Robot pets at mha Maple Leaf care home to help residents

Robotic pets at mha Maple Leaf care home, Ripley to help residents

Transcript

00:00Can you just tell me a bit about yourself and where we are and about the robotic pets?

00:04Yeah, so my name's Sam, I'm the manager of Maple Leaf House in Ripley which is a dementia nursing home.

00:11All of our residents have a form of dementia and most of them are at the advanced stages of their

00:18journey. We introduced robotic pets into the home as obviously when our residents did live at their

00:24own homes before coming to us they would have had their own pets and it's not always possible

00:30for those pets to come and live with us. The robotic pets that we've got are quite realistic

00:37and will respond to touch and residents playing with them and it gives residents a lot of comfort

00:44for those that have been used to pets and used to having animals around. It does give them a

00:50lot of comfort and it also acts as a bit of a mood enhancer so they'll see these

01:00robotic animals and play and interact with them when people are feeling a bit low or distressed

01:06or a bit fed up, you know, animals are bringing a smile to their faces. Our residents are obviously

01:14as I said before quite advanced on their journey so I think it brings them a lot of

01:18comfort, it opens up a lot of memories, it allows us to do reminiscence work with the

01:24residents where we talk about animals and past, you know, experiences they've had around animals

01:32and it allows us to open up a conversation with our residents about animals and allows them to

01:38get engaged with the staff at the home. It brings a sense of well-being and a sense of purpose to

01:51the residents, quite often you'll see them trying to feed the animals and trying to get a response

01:57from the animals and because the animals do respond you can see the joy that that brings to

02:02the residents that we have. At the home we use a dog and a cat, we've also got birds as well.

02:07Yeah so as you can see if we stroke the animals they'll respond, I think the dog's just having a

02:13bit of a quiet time, but yeah they make realistic noises.