Your residents have lived next door to each other for years. How many know each other’s stories?
Six weekly visits become a hardcover book of a resident’s life in their own words, a film narrated in their own voice, the messages they record for people by name, and every story edited and saved in an archive their family keeps for good. And — one story at a time — a way for the people they live among to find out who they have been sitting with.
What happens
- Six weekly visits, one chapter of a life each: childhood, work, marriage, faith, the hard years, what matters most.
- The Companion is never in your building. Every visit is by video. Nobody arrives, nobody signs in, nobody needs escorting.
- They are paid, trained and briefed for that resident — and they talk about nothing except the stories the resident wants to tell.
- An aide carries in the tablet we provide, taps one button and leaves. The resident has no account and no password.
- Nothing is recorded without a signed consent. The software will not start without one.
The book is the resident’s
A hardcover of their life in their own words — their stories, their photographs, the things they wanted said. They sign it in front of their family and friends, in your building. A film comes with it, about a quarter of an hour.
What the family is left with.
Not a folder of files. Their parent, still talking, for years.
The archive. Every chapter, every story and every photograph, kept and downloadable in ordinary formats at any time. The complete recording of every visit is theirs too.
Stories that arrive on their own. Short clips of one story at a time — ninety seconds of their mother explaining how they got their name, landing on a Tuesday in March when nobody was thinking about any of this.
Messages their parent recorded for people by name, held and delivered on the days that matter: a birthday, a wedding, a Christmas they may not be there for. Nobody in the family has to remember, and nothing depends on anyone still being the person who does this in twenty years.
Their presentation
Your community holds the event. You plan it, you invite the families, and you show the film. We hand you the finished film and the printed books, and the resident signs copies of their own book.
The whole community can be part of this — neighbors, families and staff in one room, for one of your own. Who is invited is the resident’s call.
Getting to know each other
After their signing, the resident marks the stories they are willing to share with the community. Nothing is shared that they have not marked.
Then a Story Afternoon in your activity room: one story from each resident who wants to be in it, five or six minutes apiece, the storyteller sitting in the front row. This is where the stories the film left out get told. A neighbor who has heard how someone met their husband has something to say to them at breakfast.
This part we would build with you — the resident’s own list and the shape of the afternoon — and you would decide as much of it as we would.
The messages a resident records for particular people are never shown in the building. Those belong to the person they are for.
What your community keeps
- Neighbors who know each other’s histories, in the places the resident chose to tell them.
- Staff who know who they are caring for. With the resident’s permission, one page for your team: what they go by, where they grew up, what they did, three things to ask them about. Nothing from the chart.
- A family with a reason to be here — weeks of hunting for photographs, then an afternoon in your building.
- Something to put in a daughter’s hands on a tour. Every community has bingo, a salon and a bus. Almost none can hand her a hardcover and say: our residents make these.
What we ask, and what it costs
- A quiet spot with Wi-Fi where the tablet can live.
- One aide, one tap, a few minutes a visit.
- Help choosing the residents — three to start — and an introduction to their families.
- The event at the end: your room, your invitations, your afternoon.
$50 per visit delivered
Invoiced monthly. A six-visit series is $300. No platform fee, no minimum, no term — a month with no visits costs you nothing, so there is no line item to defend in a budget cycle.
What that covers: the visits and the Companion’s time · the resident’s printed book · the film, made and screened at their presentation · every story edited and kept in the family’s archive · the clips the resident chooses to share with your community.
Which of your residents do the others know least?
Start there. Write to Steve and we will come and talk it through.
steve@dearfamilyarchive.com
It helps if you tell us: your community and town · your role · roughly how many residents.