YouthCare

A low-cost intergenerational respite care program that partners trained students and older adults with dementia in a community setting.

One of the most difficult realities of a dementia diagnosis is that there are no effective treatments for the disease, nor is there a cure. We do, however, have the opportunity to mitigate the difficulties of its decline. As the rates of this disease double in the next twelve years, effectively bankrupting our healthcare system, cities that implement avant-garde solutions to address its care will be ones that stand out in the international challenge to solve what is likely to be the greatest public health crisis of modern history.

Traditionally, the effort to seek solutions for this disease has been limited to the elderly generation, but we are rapidly bringing the realities out of the shadows and injecting intergenerational innovation.

The Youth Movement Against Alzheimer’s, 501(c)3, offers a novel, inexpensive solution to provide respite care services: YouthCare. YouthCare is an intergenerational respite-care program that partners trained college student volunteers and older adults with early-stage dementia in a community-based setting. For three hours, twice a week, they play games, participate in artistic activities, and deliver the research-backed Brain Boot Camp, developed by the UCLA Longevity Center to help people compensate for age-related cognitive decline. Students and seniors are paired based on similar interests and hobbies, creating a valuable mentor-mentee relationship.

YouthCare has been recognized at pitch competitions held by several leading universities such as Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, as well as the Clinton Global Initiative. Most recently, this model won openIDEO’s care for dementia challenge, which received 250 applications from around the world, and Social Venture Partners LA Fast Pitch 2018.

YouthCare is built on a 2 year pilot with UCLA Geriatrics. Our caregiver waitlist was at more than four times capacity, with more applying to volunteer than we could accept, and most importantly, three-quarters of caregivers said this program alone was all the break they needed -- a key finding in our efforts to reduce rates of caregiver depression. One hundred percent of students reported that they would recommend this program to a friend, and many seniors with Alzheimer’s provided anecdotal evidence that they had found purpose once again in their lives. With just six hours a week, we found a win–win–win for older adults with dementia, their caregivers, and students, who now have a skill development opportunity to work with our growing aging population.

YouthCare is the least-expensive respite-care option. Research shows that respite is critical to keeping loved ones at home longer. In fact, 2-4 years of YouthCare costs are comparable to just one month of nursing home costs. If YouthCare reaches 1% of Americans with dementia and allows them to age at home for just two more months, we will save the healthcare system one billion dollars.

YouthCare has launched our pilot program at USC in February 2018. With the help of the MIT Solve community we can bring this model to several other colleges and communities around the country.

YouthCare is the lowest-cost respite care option on the market, and presents a unique opportunity for caregivers to reduce their stress, seniors to seek purposeful aging, and students to engage with our growing elderly population. YouthCare transcends the conventional respite care program as memory care is seamlessly integrated into our caregiving curriculum. This intergenerational path for volunteer respite also fosters a mentor-mentee rapport that helps reinvigorates seniors. Furthermore, by cutting back caregiving costs, YouthCare will save the healthcare system millions of dollars, thus making YouthCare a win-win-win-win solution for older adults, caregivers, students, and the healthcare system.

Our human-centric mobile app is integral to YouthCare because it creates accessibility and reduces operational costs by 33%. The mobile application offers a dual profile approach that allows students to showcase their personalities and interests, and caregivers to explain the career path and hobbies of their loved ones. The algorithm then automatically partners students with seniors based on similar career interests, and hobbies. Furthermore, our mobile application is critical in eliminating a need for site-administrators thus significantly lowering our cost-to-client. Finally, we will create an algorithm that returns a list of nearby venues that fit the specifications for our program.

Since our trip to the last SOLVE finals, our team has materialized a fee-for-service pilot  at the University of Southern California this past February. Our pilot successfully recruited and trained 40 student volunteers within just two weeks. We expect much higher numbers upon re-launching our program in the fall.

In the next two months, we aim to complete a MVP of our mobile app and will conducting user-testing. Additionally, we plan to apply to become a Medicaid waiver program and work with private/Medicare-advantage insurance plans to push costs from end-user to health insurance.

In 5 years, we plan to transform access to care by onboarding 250 universities and actively serving over 6000 caregivers.  We believe we can scale rapidly because our mobile app will simplify the process for school administrators and community members to start new sites of our program. In addition, by expanding our training protocol to include other diseases we will be able to service those affected by other diseases that require family caregivers. Finally, we plan to explore the potential for direct-to-home care, which will allow us to offer services for an even lower cost.

Our solution requires partnerships with universities that approve their students to be trained to provide respite care. Through the help student liaisons and/or administration, we have and will be able to easily market YouthCare to students as an opportunity to work with the aging population while addressing a global challenge.

Caregivers will be notified of YouthCare through our partnerships with nonprofits that already serve these populations. For example, with the help of the LA Caregiver Resource Center, Alzheimer’s Greater Los Angeles, and the Partners in Care Foundation we were able to locate the caregivers for our pilot at USC.

Our grant-funded model has paired over 125 students and seniors, providing more than 3200 hours of respite care. Our caregiver waitlist was at over four times capacity, with more applying to volunteer than we could accept, highlighting the need for caregiver respite. Noteably, 73% of caregivers said this program alone was all the break they needed -- a key finding in our efforts to reduce rates of caregiver depression. Furthermore, 100% of students reported that they would recommend this program to a friend, and many seniors with Alzheimer’s provided anecdotal evidence that they had found purpose again in their lives.

In 12 months, YMAA aims to launch 5 more YouthCare sites that will reach 150 more caregivers and 150 more students. In the next 3 years, we expect 50 new sites in primarily urban/suburban areas, helping us serve 1,000 caregivers and 1,000 students.

Our impact would be quantitatively measured by the number of hours of care provided to seniors and respite provided to caregivers, and the cost-savings for Medicaid/Medi-cal and for individual families. We plan on establishing a research committee to assess YouthCare’s effect on the time spent aging at home to offset long-term care costs.

Our team  is comprised of driven and compassionate youth with the shared goal of alleviating the impact of Alzheimer’s Disease. In the past three years, our student-led, almost-all volunteer team has designed the first study to assess the effect of dementia care on high schoolers (IRB-Approved), drafted bipartisan legislation to create a CA Care Corps (AB 2101 ), and become the national leaders in high school and college Alzheimer’s advocacy. We will be leveraging the relationships we’ve built through these projects to scale our model. Our tech team includes IBM and UCLA alumni.

Our social enterprise’s main revenue stream is the $15 per hour rate for our caregiving service. The revenue generated will provide us enough funds to scale the program to other campuses across the United States. No other for-profit care company can ever match our low costs, and no other traditional Alzheimer’s nonprofit has our ability to reach the student demographic, thus giving us a competitive advantage that would help YouthCare achieve long-term sustainability.

In order to complete and refine our technology, we are seeking funding from private donors and various grants. So far, YMAA has won prize money at  pitch competitions at UCLA, Social Venture Partners, and OpenIDEO’s international care for dementia challenge. We have also had a successful crowdfunding campaign through the Clinton Global Initiative platform to raise over $6,500. Our current funds are estimated to create a 1.5-year runway.

Our future strategy for increasing revenue includes working more closely with public and private insurance companies, offering free care for a limited time to grow our customer database, and strategic partnerships with larger nonprofits. With the implementation of our mobile application, we will be able to lower our cost to client to $10/hour.

Our team was drawn to Solve primarily because of the fact that both our organizations share similar core values in regards to the power of partnership, need for relentless optimism, and desire for open innovation. Through Solve, our team believes we can strengthen our infrastructure so our idea can reach a broader stage and connect with individuals whose mentorship and advice can lend our execution-oriented team a better direction. With your guidance and our team's passion, we know we can create an intergenerational force that helps millions affected by Alzheimer's and prepares tomorrow's leaders to address issues of aging.

Our primary barrier for success is attracting caregiver clients. Our team has conducted 75+ in-person surveys with low-income family caregivers in the LA area and have recognized our areas for improvement include continuing to build a robust partner referral network in Los Angeles, becoming an insurance waiver program, and providing transportation for those who cannot drop off their loved ones at our site.

The SOLVE community can help plug us to resources to direct us to the most effective avenues for reaching these goals and by providing us mentors to help guide the implementation of our technology.