UK/NI dementia-safeguarding NFC Find My Loved One Expands across multiple councils

On 2 September 2026 Lichfield District Council confirmed it has funded 2,000 NFC-enabled identification devices for residents living with dementia, given out free under the name “Find My Loved One”. It is the largest single figure yet in a cluster of near-identical schemes, and the cluster is the real story: the same technology, from the same supplier, is now in use by at least eight UK police forces and seven local authorities, from Devon and Cornwall to Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man.

The device is deliberately unremarkable. A wristband, a keyfob on a lanyard or a hang tag carries a passive NFC tag. Anyone finding a person who is lost or confused taps a phone against it and sees details supplied by the wearer or their carer: their name, a short message such as “I have dementia”, and an emergency contact number.

The supplier: Lumiio, and the ten years of Seritag behind it

The tags come from Lumiio, the dementia and personal-ID brand launched by Seritag, a UK NFC tag supplier that has been making and encoding NFC tags for over ten years. The two are sister companies, and this is not a product that appeared to chase council budgets. As Seritag puts it, “For over 10 years, our sister company Seritag used their NFC expertise to work supply NFC dementia and essential personal information ID wristbands to police forces and charities across the UK.”

That decade of one-off orders is what Lumiio was built to replace: bespoke batches per force produced inconsistency, awkward information management and patchy device compatibility. Lumiio turned it into a product: a purpose-built range of NFC wearables paired with a free mobile app on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The range covers wristbands, hang tags, keycards, keyfobs and lanyards in high-visibility yellow, printed with “Dementia Safeguarding”, the NFC mark and the instruction “Scan to help me”. Lumiio’s hosted service holds the wearer’s name, two emergency contacts, diagnoses and communication preferences, with no subscription and unlimited updates, so a change of carer or phone number does not mean a new tag. Tapping works app-free for the finder; the app is only needed for offline access. Lumiio donates GBP 1 per order to charity.

What is actually on the tag

Lumiio products use a genuine NXP NTAG215, a widely used NFC Forum Type 2 tag with 504 bytes of user memory. NFC operates at 13.56 MHz in the HF band, standardised in ISO/IEC 14443 and ISO/IEC 18092, with NDEF the data format that hands a URL or short text block straight to a phone with no app involved. The NTAG215 supports a one-way lock, so the encoded data cannot be casually overwritten. Those 504 bytes are also why the design points at a hosted record rather than trying to hold a full care profile on the chip itself.

Read range is a few centimetres, which in a safeguarding context is a feature rather than a limitation. The tag cannot be read across a room or skimmed in a crowd, so it discloses nothing until someone deliberately holds a phone against it. The tags are passive, drawing all their power from the reading phone’s field, so there is no battery to charge or replace. For a user group who may not reliably charge a device, that matters.

Every current iPhone and Android handset reads NFC tags with nothing installed, which is why the scheme works with a stranger’s phone in the street rather than needing staff with special kit. Set against a GPS or Bluetooth tracker, that means no location tracking, no subscription, no charging and far fewer consent and dignity objections, at the cost of only doing anything once someone has already been approached.

Where the scheme came from

Avon and Somerset Police pioneered the Dementia Safeguarding Scheme and is credited as the originator by every council that has since adopted it, with Inspector Stuart King credited with the initiative and the work dated by Seritag to 2020. It sits alongside the Herbert Protocol, the nationally recognised form on which a person living with dementia or their next of kin records information in advance that police can use if that person goes missing. Seritag reports a 93 per cent success rate for the Avon and Somerset scheme, with only 7 per cent of enrolled individuals having gone missing as of November 2023. That figure comes from the supplier, not an independent evaluation.

The Northern Ireland sequence, then England

Northern Ireland has adopted the model council by council: Ards and North Down in May 2025, Antrim and Newtownabbey in November 2025, Lisburn and Castlereagh in January 2026 and Mid and East Antrim in May 2026. Lichfield District followed in September 2026.

Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council announced its version on 5 January 2026, jointly with its Policing and Community Safety Partnership and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, offering 500 wristbands and hang tags free of charge. Councillor Tim Mitchell, Communities and Wellbeing chairman, noted that “Within Lisburn and Castlereagh our percentage of older residents is increasing”.

Mid and East Antrim Borough Council launched its Dementia Friendly Safeguarding Scheme with the PSNI on 21 May 2026, again using wristbands and hang tags storing emergency contact information, so a tap gives next-of-kin details and the person can be helped home. Councillor Jackson Minford, Mayor of Mid and East Antrim, said “These simple, effective tools empower our communities to become more dementia friendly”. Registration is free through the Dementia Friendly MEA section of the council website.

Lichfield: 2,000 devices, and no central database

The Lichfield devices are free to district residents living with dementia and related conditions, distributed by Grace Cares, a local social enterprise, working with the Alzheimer’s Society, Magnolia Friends and Dementia Support. They can be collected from Grace Cares at Elmhurst Business Park, Monday to Friday, with drop-in sessions at four venues through September 2026. The scheme is backed by the Staffordshire Commissioner and the Lichfield District Community Safety Partnership.

Councillor Richard Cox, Cabinet Member for Community and Public Protection, said “For someone living with dementia, becoming lost or confused can be frightening”, framing the aim as independence with reassurance. Emma Smith of Grace Cares said “This is a simple piece of technology, but it can provide an important extra layer of reassurance”, and that it can help reunite people safely with their carers.

The privacy design is the part other public-sector projects should note. The scheme does not track location, the devices need no charging, and no information is held in any central system. Only essential contact details and a custom message sit on the individual tag.

Taken together, these deployments say something useful about where NFC earns its keep in public services. Nobody is claiming a 13.56 MHz tag solves dementia care. What it does is remove the friction from one moment, the point at which a stranger wants to help and has no way of knowing who to call, using hardware that costs a few pounds and works with the phone already in the finder’s hand. That is a narrow promise, kept cheaply and at scale, which is more than most healthcare technology pilots manage.