Here's an idea

Tenants decided to spend £4000 of West Kent Extra's security budget last year and this year on a scheme to teach elderly people about bogus callers.

We run sessions in West Kent Housing Association's sheltered housing schemes every three months. We usually get about 40 people, some of them non-residents.

I was trained by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and I use a teaching pack from the Home Office's distracted burglary taskforce. It contains two videos: one for the tenants, which stars Annette Crosbie from One Foot in the Grave; and one for the care workers, which is more scary and graphic.

The tenants video tells people what to look out for – a lot of bogus callers claim they're from the water board and need to look at the stopcock. They distract the tenant in the kitchen, which is usually at the back of the house, while an accomplice looks for cash or jewellery upstairs.

We tell people never to let anyone in if they're not expecting them because few services will send out tradespeople without an appointment.

After that we get out the goodies: personal alarms, spyglasses and fake baked bean tins to keep money in.

I want to go back next year and see if the messages have sunk in.

Sometimes, when I visit tenants, I don't show my badge and see if they will let me in. Often they do and then say, "Well, you looked so nice". Obviously, we've got to keep it going.