. In the UK, USA, Canada or Europe? See local pricing: UK, USA, Canada, Europe.
For your IT provider
Your IT person (or ours) can push Duress Alert to every computer automatically, silent-install MSIs generated by the server with your configuration baked in, central management of every setting, and support for shared/remote desktops (RDS) and Mac. Client-to-server traffic stays on your local network (default TCP 8001); only the server talks to the cloud, over HTTPS, for licensing and reporting. Have an IT team, multiple sites, or shared/remote desktops? See our IT deployment page, silent installs, central configuration and rollout at any scale.
Common questions.
It is one deliberate action: a click on the on-screen button, a keyboard shortcut or a physical USB button. That is about as much as you can expect anyone to remember under pressure, which is the point.
It is the single most common trigger for a bad afternoon, so it is worth covering the desks where that conversation happens and agreeing who steps in when it does.
Then the value is less about awareness and more about the worker being able to signal without escalating the moment, plus the record afterwards. If the coordinator is in a back office with the door shut, it also closes a real gap.
No. Licensing is by user count, and every machine those users work at can be covered. For a small centre that usually means every computer in the building.
Yes. The NDIS Practice Standards core module expects incident management systems and a safe environment for workers as well as participants. Duress Alert is a control you can evidence at audit, and its alert history drops straight into your incident register.
No. Duress Alert runs on the Windows and Mac computers you already have. An optional physical desk button can be added from A$25 where a tactile trigger helps.
Annual licensing starts from A$299 for up to 10 users, with Group, Corporate and Multi Site plans above that, plus a one-off A$99 install. Every plan includes a free 21-day trial.
The trial licence expires and alerting stops until a licence is applied. Nothing is charged automatically, and we hold no payment details from the trial.
Buy the licence in the Duress Alert cloud portal. If your server is cloud connected, which is the default, the licence updates itself at the server’s next check-in, and it checks in daily. For an offline installation, our team coordinates with you to apply the licence.
Whichever you prefer. You can run the silent installer yourself in about five minutes per computer, your own IT provider can do it, or we can do it with you as a one-off install service that includes training and 12 months of support.
Tell us about your site.
Tell us your team size and setting, and we’ll show you how Duress Alert works on your own desks and what a rollout looks like. We get back to you quickly.
For the teams who meet people on their hardest days.
Questions? +61 1300 366 911 (Australia).
