
4 November 2020, Brisbane, Australia
With the advent of COVID-19, many residents have been socially isolated since March 2020 and are suffering symptoms of anxiety and depression. Many Care Home residents are visited only once a week or even less.
4 November 2020, Brisbane, Australia
With the advent of COVID-19, many residents have been socially isolated since March 2020 and are suffering symptoms of anxiety and depression. Many Care Home residents are visited only once a week or even less.
Since March 2020, care home residents have suffered:
With social distancing rules in place, the care homes have relied on technology to bring the families together virtually. However, the process has been daunting for the staff at the care home, the resident and the family members.
Recently, Mal from VisionLINQ has seen Care Homes buy iPads and tablets for residents to use for video calling.
The iPads and seniors tablets are bought by Care Homes with the right intentions: To connect residents to family. Unfortunately, they’re not easy for residents to use, they require staff to learn new apps, and there are no clear instructions for family members.
Australia-based VisionLINQ has teamed with Konnekt to place Videophones and Captioning Videophones into Aged Care Homes and Disability Care, enabling socially isolated residents to enjoy virtual visits from family and friends. You can help relieve the loneliness of those suffering during the global pandemic.
The Konnekt Videophones are super simple, designed with one purpose in mind: To connect a resident to relatives with the touch of a button.
Most importantly, a staff member does not need to stay in the room during the call. The Videophone is incredibly easy to use, and Konnekt support ensures that family can get connected fast using the standard Skype app.
Please open your heart to help elders and those with disabilities — many of whom have not enjoyed seeing interstate family for many months or even years.
Care Home residents with severe or profound hearing impairment or deafness have been devastated by the global pandemic. Their world is a lonely world. Too often, they suffer in silence, failing to understand even the staff who try to help them.
The Konnekt Captioning Videophone enables those with hearing loss to communicate, using captions (also known as subtitles or voice-to-text).
Captioned calls can be regular phone calls or video calls. Video calls allow the user to talk face-to-face to family and friends. This enables lip reading and the viewing of facial expressions, which significantly aids comprehension.
Sharing the same hardware platform as the regular Konnekt Videophone, the Captioning Videophone adds captioning, an optional handset and optional keypad dialler. It can have its own regular telephone number so that it can be used as a simple captioning phone.
The gifted Videophones will enable lonely residents to receive virtual visits from family. Increased face-to-face conversation has been shown, in medical studies, to combat social isolation and decrease depression risk.
To help as many Care Home residents as possible, up to ten used and ex-rental Konnekt devices will be gifted.
Each Videophone can either be dedicated to one resident, shared among 4 to 8 residents, or deployed across an entire site:
The fundraiser campaign is the vision of VisionLINQ’s founder, Mal Christie. Mal has had his own family experience with isolation and has seen, first hand, how regular virtual visits can turn around declining mental health:
Soon after my his wife passed on, Dad moved into Aged Care in Melbourne. He lost his appetite for living. The boys from Konnekt organized a Videophone and helped Dad connect with almost every one of his extended family and close friends.
The change was immediately obvious! Dad especially loved seeing his great grandkids, many of whom can’t visit now.
VisionLINQ is looking for Care Homes that have committed leaders and caring Lifestyle Activities Coordinators who want to make a difference to resident quality of life.
Mal Christie, VisionLINQ’s founder, admires the dedicated staff who work at Care Homes. He knows first hand how much of a difference great care can make to a resident. He has personally met and talked to many of the staff who help look after his own dad.
My vision is for every resident at every Care Home to be able to enjoy virtual visits. This can only work if we free up the time of Care Home staff, and make it easy for family to connect.
If your Care organization has budget, please contact VisionLINQ or Konnekt directly. We will help you stretch your funding to put it to best use for maximum benefit.
If you have a pre-loved (used) Videophone or Captioning Videophone you no longer require, we will happily refurbish it for this program.
If you would like to suggest your parent’s Care Home to be a beneficiary of this program, please get in touch with Mal Christie.
Please open your heart. Give the gift that keeps on giving. To donate click on the button below or copy VisionLINQ’s GoFundMe page URL to your browser:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/visionlinq-captions-video-touch-phone