What's a Care Stream?

What's a care stream? A care stream is a live-stream of a person receiving care for a disability, illness, or nearing the end of life phase.

Who do care streams benefit? 

  • Those staying or living in assisted living facilities, hospice centers, long-term-care facilities
  • Those living with a disability, illness, disorder, or age which requires the assistance of caregivers
  • Those combating isolation and loneliness through age or environment
  • The caregivers and facilities that treat all the above
  • The family and friends of people receiving care
  • The respective communities which the individual receiving care belongs to.

Who can care stream?
This is a loaded question but one which you should not jump to exclude yourself from at first glance. Many states have legalized monitoring devices in long-term-care facilities, while other states have forbid them. It's best to request explicit written permission from any facility you are considering to use a monitoring device/care stream. See this form for clarity. 

What can a care stream look like? 
A care stream can be morning toilet time, during the shower, therapy or medical treatments, any part of your care routine, or simply your day to day life (Roger's Twitch Clip Collection). 

Roger laughing with facility staff while care streaming

Roger praising his facilities accomodations.

Roger reacting to a painting received by a viewer


Roger discussing his hospice care's bandwidth speed on a Christmas care stream

You can find Roger's hospice facility stream collections here and his long term care facility streams here. 



What are the short and long term benefits of care streaming? 

Short Term

    • Instant monitoring device capabilities as soon as you go live whether at home or in an assisted living facility
      • VOD Archiving: 
        • Enable VOD (Video On Demand) storage by heading to the Creator Dashboard. 
        • Look for the Settings tab on the left and then click Stream < VOD Settings < toggle the slider next to Store past broadcasts to enable or disable archiving.
      • Clips: Allows viewers to make clips of your stream that are permanently saved to your channel. This is helpful for capturing sentimental moments, content for advocacy, and emergency or unusual situations.

    • Exposure: Twitch naturally recommends you to people so the more you stream, the more people can see/meet you.
    • Creative Outlet: A person staying in an assisted living facility may have a story they wish to tell, lyrics, poems, or messages they want to write but are unable to due to their mobility. 
    • Contact: Family and friends can join chat to interact, reminisce on old memories,  and make new ones through a community.   

 

Long Term

    • Care streaming long-term can form a community around your channel that cares about you and your well-being.
    • Techniques to make engaging care content are being developed and assembled.
    • Content creators are being recruited to help care streamers get adjusted to the stream/content making lifestyle
    • The quality of care received should gradually increase as facilities develop more monitoring device and care stream cases
    • Loneliness, hopelessness, and existential nihilistic tendencies can be mitigated in these environments with the help of care streams.
    • Care streaming helps you improve your quality of life by providing you with entertainment, education, relaxation, or inspiration 
    • Raise awareness about important issues such as disability rights, health care access, end-of-life care options, etc. share your insights and opinions on these topics with others who may benefit from them or relate to them.


What are the risks of Care Streaming?

  • Disorderly viewers: Albeit less common, it is wise to be prepared for occasional disorderly viewers (a.k.a trolls, phishing scammers, hackers).
  • Recording Party Consent Laws: You must receive explicit consent to use a monitoring device (or stream) from the staff you hire or the facilities you are considering. There are states which allow monitoring devices unconditionally while others may require consent forms, special conditions, etc. Another post on this blog will discuss my findings for the US in terms of it's availability and feasibility to lobby for. 
  • Clipping insensitive/personal content: Exposing the personal information of streamers can be easy in environments where care is being administered due to personal information being disclosed more openly in those settings.
  • Vulnerability due to specific disabilities and cognitive impairments: There are cases where an individual unnattended may be more vulnerable to their viewers manipulation or social engineering (i.e: dementia, intellectual disabilities)

Thoughts regarding Care Streaming:

Due to the sensitive, often private nature of long-term care facility environments, it's important to consider the privacy of all parties involved. However, this is a system which the evidence to prove it's utility has minimal research conducted to explore the potential benefits it has on both the individual receiving care and the systems of which they receive care (facility and staff).

A big part of the reason ideas like this fail to get off the ground is because people sit around hyperfixating on the ethics and consequences of implementing a system like this in bulk. These considerations are very important, although deluzian philosophy is a helpful approach to countering this inaction. 

Instead of questioning whether care streams are objectively good or bad, looking to past experience to imitate, thinking in future-terms to innovate, we must try to observe care streaming for everything that which it can be and do. On a very large scale, we know what it's possible of doing, but nobody has been persistent enough to explore the full scope of it's influence in all effected industries.


Contact:

Please contact me if you or a loved one is currently residing or pending admission to a long-term/assisted living facility. 

You only need a smart phone, internet connection, a Twitch account (Sign Up), and the mobile Twitch app  (Android/Apple) to start streaming.

If you are interested in anything above or helping with advocacy fill out our Support Form





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