VR-CARES: Feasibility of Virtual Reality for Caregiver Assembly, Relief, Empowerment, and Support to improve social connection, health, and at-home dementia care

The escalating demand for home-based caregiving, combined with a high turnover rate and prevalence of stress and burden in this workforce, presents a unique challenge within the healthcare sector. High turnover rates are especially difficult for care recipients with dementia who benefit from consistency. Caregivers are often socially isolated at work due to the intimate care they provide to socially isolated clients. The VR-CARES initiative is an innovative response to these issues built upon Rendever's existing social engagement VR platform and vast content to provide a novel caregiver support virtual reality (VR) platform for dementia caregivers providing in- home care that generates real community and connectivity. Rendever, a pioneer in VR for older adults enables shared experiences with networked communication technology so that wherever someone is geographically, they can connect with others for group travel, activities, games, and sharing life stories. Caregivers can use Rendever with clients to make their job more fun and get to know their clients better, resulting in fewer negative behaviors of care seekers, improved relations and trust, and higher job satisfaction. Additionally, the project will harness the power of VR to create virtual support groups in which caregivers can connect virtually as avatars in comforting and immersive environments for friendship building, debriefing about their day, receiving training, attending NAMI-led support groups, and just casually meeting up. This project represents a confluence of intentional technology and empathetic foresight, whereby dementia caregivers are not merely the subjects of a technological intervention but active participants in its development. In this STTR Phase I study, we co-develop and test the feasibility and technological merit of a new VR platform tailored to the nuances of caregiving – a gathering place for caregivers that resonates with the experiences and needs of home health workers and prioritizes their social and mental health by providing them with a safe, accessible, space for social support and fun, shared experiences. The guiding vision is to transform the isolating landscape of home healthcare into one of communal support and enrichment for both the caregiver and the person living with dementia in their care. Phase 1 aims to (1) draw upon the lived experiences of caregivers, inviting them to inform the development of the VR environment, (2) develop the content, features, and controls informed by aim 1, and (3) use outcome data on social and mental health, caregiver burden, and job satisfaction to plan a clinical trial for Phase II. The expected outcome is a user-centric, successfully adopted VR support system that alleviates feelings of loneliness and stress and cultivates resilience and job satisfaction among caregivers. By embracing a collaborative model where the end- user is central to the creative process, VR-CARES ensures that the Caregiver VR platform is intrinsically aligned with the caregivers' reality, facilitating genuine connection and empowerment, and signaling a pivotal shift towards technology that serves and is shaped by those at the heart of dementia care.