Why nothing else works
Every family tries something else first.
Based on peer-reviewed dementia care research, Alzheimer Society of Canada guidelines, UCLA Health, and UCSF Memory and Aging Center published guidance.
| Approach | What actually happens | |
|---|---|---|
| Taking the phone away | ✗ | The anxiety doesn't go away: it has nowhere to go. Violates the least restrictive option principle. Most families give it back within weeks. |
| Call blocking / quiet hours | ✗ | Blocks the call, not the anxiety. From their loved one's perspective, they called the person they love most and got nothing. Makes underlying anxiety worse. |
| Voicemail | ✗ | Many loved ones can't leave a message as dementia progresses. Adds caregiver guilt and increases scam-call vulnerability. |
| Not answering | ✗ | The most common approach and the most costly to the caregiver. Research directly links guilt from ignored calls to greater burnout. |
| Scheduled calls | ~ | Works in early stages. Stops working as dementia progresses. By the time families find KindredMind, scheduled calls have already failed. |
| KindredMind | ✓ | Every call answered in a familiar, loving voice. Anxiety resolved. Family sees a summary. No guilt. Works as dementia progresses. |
Sources: Alzheimer Society of Canada · UCLA Health · UCSF Memory and Aging Center · peer-reviewed dementia caregiving research
Hear Kirstin's story
Hear Kirstin's story
Kirstin sat down with Lori La Bey of Alzheimer's Speaks to share the story behind KindredMind, what she learned caring for her mom Sharon, and why a voice companion that meets people with warmth changes the experience of dementia caregiving for both sides.
An interview with Lori La Bey, Alzheimer's Speaks · Watch on YouTube
What KindredMind actually does
When a person with dementia calls their family caregiver and that person can't answer, they're usually left with voicemail. The anxiety that drove the call goes unresolved. The next call comes sooner. By the end of the morning, the family has missed a dozen calls and the resident is increasingly distressed.
KindredMind changes that. The family caregiver records their voice and builds a personalised knowledge base, their loved one's routines, their worries, the specific reassurances that work for them. When the resident calls the KindredMind number, they hear their family member's voice responding warmly, patiently, and with the specific knowledge of what they need to hear.
The call is answered. The anxiety resolves. The next call comes later, or not at all.
Why this exists
Built by a caregiver. For caregivers.
Kirstin Thomas is the co-founder of KindredMind and the primary caregiver for her mother Sharon, who lives with mixed dementia, both vascular and frontotemporal lobe dementia amplified by a stroke, in a care facility in Ontario. Kirstin visits Sharon almost every day, but it's the calls she can't answer that KindredMind was built for, the 7am calls while getting her kids out the door, the calls during meetings, the calls during her daughter's recital. Sharon just needs to hear her daughter's voice. Kirstin built KindredMind so she always does.
"She just needs to hear my voice. I built this so she always does, even when I can't get to the phone."
Kirstin Thomas, co-founder of KindredMind
Why memory care workers are the right people to share this
Whether you work as a PSW in a Canadian long-term care home, a CNA or home health aide in the United States, or a care worker supporting dementia families anywhere in the world - you are the most trusted person in that family's life right now.
Family caregivers rarely find products like KindredMind through advertising. They find them through the people who are already in their lives and have earned their trust, the PSWs, social workers, and nurses who see what they're going through every day.
You know which families are drowning in missed calls. You know which daughters are screening calls from their own mothers because they can't answer another one today. You know which residents call for their son ten times before lunch and are left with voicemail every time.
When you share KindredMind with those families, you're not selling them something. You're handing them a solution to a problem you've watched them struggle with.
The science behind it
The Alzheimer Society of Canada guidelines and Validation Therapy both confirm: warmth, patience, and the reassurance of a familiar voice are the correct clinical response to dementia separation anxiety. Simulated Presence Therapy, providing that comfort through a loved one's voice, is a recognised, evidence-based approach studied since the 1990s and part of the framework dementia care professionals are trained in.
The key innovation KindredMind brings is responsiveness. Earlier simulated presence approaches used static recordings, the same message played repeatedly. KindredMind's voice responds to what the resident is actually saying, in real time, in the caregiver's voice. It is not a recording. It is a presence.
How to get started as an advocate
Getting started takes about five minutes. You apply through the form below, we send you a personalised referral link and a printable resource card you can share with families, and you start earning when families sign up. There is no training required, no certification, and no commitment, just a resource you believe in and a way to be compensated for sharing it. The program is open to memory care workers in Canada, the United States, and worldwide.
The families you support are already looking for something like this. You already know which ones. You're just the person who helps them find it.