✨ Resident Life

At Pennswood Village, there is a tech committee of 12 residents who provide AV support to the community, do stagecraft, and respond to tech help requests. For serious problems we refer residents to various contractors. The IT guys on the administrative staff provide help with viruses and hooking up accessories. Residents have learned who to call, so we gave up the "hot line" we once had, and simply publish the names, specialties, and phone numbers.

Two schools are located adjacent to our campus. As community service, students hold office hours to coach residents on the basics of phones, tablets, and laptops.

Some of the home health aids are savvy about phones and email and residents will sometimes hire one of them to do digital housekeeping with them.

Our referral list gives both drop-off repair services and techs of various levels who make house calls. These fellows quickly get a word-of-mouth following when results are good.

Scams are a major problem. We have a set of instructions for scam recovery, and when necessary staff members provide support. We recommend victims call the AARP Fraud hotline for advice and support.

Richmond Shreve

NaCCRA Board Member

Forum Moderator

Congratulations to Channing House with their long running successful resident Help Desk. We have attempted to implement similar support with the creation of a resident volunteer tech committee augmented with professional paid outside technical help. A major problem has been recruiting willing and able resident volunteers. I have a number of questions regarding the Channing House program and factors contributing to its successful operation.

Does the administration provide the internal phone extension?

Who and how are the phone extension and email in-box monitored?

How are help messages assigned to appropriate tech volunteers?

Are there criteria for respective volunteers to become tech help team members?

What are your major contributing factors to your successful implementation and operation of your resident tech support?

Answers to these questions hopefully will help us in tarting tech help support in our community.

Mike Vandenberg

Resident Communications Facilitator

Kirkland Village (Presbyterian Senior Living)

Channing House has had a tech help program created & staffed by volunteer residents for 12 years. Below is the anniversary announcement we made. The 10,000 calls for service (2+ calls every day for 4,383 days) cover any device with a wire from help changing clocks to Daylight Savings time to recovering from phishing attacks on Macs, ChromeBooks, & PCs.

The tech squad has an internal phone extension and email address for leaving help messages. Tech goal is to make contact within 24 hours. Tech mission as first responders is to fix. We refer problems beyond our capabilities to our IT department or external vendors. A surprising number of issues are solved with “power it off, wait, turn it on”. Because training is open-ended and long term, we do not train. We suggest other sources of training. One of the nice features of being a tech is you get to meet your fellow residents.

==== report to CH residents and administration =========

Today, July 8, is the 12th anniversary of the resident Tech Help team. It’s also another milestone: tech help did our 10,000th call for service this week. Below is a table of our calls for service. Note we have done more than 2 calls each and every day for 4,383 days.

You should thank each of these residents for their service to the CH community. Craig gets a special thanks for thinking up this service:

<a list of 14 resident tech volunteers>

2.28 7/8/2013 <Grand Total> 4383 10,013 12.00 yrs

Calls/day start end nr days nr calls

1.1 7/1/2025 7/7/2025 7 8 CY25/2ndHalf

1.7 1/1/2025 6/30/2025 181 307 CY25/1stHalf

1.8 7/1/2024 12/31/2024 184 330 CY24/2ndHalf

2.2 1/1/2024 6/30/2024 182 399 CY24/1stHalf

2.3 7/1/2023 12/31/2023 184 425 CY23/2ndHalf

3.1 1/1/2023 6/30/2023 181 557 CY23/1stHalf

2.6 7/1/2022 12/31/2022 184 485 CY22/2ndHalf

2.9 1/1/2022 6/30/2022 181 528 CY22/1stHalf

2.8 7/1/2021 12/31/2021 184 508 CY21/2ndHalf

2.8 1/1/2021 6/30/2021 181 501 CY21/1stHalf

2.4 7/1/2020 12/31/2020 184 437 CY20/2ndHalf

2.2 1/1/2020 6/30/2020 182 408 CY20/1stHalf

2.2 7/1/2019 12/31/2019 184 412 CY19/2ndHalf

2.5 1/1/2019 6/30/2019 181 449 CY19/1stHalf

2.0 7/1/2018 12/31/2018 184 370 CY18/2ndHalf

2.3 1/1/2018 6/30/2018 181 421 CY18/1stHalf

2.5 7/1/2017 12/31/2017 184 453 CY17/2ndHalf

2.5 1/1/2017 6/30/2017 181 450 CY17/1stHalf

2.5 7/1/2016 12/31/2016 184 459 CY16/2ndHalf

2.8 1/1/2016 6/30/2016 182 504 CY16/1stHalf

2.1 3/13/2015 12/31/2015 294 608 CY15

1.6 7/8/2013 3/13/2015 614 1002 CY13-14

Bert Laurence

Tech Help Dispatch

We at Emerald Heights (Redmond, WA) copied our sister community (Herons Key) and have a "Tech Help Hour" in our main 'living room' every Thursday from 1-2pm. Residents come with a variety of issues with their cellphones, tablets and laptops. When the number of helpers allows, we will also go to residents' units to help with stationery devices. If we happen to finish helping early, volunteers find they also benefit from sharing experiences and information with each other. We've been doing this for almost a year now and residents very much appreciate it.

Thank you for the posting ,

I'm helping to start a Senior Help Desk at my CCRC and plan to set up a table and see what traffic we get to know our next steps. Our CCRC has a full time resident-focused IT person, and we don't plan to encroach on his territory. But he charges and some folks are pretty needy in this IT help area.

Barry

A report of service to the residents of our CCRC:

The Channing House (CH) volunteer resident Tech Help had a very successful 2021 as shown by our statistics of over one-thousand successful calls for service fixing all manner of computers, smart phones, TVs, and all types of electronic devices:

Calls/day start end #Calls Range

2.77 1/1/2021 6/30/2021 501 CY21/1stHalf

2.76 7/1/2021 12/31/2021 508 CY21/2ndHalf

Total Calls,2021 = 1009

Tech Help can be very proud of the assistance rendered which not only served the CH residents but also saved the CH budget significant money in cost avoidance. Next time you see one of these resident tech help volunteers, give them a high-five. These techs each averaged over 28 calls for service during 2021:

<<list of 11 resident volunteer techs>>

In case you wonder about tech help’s history, here is the resident tech help historical service record since we started on 7/8/2013:

2.25 <<Grand Totals>> 3101 6982 8.48

Calls/day Nr days Nr Calls Yrs of service

We are always looking for more volunteers to join this elite group. It’s not as hard as you might think.

Bert Laurence & CA

Tech Help Co-Chairs