Vitalliance: rethinking the societal stakes of home help
The sector of home services for dependent persons is facing a multitude of demands. Vitalliance is setting up adapted services to meet the current and future societal challenges.
- Can you introduce yourself?
Rafika El Madhoun: Today, I am Sales Director at Vitalliance, with a professional background in the Home Help sector. I was first of all an Auxiliary of Life for 7 years, parallel to my studies. In 2007, I joined Vitalliance as a Customer Service Representative and then Branch Manager in the Sarthe region. These first years were important with a direct link with the Auxiliary Life teams and the Clients. I was then in charge of a Regional Division and then Network Management at the national level.
From a personal point of view, I am the guardian of my sister who is in a situation of disability. Every day, this personal experience guides me and gives me ideas for the development of Vitalliance with a real impact on the well-being of people with disabilities, which is important.
- What is your role within Vitalliance and what does it consist of?
Rafika El Madhoun: Today, my role within Vitalliance consists in defining the development strategy of the agencies, i.e. the publics concerned, the services we make available to our beneficiaries, the discourse and the tools to present the services. In a complementary way, I am in charge of partnerships with the main players in the sector. Finally, I am working on defining the customer experience within Vitalliance, in order to always seek the best experience and satisfaction for our beneficiaries.
- What type of public does Vitalliance help?
Rafika El Madhoun: Today, Vitalliance offers services that focus on keeping dependent people at home. We specialise in helping elderly people with a loss of autonomy and people with disabilities.
Our services are specialised activities in human assistance. We intervene within the framework of a life project adapted to each beneficiary. First of all, we ensure a well being at home with daily activities such as assistance with meals, help getting up and going to bed, administrative assistance, etc… It is important to frame the services according to the needs of each person. Also, we increasingly offer leisure solutions, such as access to daily sports, travel and culture.
We are actively working on skills development. For example, we are developing an internal unit specialising in services for people with head trauma and brain injuries. In a complementary way, we are working on different expertises on autism and behavioural disorders, Alzheimer’s and related disorders. These different solutions must meet specific needs and be the subject of in-house training sessions for agencies and Auxiliary of Life teams.
- As you said earlier, you also offer many activities, including sports and travel. How do the ancillary activities you offer (travel, sport) improve the quality of life of your beneficiaries?
Rafika El Madhoun: The fact that we offer a lot of activities in the field of home care is relatively innovative, because we address a dimension that is external to the home. Until now, when we talk about home support, we tend to reduce the person to this simple notion of home. As if life could not exist outside this framework, which is false. At Vitalliance, our desire is to include the people we accompany in society, but also to accompany them outside their home. We accompany people in their efforts to do sports or to go on holiday. If they have a travel dream, we can see together how to make it come true.
For example, the simple fact of going to the swimming pool for a person with a disability requires us to think about the organisation, the person accompanying him or her, the security measures to be put in place, the financing, etc. Our mission is therefore to help our clients in this regard and to make sports, leisure and cultural activities possible.
- Today, new technologies are increasingly present in our daily lives. In particular, they can help the elderly and simplify their lives. Do you offer such services?
Rafika El Madhoun: We offer fairly simple and accessible services that revolve around remote assistance. Both to secure the beneficiary and to offer services to the family. We provide them directly with a tablet on which they can communicate with their loved ones, share photos, in addition to having a 24-hour remote assistance service. This contributes to digital inclusion for dependent people. There is also a connected watch that makes it possible, for example, to define a security perimeter around the house. If a person with Alzheimer’s disease leaves this perimeter, an alert is sent to the smartphone of the family and carers.
- Do you have other development projects in the coming years? Can you tell us more about them?
Rafika El Madhoun: We are starting to think about projects with virtual personal assistants. For example, the client asks a question about the schedule of the next intervention and the virtual assistant can answer it automatically. This will never replace the daily support of the teams and agencies, but it can reassure people at home. We would also like to work with a company specializing in a digital solution to help people in a situation of dependency to work on their coordination and movement. There are a lot of projects over the next few years, and demand is growing strongly. A key factor in the success of this type of project is adoption at home, ensuring and measuring that it facilitates the daily lives of our beneficiaries.
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