I’m caring for my elderly mother, who has dementia and is still living (with considerable support) in her own home.
She rings me often, and if I can’t get to the phone we used to have two problems.
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She doesn’t remember what an answerphone is. So she would listen to the outgoing message, then say something, and then not get any reply because that’s what answerphones do. She’d get very distressed, and think I was angry with her, or playing a trick, and so on. It was very upsetting for both of us.
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She’d ring to tell me the same thing over and over. Obviously, not her fault. But if she couldn’t speak to me then she’d get stuck in a loop and leave many messages.
I’m a geek, so to help with this I cobbled together an AI answerphone, which would handle the call in a reassuring way, take a message, and encourage her to hang up. It emails a recording and transcript.
It can handle kinds of questions she often has, like whether I’m coming today (it integrates with Myhomehelper) or where everyone has gone.
It remembers the topic of the last call, so it can help her break out of the loop.
This has been very useful to me and her. I’d be interested to hear whether this kind of thing would be helpful for other carers.