Sensor Equipment

[Wildy]

I'm not sure which section to post this in. My 61 year old mum has frontotemporal lobe dementia and is in mid/advance stages.

Social services have offered to put in a system that has sensors where we can see where she is going in the house when my dad is at work. She doesn't wander out anywhere but they think it will be useful to have this to see what her 'patterns' are. She has a carer going in two-three times a day for about 30mins-45mins at a time.

They're installing it tomorrow but now I'm a bit worried about it. I don't really know why but it feels a bit Big Brother and I'm not entirely sure what it is aimed to do. I will have a log-in for the system so I can see which rooms she is in.

Does anyone else have a system like this? Is it useful?

 

[ITBookworm]

Hi Wildy,

We were offered this for FIL by his social services and we seriously considered it. The system they offered was the one on this link. It sounds very similar to what your Mum is getting. You don't actually see the inside of the house only a 'mark' on a chart to say someone passed a sensor.

FIL lived alone and we were trying to work out when he got up, when/if he went outside, when/if he went to bed and so on. He couldn't tell us himself and we couldn't see if there was any pattern to his day from talking to him or the carers that went in. The only reason we didn't accept it was that we couldn't fit it ourselves - it had to be the council worker and FIL wouldn't have accepted someone in to do that. Hubby rigged something up using the burglar alarm PIR sensors that produced similar information (not nearly as clear as the proper version though and not on-line but it gave us a rough idea )

What was interesting to see (after the fact ) was that the day he fell mid afternoon and had to go into hospital he spent almost the entire day walking around the kitchen. He never seemed to be still more than a few minutes at a time and didn't seem to leave that room for more than a few minutes if that. If we had been able to see that on-line it would have rung alarm bells as a total change in pattern and we might have gone over to see if we could work out what was 'wrong'.

In our case it wouldn't have changed the outcome - FIL went into a home which he had been on the verge of anyway. For someone possibly not at that point it could help see changes in behaviour which don't show up any other way.

I would say in general if someone doesn't wander or go out at odd times then it will be more a case of finding a 'normal' pattern for that person that will allow comparison later to see if anything changes. Good luck.

 

[Wildy]

Hi Wildy,

We were offered this for FIL by his social services and we seriously considered it. The system they offered was the one on this link. It sounds very similar to what your Mum is getting. You don't actually see the inside of the house only a 'mark' on a chart to say someone passed a sensor.

FIL lived alone and we were trying to work out when he got up, when/if he went outside, when/if he went to bed and so on. He couldn't tell us himself and we couldn't see if there was any pattern to his day from talking to him or the carers that went in. The only reason we didn't accept it was that we couldn't fit it ourselves - it had to be the council worker and FIL wouldn't have accepted someone in to do that. Hubby rigged something up using the burglar alarm PIR sensors that produced similar information (not nearly as clear as the proper version though and not on-line but it gave us a rough idea )

What was interesting to see (after the fact ) was that the day he fell mid afternoon and had to go into hospital he spent almost the entire day walking around the kitchen. He never seemed to be still more than a few minutes at a time and didn't seem to leave that room for more than a few minutes if that. If we had been able to see that on-line it would have rung alarm bells as a total change in pattern and we might have gone over to see if we could work out what was 'wrong'.

In our case it wouldn't have changed the outcome - FIL went into a home which he had been on the verge of anyway. For someone possibly not at that point it could help see changes in behaviour which don't show up any other way.

I would say in general if someone doesn't wander or go out at odd times then it will be more a case of finding a 'normal' pattern for that person that will allow comparison later to see if anything changes. Good luck.

Thanks for your reply. My dad has tomorrow afternoon off work so is going to take my mum out while it is fitted as much like your FIL she wouldn't really want it to go in if she knew.

Pattern wise it will be really useful. My dad thinks she now goes and sleeps a lot in the day which is a definite change. I feel so guilty for arranging it, like I'm betraying my mum. Silly really but I still like to think she'll get better or the hospital have misdiagnosed her.

Thanks again for your help.