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An Albury study by disability service provider Mercy Connect has used virtual reality to give users a first-hand glimpse of what living with an intellectual disability is like.
The study uses a VR program called IMercyVE to mirror some of the frustration, confusion, fear and/or discomfort clients experience, and in the process builds empathy for those clients.
Mercy Connect designed the program, using its expertise in teams and staff who have a lived experience from looking after sons or daughters who have a disability.
“Empathy is a key driver to giving good quality service and support for our clients and participants,” Mercy Connect Chief Executive Officer Trent Dean says.
“One of the challenges is that as we bring people into this workforce they are either driven by passion or drive to do work and have the experience either lived or someone in their family, or they come from completely out of the sector.
“What we are trying to develop very quickly is the empathy and understanding they may not have without having that lived experience.”
The project was funded by Mercy Connect and led by Caroline Cummins, Mercy Connect’s Executive Leader of Clinical Services.
Mr Dean says IMercyVE was inspired by dementia training he experienced, where participants were put through a series of exercises to experience living with that condition.
“I thought, why couldn’t we do that using VR?” he said.
Mr Dean had already worked with Brisbane VR firm Valley General and the Royal Flying Doctor Service, where VR was used to train participants in a virtual aeroplane.
So Valley General, an entrepreneurial firm run by former gamers, was engaged to create the technology.
Mr Dean says IMercyVE participants see inside a typical house, with three scenarios for each user and a series of increasingly challenging tasks.
“One is engagement with TV and materials in front of you,” he says. “That changes so the graphics are unreadable, the clock does not look right, sounds are escalating – you can hear your heartbeat throbbing.”
“The next involves picking up your phone with one of the disability support workers contacting you – the audio changes, creating sensory overload.”
“Then they move to the kitchen where tremor is introduced – you are trying to feed yourself, but your hand is moving involuntarily so you cannot do the tasks.”
“You are immersed, like you are literally standing in this virtual space.”
Mercy Connect turned to La Trobe University to evaluate the study, with the eventual findings published in the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities.
Study co-author and Director of La Trobe’s John Richards Centre for Rural Ageing Research, Professor Irene Blackberry, says disability support workers need a range of attributes.
But empathy is vital, as it may improve the quality of communication and relationships with service users, as well as the responsiveness of workers to the needs of service users.
Professor Blackberry says IMercyVE will change the way some disability support workers are trained because it is affordable, flexible and could be used anywhere.
And when a care worker dons the headset and experiences a disability, it is an eye opener.
“We have a lot of assumptions about people with disabilities,” she says. “It is different when you experience it. When you put this headset on … it gives a very different perspective.”
Mr Dean says IMeryVE’s has other potential uses.
As well as using it for new and existing staff, he says it can also be a marketing tool when recruiting people. “We can show them and say, ‘This is what it’s like’.
“We can do videos of clients in VR camera and have you walking through their house so you can have a participant with a disability explaining what their life is like. You are there, without having to go on site.
“And say for clients whose behaviours are escalating, you can use it chose how you can work to de-escalate and help to regulate those behaviours.”
