The Connect app is a HIPAA-compliant tool proven to help caregivers quickly develop trust with their clients. By building a menu of personal content like music, photos, video, and cherished life experiences, caregivers can easily connect with clients like longtime friends. Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Connect app is the simple science behind helping people age at home longer. We believe that dementia is best understood from a strength-based perspective. Although there is progressive cognitive decline, including loss of ability to self-initiate activities and self-soothe, people with memory loss often show a gift for “being in the moment”. This is a style of communication marked by the use of few words but with responsiveness to music, photos, and cherished life experiences. The Connect solution helps home care providers collaborate with remote families to personalize client engagement via music, cognitively stimulating activities, and family communications. - Loved ones can privately share photos and videos, and suggest conversation topics, and music preferences via the Connect mobile app. - Assigned caregivers can access and engage with personalized content and provide feedback to the family via a mobile app on the device of their choice. - Case managers, agency staff, caregivers, and family, can all contribute and comment on activities through the mobile app. We have learned that by providing caregivers with a tool to help build meaningful relationships with care recipients, the Connect app helps to reduce challenging behaviors, turnover, and hospital readmissions. The Connect app is the simple science behind retaining your caregivers and clients and allowing people with dementia to stay at home longer, where they want to be.
