I am hoping to get the community’s wisdom on something. My mother-in-law is suffering from dementia. We are transferring her from her existing assisted living facility to one that is closer and offers a higher level of care.
It turns out that the new facility, unlike the old one, does not have an in room phone. While she has a cell phone, she often forgets to charge it and then it becomes a hunting process to find it in the room if it dies.
My plan is to set her up with a wired in room phone that we will connect via Voice over IP to the wireless router that we will get installed there. Wired means she won’t have to charge it, and it can’t be lost. Simpler is better here.
Here are my questions:
Any recommendations on VoIP providers? While cost is a consideration, more important are reliability and good customer service. Also desirable is the ability to block all incoming calls except those from approved numbers (her relatives and friends) so that she doesn’t get phishing calls from the “IRS” that threaten her with jail time.
I’m afraid I don’t have any helpful knowledge about your two specific questions, but I am moved to wonder whether there might be a more mechanical way of disguising her cellphone as a wired phone and forcing her to keep it plugged in. Like, just put it in a beefy case (like an Otterbox) and superglue the charging cord to the case’s charging port…?
Kind of a kluge but then she could stick with the interface that’s already familiar…
As my parents aged in their assisted living facility, it became more and more difficult to communicate with them. They had a telephone but my dad couldn’t hear it ring; if he did hear it ring he couldn’t hear you on the phone. So I relied on my mother to answer the phone but unfortunately she died 5 months before my father.
They had the kind of landlines that rest in a charging cradle, so would have the same issue if not replaced.
They had a computer but toward the end couldn’t remember how to use it.
Unfortunately their abilities declined so much in their last months. I had to email or call the facility to have messages delivered to my dad.
I had used a similar type plug in phone for my parents. This is hard to say, but please understand that MIL will decline. What works today, may not work next week. My parents went from using cell phones independently, to only being able to use the landline (could not remember how to use the cell phone, could not remember where it was or how to charge it). I debated getting the phone where you could put photos of people next to their number so they’d just have to push my photo to call me.
Eventually even the landline was not useful. They would leave it off the hook, or pack it up “for safekeeping” or I would find it stored in the shower or a nightstand. I hope this doesn’t happen for you, but be prepared to tweak your set up periodically.
My mom also couldn’t manage the phone. We called the reception desk on her floor every morning at a specific time and the aide would go get her. That ended up much easier for her than trying to figure out how to answer the phone in her room.
We use callcentric for our home phone with a dedicated VOIP phone – it needs an ethernet connection and needs an electric outlet. It works well. Their service allows call and spam filtering, and can ask callers to dial a specific number to weed out the robocallers. There are other provides as well; for our business VOIP we use nextiva. (this is from my husband who is a huge fan of IP phones and uses them both for our house and for his medical office).
Please message me if you have more questions and he would be happy to answer
We understand this well, and we know what the long term prognosis is, and it’s not good. When the wired phone is no longer useful, we will get rid of it. But for now, she’s better with that compared to the cell phone.
This is in no way helpful in answering your posted question, but I will say, FIL had a wired phone at his AL, every morning after he got back from breakfast we got a call. We would cringe when the phone rang at that time, as well as the as many as 20-30 other times some days.
When he moved to a B&C, I “failed” to hook up a phone, the house (6 seniors plus live in caregivers) had a phone he could use any time. I told BIL/SIL if they installed a phone on their visits that I would never forgive them. FIL never got an in room phone and it was such a blessing for us. We still called him, regularly, but were not at the mercy of his dementia demandingness.
THIS. Are you going to be the one MIL calls all the time? Is your H the designated local sibling in charge? If so, you may come to regret the day that any phone was hooked up for her to use. Perhaps it’s better to not get a landline at all, if she’s having such trouble with a cell phone.
I don’t have the knowledge of the others on how or whether your mom will use the phone, but we did this when we moved my mom to an independent living community. Ours was money oriented though - AT&T would only provide a landline AND internet and the community has wi-fi so the internet was a waste of money. We went with Ooma and have been happy with it (though she doesn’t understand VOIP and gets upset when it goes out (her community wifi might blip off and then the system needs to reset). Best news was she was able to port her home number to the new community, even though it’s in a different area code.
But when my parent was in the same situation, we were given the option of having a phone…which we chose when she moved in. However, it was on her nightstand which really wasn’t all that reachable from the bed. She never used that phone so we discontinued the service.
But then…we visited every day because it was closeby. She didn’t need a phone…which would have been a challenge to use.
My mother calls me all day long. I considered removing her phone. She has a cell with my number programmed and most of the time she can work it (long term memory?). Without that phone she feels unsafe, and she may be! She calls me about a problem and then I call the front desk because she is no longer able to call the front desk with the room phone. I honestly don’t know if she knows what that white phone does.
We also use callcentric. My DH loves it and imported our records after about a month to make the “white list” so we didn’t have to enter them one by one. Then spammers have to press 1 to talk, which they don’t . went from 10 calls (it felt like) to 0 a day.
I just put in a landline for my Dad in AL. He is mostly blind so got https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V7DCT3L?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
It seems to work well, except having speed dial and the memory dial buttons work differently was hard to get into his head (for now).
For Mom back in the day, we just called the front desk for the last months. She had to have the phone held for her anyway or it would be upside down.
I can’t remember the last time mom used a phone in her own. I have tried to teach her how to use the cell phone but finally gave up years ago. I’m not sure she knows how to use the landline in her IL unit. As far as I can recall she’s never placed a call on it.
At this point, she’s nearly always with one of us family members so she doesn’t have to many snug calls.
So far, we haven’t had any issues with my MIL calling us often. I doubt she remembers the phone number.
I looked up the reviews for Ooma, and they look great … until it’s time to cancel, at which point lots of people have complaints that it’s basically impossible to do so. Looking at CallCentric next.
