Introducing Technology Plans

Individuals receiving services from Imagine!, including all of the residents of our SmartHomes, have annual planning meetings where the individuals, along with family members, care providers, and other key members of the individual’s support team discuss what services will best meet the needs and goals of the individual. During these meetings, the team develops what are known as Individual Plans (IPs). These plans focus on the issues discussed in the meeting and outline the strategies for addressing them.

To further our ability to see how technology can impact the lives of the residents living in our SmartHomes, we have begun to develop resident Technology Plans to support and enhance each resident’s IP. The Technology Plans will focus on how to use technology to maximize residents’ self-sufficiency and quality of life while optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of caregivers in the service environment.

The Technology Plans will identify baseline skill levels at various tasks, identify objective milestones that will indicate an increase beyond those baseline skills, and then create methodologies and motivational plans designed to meet those objective milestones.

The objective milestones will build on each other in such a way that residents will be able to use technology to take incremental steps toward meet bigger goals identified in IPs – focusing on what is important to and important for each individual resident.

The data from the Technology Plans will be tracked, so we can have better measurements of the success rates of the many technologies already in use in the SmartHomes.

The new resident Technology Plans are another example of how Imagine! is moving forward with Phase II of its SmartHomes project, where we are using the homes as living laboratories to identify and develop the most effective tools for serving people with developmental disabilities and related conditions – so we can meet the needs of many more in the future!