One of Mindings most powerful and useful features is the calendar. Mindings pulls in data from online services such as Google and iCloud Calendars, and displays the information in a simple, easy-to-read day schedule. A great benefit of this is that multiple people can subscribe to these calendars, so a whole group of family, friends and carers can add and edit entries. Mindings updates the calendar every ten minutes, so the user is reassured that the information is bang up-to-date.
Add what YOU are doing to the calendar
The Mindings calendar was created with the purpose of reminding the user to do things. However, in trials, and my own personal experience, I have found that what has been received particularly well, is using the calendar to tell the user what YOU (and other people) are doing. Many of our users are socially isolated, or are living with conditions like dementia. Short-term memory issues are common, so they often get anxious, wondering where family, friends and carers are, or what is likely to happen to them that day.
So, when immediate family are on holiday, I put that in my Dad’s Mindings calendar, so he knows where we are, and knows not to expect a visit, and also knows he can look forward to receiving pictures soon!
An early use of this feature was entering my sister’s shift pattern into Mindings. She was a paramedic, and had three shift patterns, day, back and night. The result was my Dad never called her, always worried that she might be at the wheel of an ambulance, or asleep recovering from a night shift. The photocopied rota she gave my Dad was indecipherable, and with the inevitable changes over a month meant that it was always wrong anyway. Within a couple of days of adding the shift pattern to Mindings my sister got her first phone call in a long time from Dad.
Don’t forget the other benefits of the Mindings calendar:
Holidays, Birthdays, Appointments and Reminders
There’s a variety of useful content that can be included in the calendar, which appears as part of the cycle of content:
All-day events, such as Bank holidays, regional holidays, and observed days such as Mother’s Day
Birthdays and anniversaries of family and friends
Appointments with doctors, dentists, hairdressers etc
Reminders of visitors, deliveries, putting out the bins etc
Calendar Options and Settings
There are many options settings on the Mindings Admin Website, to enable it to be tailored for individuals, such as:
Displaying the calendar more than once per cycle, to ensure it’s seen
Showing, not-showing, or showing faded, events that have passed
Displaying today’s date at the top of the calendar, or simply displaying the word “Today”
‘Tomorrow Calendar’, displaying a calendar of the next day’s events
Reminders, using the alert/notification feature of online calendars to create a Reminder screen before an appointment
If you have any tips, or need any help with setting up Mindings, please get in touch.
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