Aspire for More with Erin
Aspire for More with Erin
Simple Tools Profound Impact: Reimagining Dementia Education with Allyson Schrier
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Episode Summary:
What if the key to better dementia care isn’t more complexity—but more simplicity?
In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Erin sits down with Allyson Schrier, founder of Zinnia TV, to discuss how personal experience, curiosity, and innovation led to a tool that's transforming dementia education. From caregiving for her husband with frontotemporal dementia to developing a video platform that helps caregivers model daily activities and reduce agitation—Allyson brings both heart and strategy.
This episode explores:
- How trauma and curiosity can birth impactful solutions
- Why traditional staff training misses the mark—and how to fix it
- How modeling and pre-framing transform caregiving outcomes
- Cultural awareness and the need to individualize training
- Zinnia TV’s power to soothe, connect, and empower
Whether you’re a senior living leader, family caregiver, or simply someone who believes in person-centered care—this episode will shift how you think about training, communication, and compassion.
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What if the key to better Dementia care isn't more complexity? But it's actually more simplicity. In this episode, I sit down with Allison Schreyer, founder of Zia tv, to explore how modeling and pre-framing and bite-size learning can transform how we train staff, support our residents, and lead with empathy inside our senior living communities. If you have ever said, they should already know how to do this. You get frustrated about that. This episode hopefully will be a wake up call for you because great care doesn't start when you start checking off the boxes in your training, your corporate training, leadership checklist. It starts with very clear, very simple connection to your team. And I'm so happy to welcome Allison here today, founder of Zia tv, who's going to talk about all of that and more. Welcome Allison. Thank you, Erin. It's great to be here. Yes, I, was able to hear. A lot about your story through some friends of mine, and I wanted to have you here so your story could be told to my listeners as well and reach the people inside of a community because I think Zia TV has a lot to offer in very unique and innovative ways. So tell us about you, how you got here. What you're doing is solve some really big, complex problems.
Allyson:Well, thank you for that invitation. So, so many people who work in the, dementia sphere, my background starts with that part of the story, which is that my husband was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia when he was 47. Right around the same time my stepdad was diagnosed with vascular dementia and my stepmother had. Undiagnosed, but was almost certainly Alzheimer's disease. So I was. Suddenly, as is always the case, thrust into the role of trying to figure out how do you support the person who's living with me, who has dementia, while also supporting my parents and their partners who are living with dementia. So it required that I learn a lot pretty quickly, but I think that's the case with everybody. I happen to be a, deeply inquisitive person. So I really wanted to understand why, what's going on in my husband's brain? Why is he responding to the world in the way that he is? And so that led to me taking a bunch of classes and watching videos, reading books. And gaining some understanding. It also, was the case that I did many things wrong while supporting my husband, and that certainly taught me how to do things correctly. So, deep curiosity, I think is the greatest thing that a caregiver can be blessed with. And when I, really latched on to the idea that I had to get a job right? I had to get work because my husband had been a software engineer. I was very comfortable being a stay at home mom. How lucky was I that I was with our, our kids were 12 and 15 when he was diagnosed, but how lucky was I that I had this life where I. Doing writing and being the stay-at-home mom and, driving people places and suddenly wow. Life took a big, sharp turn and I wasn't ready for it. So, I, for a couple of years we were blessed to have enough money in savings that I was able to make our family run off of that. But then, especially once my husband moved into long-term care. I had to find a job and the question was, what would I do? My background is in technology and one of the things that I did back then is that I, I taught, I became an expert in certain systems that other people wanted to know about and I loved teaching, but I thought, I could do that again, except that I'm not an expert in anything. And then I. But what? I know a lot about caregiving and I bet I could get to a point where I would have something to offer other caregivers. So, Erin, that led to me getting certifications. I did the whole TPA snow route, and gained certifications there. I started teaching for free in libraries and churches and wherever I could go. To just spread the word to dementia family caregivers. I had a, a class that I developed that was called How to Be Friends with People Living With Dementia because I recognized that a lot of people shied away from our family simply because they didn't know how to be with Evan. They didn't know how to communicate with him. They were afraid. What happens if he gets violent? There's so much misunderstanding about what dementia is and what dementia is not, and how to be with people Eventually, I. Got certified to teach classes in long-term care here in Washington State. And so for four years I was in long-term care communities where my students were the people who were the boots on the ground caregivers. I had activity folks, I had, I had executive directors in my classes and I taught them the mandated. Full day dementia and full day mental health classes that are required if you want to work in long-term care in Washington State. And from there, I moved into the University of Washington, where I worked for three years, helping to launch and then manage a program that was. Education again, but this time the students were primary care providers who were trying to learn how to better detect, diagnose, and support their patients who are living with dementia and then there's a whole other story, which is how Zinnia TV came to be, but that is the basis of what allowed me to feel comfortable supporting. People, whether they are family members, professional caregivers, or even healthcare providers in their questions about how to best serve people who are living with dementia.
Erin:That's a true definition of what an overnight success looks like, right? You start free, you start working in the churches and the libraries. You start educating, you start getting the reps in. And everybody's definition of success is different. that's important to establish here. But look where we start. We start at the bottom. And we get the reps in and we know that there's something more than the pain that I'm in. Look where we are now. I mean, it's a beautiful story on how life. Can use your deepest, darkest trauma, the deepest, darkest wounds and turn it into something that is triumphant if you allow it to be that way. Right? If you own the parts of the story, like you said, that people don't know how to relate, they don't know how to act, and therefore they were distant. And you use that pain to help educate instead of sit in the pain. And look where that took you. Yeah, that's huge. Thank you for that acknowledgement. Yeah. That's so important. Just with my own story, like hearing that as a parent of somebody who's unique and then knowing that story with your husband and seeing that from my experience inside of a community, there's something really important about education, which is the topic that we have today, because people don't engage because they feel uncomfortable. Well, what happens? How do you go from uncomfortable to comfortable? It's education, it's practice, it's real life experience, you know?
Allyson:It absolutely is. And, just yesterday, I facilitate support groups for family members who are supporting loved ones with dementia. And just yesterday, that was the topic that we were taught. The topic was, how do I know when it's time for my loved one to go to long-term care? And so one of the questions was, well, what about if the person is starting to get agitated and anxious all the time? Is that the time to send them to long-term care? And I said, no, that's the time to think about what you might be doing wrong. That is, Right. Because somebody's gotta change. And it can't be the person who has dementia. It has to be the person who has the big, fat, healthy brain who is capable of change. And so if a person is routinely getting agitated and anxious and upset, the first step is to get curious and figure out what are the triggers and how do I respond to those triggers in a way that will not make things worse, but will instead soothe and reduce agitation. So that gets back to your point. Education. If you understand what's going on physically in the brain of a person who's living with dementia and how that translates into the way that one responds to the world, my gosh, that's a game changer.
Erin:It's a huge game changer. It's huge. And it's being intentional, I think, for too many people. We're not intentional. And being intentional about knowing what you need to know, knowing what you don't know that you need to know, and then applying that. That can change your life. In every facet. So I think it's a really great story that you used your pain, right? Your family's paying to fuel, a mission to create. Something that helps people. I know that you must have seen the gaps through your own personal and professional journey. You must have seen gaps in training that caused you to understand, Hey, I can help solve this problem and somehow combine technology and education together in a unique way. And that led to the creation of Zia tv. So what were those gaps? And then how do you, how do you use your product as Z-E-S-T-V to fill those gaps?'Cause it's interesting, right?
Allyson:Well talk from a long-term care perspective, right? What I found working with my students who had been through CNA training, right? They had the physical skills. So they understood how you bathe a person. They understood the basics about how to dress a person. They understood the basics about how to help a person eat a meal, but what they seemed to really lack was a sense of what could go south and how to correctly respond to that. And also, I will admit that, while the training. That was mandated by Washington State. I thought, great. Their curriculum was thorough. It was clear they had great examples. I liked following their curriculum, but I really deviated a lot because I felt it was imperative. If you're gonna be supporting people who are living with dementia, that you also understand some of the things that Tiva snow. Pushes, right? Like hand underhand, feeding instead of just poking a spoon in someone's mouth and how to use hand underhand to help people dress. And the positive physical approach. How do you, how do you approach somebody in a way that doesn't kind of put them off or scare them or agitate them? And so I think that some of the gaps that I saw is that the training that people received seemed to be training that was. Old fashioned, they were learning things that were part of a curriculum that was probably written 20 years ago, and it didn't seem like the curriculum was where wherever they were getting their training, it lacked the personhood that I think is so important when one is working in a caregiving, caregiving situation. The other gaps that I saw Erin, were that the people who were my students. Were overworked, right? They, they had so many things that they needed to do in a very short period of time, and there may be, in some cases, one. Caregiver to 14 residents. So how does one caregiver with 14 residents also establish a sense of companionship and connection with the residents? Because it all starts with connection, right? It has to be a person to person. Connection there needs to be the person to person connection, where we are more than just a person who's coming in to scrub something, right? We're coming into work in a very intimate way with another human being. How do we have them trust us? How do we have them know us? How do we have them not feel like we are rushing through to get this done so that we can take it off of our agenda? And move on to the next person. And that's hard when a person has too many people that they're caring for. So part of the gap has to do with education. Part of the gap has to do with just the realities that, especially right now, people are, there's not enough. Staff right there, there's a huge shortage. And so people are taking on more than they should. And so therefore it is more than ever important to have tools to lean into technology as a mechanism to help create connection, to help reduce agitation, to help educate caregivers. And that's where Zia comes in.
Erin:Leadership inside senior living is layered. It's very complex, it's very rushed. Caregivers get a lot of attention, because they deserve it on how overworked they are and leaders. Struggle with the same thing. I think that leaders struggle with the connection piece and knowing how to connect with caregivers to get the most outta them, to educate them in a very connected and specific way for them. What have you seen in your career that leaders often overlook when it comes to staff education? And resident, engagement.
Allyson:Yeah. So one of the big issues that I have seen is lack of cultural awareness. Where leaders assume that everybody learns the same way. Yes, I was one of those. Yes. So lack of an understanding of learning styles and a respect for different learning styles and lack of cultural awareness where a person who is here from another country. Who does not think or do things the same way as the person who is training them, and so therefore, the person who is the caregiver from another culture is made to feel disrespected, is made to feel. Less than and is not necessarily picking up how they're supposed to be performing this duty, and it could be because of language issues as well as cultural issues. So I think that that is, that is a huge gap that I see. I have a dear friend who manages the memory care unit at a community here in the Seattle area. And she was complaining bitterly about just some of the staff and some of the male staff especially who were from other countries who really didn't respect her and who were pushing back against her. We had a conversation about the fact, well, culturally it's not. Don't like, don't take it personally. Right. But you have to come up with a solution because culturally, the way that they have spent their entire lives is in a society where women are not well respected. So how do you push? How do you work with that? And the first part is to just recognize it. Recognize that it's an issue, and then from there, open up conversation in a meaningful way to try to figure out how do you and I. Staff member work together to make sure that we are meeting our goals, that we are mutually meeting our goals. And so I think that that is something that's also overlooked is what does the caregiver want? What do they expect? What do they need for management to allow them to be successful? And so creating a communication flow that invites people to be able to say. This isn't working for me is really important. Instead of just handing somebody a list of rules and saying, this is the way that you're going to do things in this community.
Erin:Yeah. You know, we make it sound so simple. Awareness and curiosity are like the two basic things you need in order to move in this world. It's really hard to be that simple because everybody is so busy. But if you take a beat and like you said, be aware, don't just ignore this issue'cause it's not going away. You have to be aware and then you have to be curious. Not judgmental. Not defensive, and not isolating. But curious and ask the questions. That's such good word. The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
Allyson:What it's all about is this idea of awareness of what do the people who, report to me need. Importance of as in any relationship, right? So often what happens I, in my own personal relationship, right? What I find is that sometimes when I'm expressing a concern, the person who I am expressing it to immediately gets their back and gets defensive because they feel like they're being attacked. And so to recognize the importance of instead of getting defensive, get curious. Always, instead of getting defensive, get curious. Why is the person saying this listening? One of the things that I taught in my classes to caregivers was the importance of active listening. How do I really take in what somebody is saying and hear it without filtering it through the filter of what I want to hear? Right. I need to hear what somebody is actually saying. And as you just said so beautifully, stay out of judgment. I cannot judge a person for what they say. And the other thing that is so important to recognize is that I cannot push back on your emotional response. And this is with everybody who we're dealing with, but I cannot invalidate your emotional response. So if somebody says, I'm really. Scared about the way that things are happening with this resident who I'm supporting. I could never, it would never be appropriate for me to say, you're not scared or, fear isn't an appropriate response here. She's scared. So you need to get curious about why is she, and what does she need? In order to not feel that way. Yeah. Sorry. I'm not even sure if this is where we intended to go with the conversation, but it
Erin:No, it's so good though. It's so good. It really is so good and it really does lead me into, like the point of today's episode to me is about modeling and pre-framing, which are the fundamentals when we are talking about. Educating caregivers and caring for loved ones. Pre-framing is something I use all the time as a parent with my children. You know, obviously one has some unique needs, and the other one is a typical child and pre-framing works. And this is something that when I was looking into Zia TV and talking to you about it, that's what these videos do, right? They pre-frame and they model. The activity of daily living or the next phase that we're moving into that is a nonverbal communication, right? And so if we can combine the caregiving verbal instructions with a video of nonverbal communication with a modeling and pre-framing way, sounds complicated to some, but actually is. Seamless in approach. So share this powerful idea in more detailed way.
Allyson:Absolutely. So first, let me just define what Zia is. Yes. So Zia tv and it's Zia the flowers, Z-I-N-N-I-A. Which came about because I am a, passionate gardener and one of my favorite flowers is Zia's. And one of the reasons I love them is because they put up with a lot, right? So even if conditions are suboptimal, they still do really well. And so it seemed an appropriate name for what we were developing. Zenia is an app that delivers, it's a streaming service. So if you think about Netflix or Hulu or any of those, Amazon Prime, right? deliveries, mechanisms for videos. However, the videos that we stream are custom curated by us to be digestible by and engaging for people living with dementia. And this came from my experience as a family caregiver when I was looking for a tool to help me. Connect with and engage with my husband who was nonverbal. I had found that if I show him images of things, so our, our conversations tend to be transactional when we're talking with a person who's nonverbal, you just sort of get into this yucky yak mode about, I did go shopping today. You wouldn't believe the price of whatever. Which is of no interest to the person with dementia, but it's what's in my mind. And so that's what I talk about. Instead, what I figured out is, oh, but if I bring in a magazine and we look at pictures, there's something for you to look at, something for you to focus on, and it can inspire a conversation that is meaningful. So if I brought in a ski magazine and he loves skiing, we could talk about skiing, we could talk about specific ski trips that we have done. We could talk about equipment, we could talk about types of snow, whatever it might be. I discovered that, well, I could also do that with my phone. I've got lots of pictures on my phone and I discovered that I could make little videos on my phone using Apple's memories product so we could watch a little video that is comprised of all of the images of dogs say that are on my phone. I wanted to, however, have content that wasn't on my phone because I wanted to do ski videos and I wanted to do. Rafting videos. And so in a phone conversation with somebody who was at Apple, I got connected to the person who created the little thing that I was using on my phone to make videos. I asked him, how do I get more content? And he was oh my God, wait, you're you making videos to reach out to people with dementia? And I said, yes. And he said, oh my gosh, we never thought about that as a possible use case. He had recently left Apple. He became my business partner, and we started Zia together. That was back in 2018. So now moving forward, here we are at 2025, right? Our app didn't come out until 2022. Prior to that, we were just iterating, iterating, iterating, building content, and we were very lucky early on to be able to get our videos into a research project at the University of British Columbia in conjunction with Vancouver General Hospital That. Was invaluable because we had students going into long-term care communities, showing them our videos, and we were constantly getting feedback about what's working, what's not working. Meanwhile, we were going into care communities and showing videos and figuring out what to do. So where we are now is that Zenia is about 30 different channels I will call them, which are basically categories. So it could be a category of travel videos or of animal videos, or of hobbies or of faith-based videos. There are singalongs, there are quizzes. What we know is that people with dementia have a really hard time tracking a plot. Telling fact from fiction, paying attention to different characters.
Erin:Mm-hmm.
Allyson:Processing audio and video that is happening at the same time. I will digress for just a moment and share that about, uh, in May, I was at a conference, the Michigan Assisted Living Association conference, where I led a panel that was called Low Tech and No Tech Solutions for people living with Dementia. The panelists all had dementia. Now, obviously they're pretty high functioning people if they were able to get to a conference in Michigan, right? To be on this panel. I asked them, what do you guys like to watch on TV? And all? But one of them said, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I don't watch TV anymore. Why don't you watch tv? I just, can't pay attention. I mean, I can't follow what the, who did. I just see that character. Is she the one who did whatever? I can't follow the plot. I'm constantly asking the person I'm sitting with to tell me what just happened. And it's like I'm trying to track the audio and the video at the same time. It's too much. I get so frustrated and anxious. That I'd rather just not watch tv. So now if you think about all of the care communities, which was the case where my husband lived, he was in five different communities, and in three of them the TV was on all the time. And so you think about somebody like him who's in a wheelchair, parked in front of a tv, and you think about this experience of people who are still very early in their progression, cannot follow regular tv, and yet we put people in front of a TV and so watching regular programming, and so when I would show up and find him pounding his chest and screaming, or I would find him looking around the room lost, like, how do I get out of here or find him sleeping? It makes complete sense that those were his reactions because he was being exposed to something that was troubling on a daily basis. So the goal in creating Zia videos is to have something that is slow paced, that is, valuable, that's meaningful. And a lot of our work is based on a paper that I discovered early on that was called television viewing. And people with Dementia Living and Long-term Care, that was the name of the paper. And Dr. Kate Di Mudros and her students went to long-term care communities. They showed people I love Lucy. Jerry Springer, Bob Ross painting pictures, and what they discovered is that most of those were not meaningful at all, that people had a really hard time paying attention to them because of these deficits that we've described. But the one video that seemed to perhaps be useful was one called Venice, which was basically like screensavers images. Or slow moving videos with music, which is what Zia is with lots and lots of different topics. So if I know, I, we have I so many stories that people share with us about, we, my mom, we thought my mom was nonverbal and then we showed her the Zia sewing video. She's crazy about sewing. And when she heard the sound of fabrics being snipped, her eyes opened up. She leaned in, she watched the whole video about sewing. And by the whole video, I mean like. We're talking about seven to 12 minutes. Right. It's not like these are full length films. Mm-hmm. And they, and he said, but at the end of that, she started talking. She started telling us about sewing because we found the unlock. How do we connect with this person? Which is why Zia can be so helpful in long-term care. If we sit and we watch a video with someone, we can inspire connection and conversation in just a couple of minutes. Because we have tapped into something that is meaningful to them. So the videos are also hugely helpful to reduce agitation if somebody is starting to get upset, that we can show them a video, a visual distraction, something that pulls them in, that helps lighten the mood. And this was a huge part of the research. Both at UBC and at a number of other, places where we have since done research, but you had talked about the modeling piece and so I just wanna touch on that. We have a category of videos that are called our Activity of Daily Living videos. And so there's a video called, let's Take Our Medication, let's drink water, let's, use the toilet. Let's get dressed, let's get washed up and let's brush our teeth. These are short videos. That are not instructional. It's not somebody saying, approach the toilet, pull down your pants. Instead, what it is, is simply a video that shows people doing the thing that we are about to do and. Being successful, enjoying it. So in the, let's drink water, video. It is simply people clinking their glasses, drinking water, dogs drinking water, kitty cats drinking water, babies drinking water, people sitting across the table from each other, drinking water at a park, drinking water, and it's simply getting across the idea that drinking water is a thing. And it's something that we're about to do, so that by the time I then offer you a drink of water, it's fully present in your mind that drinking water is the activity that's about to happen. And so in long-term care communities, they will, for instance, put on the breakfast video before they serve breakfast so that people see others picking up a fork, eating breakfast, they get the thing that we're doing is eating. There are people who will use the Good morning video, which starts with a sun rising, and it starts with a rooster crowing, right? These iconic images that tell us the time of day is morning and we're about to get up, and then it goes in and it shows people showering and it shows people then eating their breakfast. It shows people getting dressed so that we just show the flow of what a morning is like. Or we could then watch the eating breakfast video. We have good night videos that show the reverse, right? The sun is setting, the moon is coming up in the sky, people are putting on their pajamas, they're yawning. It is time for us to go to bed, and we hear from people that if they watch the same videos, the a DL videos on a regular basis, that in general it reduces agitation around specific types of activities.
Erin:We always knew that TV was a big influential factor in all of our lives, right? Obviously, first the tv, then the cell phone, the computer, you know, all the things. And now what we're seeing is that it is the same. I mean, think about it, if we have CNN or Fox News, or M-S-N-B-C on all the time, what is happening in the communities? The energy is changing. Because A, the politics, you know, warrant strong emotional reactions, or even if you put a soap opera on, there's so much going on in that soap opera that's emotional and dramatic that you get those reactions because that's the energy that's influencing the room. Now we're looking at it from a perspective of we can, again, intentionally promote the energy in the room that we need to be successful. Oh my, yes. In giving and receiving care.
Allyson:yes. And I know that some people will say, well, wait a minute, but I thought, we aren't supposed to watch TV when people have dementia, not regular tv, right? And what we say is that the television. Is the, the box, the television is the tool through which, the mechanism through which we are delivering the tool. The tool being these videos, to reduce agitation, to soothe, to set the tone right. We have clients who in the afternoon put on the nature videos. They'll just play the nature channel and nature videos will roll just to kind of. Soothe. We have clients who, and by clients I mean long-term care communities who use inia videos to promote and support activities, right? If we're gonna be doing an activity today where we're going to be planting seeds in little cups first, we watch a gardening video to get people in the mood to help them understand, to get them excited about what we're going to do. Good idea. We're going for a walk in autumn. Let's first watch the Falling Leaves video so people have a sense of what we're doing and generate a little excitement about it, as well as having videos that are standalone activities in and of themselves, like the quiz videos, trivia videos, and so on.
Erin:Yeah. we talked about modeling, but pre-framing is a really technical term in communication, I think we all naturally use pre-framing, in a way when we're trying to get something that we want, but I don't think that we use it intentionally when we are trying to. Influence people in a caregiving perspective or in a leadership perspective. Or if you have a family member, um, when they're moving in, you can use pre-framing to help them understand you are gonna love the caregivers that work on this hall. You know, you're gonna love living here because this is what's gonna happen. You are. Reframing their experience to look for the positive in things versus what their fear is. Trying to tell them what their guilt is, trying to tell them a family member moving a loved one in, or if it's a resident, what my rebellion's trying to say. Right? And so if you are going on an activity, walk in the autumn. What a great way. To motivate and influence and inspire your people to want to join by watching the leaves fall. Like that is, a cognitive communication technique that allows a person to understand both visually and through hearing it, that this is what we're gonna do and then that gives us time to say. I'm so excited to go see the leaves fall. We're gonna have so much fun and you're gonna get your exercise and you're gonna feel good while you're doing it, who wouldn't wanna do that?
Allyson:Oh my gosh, yes. Is pre-framing. And you know, that pre-framing concept. I wanna also talk about that with, training. So we have a new feature that we have created, which is for every month of the year we have a channel. Related to that month's activities. So for instance, if you go into the June activities channel, you will see that there is a PDF that you can click on and it opens up and it is ideas for activities that are relevant to the month of June. For each of those activities, we identify the Zia videos that support that activity. So if the activity is making, at, on the 4th of July, making, construction paper flags, for instance, what we start with is let's watch the 4th of July video. Let's play the American Patriot Sing-along so that we sing those songs together, get us in the mood. Maybe we watch a picnic video. And then the thing, the activity is that we make these flags together. So we're trying to help staff. Preload for them. What are the things that I could be doing that might be meaningful to my people living with dementia? And then of course, we also have a channel that is caregiver education. We have a lot of education videos that we have done ourselves. And unlike most caregiver education videos, that is a talking head. Ours are very artfully, they're very kind of, can't stop ourselves. They're very artfully done. They're beautiful, they're easy to watch, and it's all, educational stuff that's based on lessons that I still teach to professional caregivers.
Erin:Yeah. It's really, I think it's just one of those gaps that you were talking about. It's not anything that I ever learned inside of a community. You know, as, as technical, I think is what we're talking about now, just the practical definition of pre-framing, which literally means just setting the stage. Giving PE people a resident or an associate or a manager, a heads up of what's coming next, and then explaining why it matters like that is as simple as it gets. But too often we just say, okay, this is what we're doing and we forget the, what's in it for me, the what's in it for them. To engage them and to want them to connect to the meaningful activity, whether it's training, meeting where we're equipping and empowering them, or an activity of daily living for a resident, it's really, really important. So I think it's a very innovative way of incorporating. Basic and fundamental skills that we seem to have lost along the way,
Allyson:I agree with you completely.
Erin:Yeah, it really is. So we've talked a lot about training, empowering and culture awareness. Do you have advice for the executive directors who say, I don't have time to train my team on the basics? Do you run into that? How do we reframe, that mindset.
Allyson:Yeah. take advantage of staff meetings. If you were to play a nine minute. Education video from Zia, whether it's about how to deal with hallucinations, how to communicate with people living with dementia, how to accept their reality, right? If you watch one of those videos and incorporate that into the conversation. Then I think that you have staff who are, all learning something at the same time and you invite people to talk about specific residents or specific issues that this topic relates to. So, you know, the, woman in 3 0 9. Keeps talking about seeing children underneath the chair. This hallucinations video will help us understand what her experience is and how we can better support her. So I think that for, I would hope that somebody who is in a leadership position would constantly, at every opportunity be offering educational, options to staff, but also with some sort of incentive. Think that for a lot of folks who are working in, for people who work, right? Mm-hmm. We wanna be paid for the things that we do. And even if it's just recognition, you know that when you take this, when that we take the time to point out, so last week we watched the hallucination video and then. Jane, stand up if, if you wouldn't mind, and just talk about what you did this week with the A man in, in 2 0 6 because it was brilliant. You clear, like you, you so demonstrated what we learned in that constantly looking for opportunities to praise staff for doing things the right way, I think is just vitally important.
Erin:She just like answered my next question, what would you tell a new executive director who you know would make training a priority? You know what the philosophy is, and that was a perfect answer to that question. You've got to highlight what's doing right and you gotta give them an opportunity to talk about what they learn because reflection turns, you know, experience into positive insights that we can learn from.
Allyson:and I also think that it's really, if at all possible to have some sort of foundational philosophy around care. So for instance, I know of a care community that foundationally says that we. Are a community that adheres to validation theory. For people who are not familiar with it, validation theory, Naomi file, FEIL. And it's about accepting a person's reality, if the entire community. Is foundationally based on the idea that we are a community that believes in validation theory. Then that would be the protocol that we use when we're doing any kind of training tying it back to how does that sit with validation theory? That's just one, right? There's also Dr. Allen Power in his brilliant book, dementia Beyond Drugs, talks about this concept called cognitive ramps. So for an executive director to. Explore what are the different foundational methodologies that we use in supporting people with dementia that we adhere to in our community? We're always looking for opportunities to create cognitive ramps for our residents. And so to then at every staff meeting, to be able to come back to that and say, how did we live that this week? What are the opportunities that we saw to. Put into play validation theory or to put into play the idea of cognitive ramps. It sounds really complicated. It is not. Alright. I mean, validation training Institute, which by the way, we have just done a partnership, so I'm well. I love I, Naomi file is one of my, One of my greatest heroes. I was so fortunate to get to meet her daughter, who is now leading the institute. And she said, could we possibly store our videos on Zia to make them available to everybody everywhere for free? And I said, oh my gosh. Yes. We have the honored to do that. Right? Yeah. And that's one of the things that we're trying to do at Zenia is that we have. We are increasing our partnerships with people who do amazing training and storing those videos within Zia so that in a long-term care community, they have a wealth of information that's available to staff. The other thing that we do is once a month. Now we're doing it twice a month, at least once a month, we host an online support group, which is free, which is where I am there. People who subscribe to Zia join me on a call, and I deliver a lesson, and then we just talk. We talk for an hour. We try our best as a company to walk the talk and to make education available and to make support available because I think that that is what we need to de-stress the people who are in support positions, whether they are at the executive level, whether they are staff or family care.
Erin:I think there's a lot of power in educating, equipping, and empowering people. Oh, and it really, it really starts with them. They have to want it, they have to be aware they need it, and then they have to implement it and then take the time to look at it. I think that Zia TV is really making headway and, and hopefully as senior living, a big senior living ship, you know, understands. The way that we all should be going, that more people can, can become part of this community. Yes. Right? Yes. Educating, equipping, and empowering people. So how do they, how do people reach out to you and contact you and find more out about Zia tv?
Allyson:we have a website, which is zia tv.com. Z-I-N-N-I-A tv.com. On that website, people can look at the top of the screen, there's an option to watch videos. So you can watch sample videos. You have a really clear sense of what are we talking about here? There's a free 14 day trial and businesses are welcome to try it for 14 days. See what they think. It is best watched on a large screen tv. So we have, Zenia is an app for Roku, for iOS, for Apple tv, Amazon Fire. So most organizations have it on a TV and then they also have it, running through, say Roku for instance. If they had an LG TV, which is another, which is like.$30 to buy the adapter. When an organization buys a Zia subscription, it's good for all of the common TVs and if they use iPads, so we have communities that might have a TV in a lobby area, another communal tv, and they have six iPads that the staff uses because Zia is great on an iPad for one-on-one stuff. Like if I'm gonna go wake up. Mr. Jones in five 13, I can go in with my iPad and say, Hey, good morning. And then I can play the good morning video right there in the moment. That's nice him understand how to get outta bed. so one subscription is good for all of those and Zia is extremely affordable, Yeah, I think it's a great solution.
Erin:It's very mission driven. Thank you Allison for being here. We appreciate your passion and your mission, right? And using your own life experience to solve the gaps that you witnessed. You know, that's what businesses are for, right? Solve those problems. And I agree. Being an example of that is powerful. So, all right, y'all check out Zia tv and as always, aspire for more for you. Own your story so you can create the future that you want. Have a good day.
Allyson:Thank you, Erin.