Remote Support Strategy Guide: For Provider Organizations

As a provider, you’re already facing many challenges with staffing shortages and funding pressures. Social distancing may be creating more challenges to the staffing patterns of your organization. We want to encourage you to consider Remote Supports with Enabling Technology. In other words, it may be time to ReSET what you’re currently doing and consider introducing technology into your organization. Remote support provides an alternative solution for social distancing, helps create a safe and healthy way to care for individuals and staff, and is a proven model for community-supported living.

FAQs

Q: Staffing is limited for us due to school closures. How can technology help us maximize the staffing we have available? 

A: Enabling technology creates the opportunity for staffing to be notified without needing to be onsite. With technology in place, staff can be assigned to respond to system alerts for multiple people instead of being one-on-one with an individual. Staff can work together in remote teams to be available to people in a particular geographic area near their homes or work from a hub location. 

Q: How do we support the safety and wellbeing of the people in our care with technology while still adhering to guidelines to reduce exposure? 

A: The benefit of enabling technology is that it is supporting independence while addressing safety concerns. Sometimes, people simply need reminders about routines or prompting to complete a task, and technology can provide this natural support. If something occurs outside of the routine (like not returning to bed at night) or necessitates an immediate response (like a panic pendant being pushed), staff are alerted by the technology and can use other technologies like a video intercom to check in before having to go into the home. 

Q: How do we balance the need for care and support with social distancing? 

A: Both natural and direct supports provide necessary care to individuals, and we know that those connections are critical to a person’s wellbeing. Technology is not designed to replace that interaction or level of support; it is integrated in order to offer staff and individuals an additional tool for support. During this time of social isolation, enabling technology can do everything from dispense medication to accessing help to prompting skills to connecting with friends and family. Remember that technology and care are not an “either/or” but a “both/and.” It will create opportunities for natural support so that both staff and individuals can limit exposure.

For Provider Organizations seeking remote support solutions with enabling technology:

Download Your Remote Support Guide Here

For Technology First Organizations seeking enhanced solutions with enabling technology:

Download Your Remote Support Guide Here

Visit https://www.simply-home.com/covid for the most up-to-date information on support options for your organization.