Southern Cross Care Tasmania is using VR to reach residents who have stopped engaging — and finding that the right experience unlocks memories, conversation, and connection that nothing else could.
When Lumen Hart sets up a VR session at Mount Esk, the question she asks first is a simple one: where have you been? It is not a clinical question. It is not a lifestyle assessment. It is the question that determines whether a resident spends the next hour somewhere meaningful, or just somewhere.
Lumen is the Lifestyle Coordinator at Mount Esk, a residential aged care home run by Southern Cross Care Tasmania. She introduced VR into the site’s engagement program in early 2025 and has since built it into a regular part of how her team works, running sessions at least once a week, in group settings and in residents’ rooms.
“It’s so beneficial,” she says. “And you don’t realise until you put those headsets on and take someone back to a town they once visited, or a life they once had. It’s hard to describe how happy it can make a person.”
The residents who stopped going out
Mount Esk, like most residential aged care homes, has residents who no longer leave their rooms. Some have lost mobility. Some carry quiet embarrassment about what they can no longer do independently. Some have simply withdrawn.
Lumen’s team brings the headsets to them on a trolley. No transfer, no chair, no complicated setup. The experience travels to the resident.
“Not a lot of people come out of their rooms these days,” she says. “So we like to take the experience to them. We can give our residents who no longer really participate the experience of not being inside the four walls they are in.”
For residents who felt the world had contracted to the size of a room, that shift matters. One resident who had done extensive international travel before losing her mobility began visiting the places she had been. It changed her days.
“She would talk about her experiences in those places,” Lumen recalls. “What she did, who she was with, what she ate. She’d talk about it pretty much all day. It would set the tone for her mood for the next few days.”
A trip back to India
The story Lumen returns to most readily involves a resident whose family had lived in India, and who had travelled there frequently with her grandmother as a child. The connection to those memories had faded over decades. Her grandmother was long gone. The travel had long since stopped.
Lumen chose an Indian travel experience, a vivid immersive tour through landscape, colour and culture.
“She talks about it all the time,” Lumen says. “It probably brought back memories that she didn’t even know that she had. You got to know a little bit more about her and her life.”
The experience did not just benefit the resident. It opened a door for the team. Staff who had known this resident for months suddenly understood her differently.
“Every time they learn something new, it’s kind of like light bulb moments in their head,” Lumen says. “That’s what she used to do. That’s who she used to be. And it develops a little bit more of a deeper respect for the individual. You have something to talk about later.”
Suzanne, one of the residents at Mount Esk, described it simply: “It feels like you’re really there. For a little while, you forget you’re sitting in a chair and you’re off exploring the world.”
Another resident, Terry, connected the experiences to something deeper: “Some of the places remind me of holidays with my family. Those memories are very special to me.”
The session in practice
Lumen’s team runs a mix of group and individual sessions. Group sessions begin in the dining room, where residents choose from a shortlist of experiences and spend time together in the same virtual space. The conversation that follows, between residents comparing what they saw and what it reminded them of, is part of the value.
One session stands out. Three male residents, all with a history of motorbikes and fast cars, were grouped together for a motorcycle ride experience. Lumen added a fan to make it feel more real.
“They were sitting on their chairs, and I got a fan,” she laughs. “They thought it was absolutely funny. You’ve got to try and make it more immersive.”
For residents in their rooms, the approach is quieter. Lumen leaves time after the session for the resident to talk. The conversation that follows a one-on-one experience, she says, is as important as the experience itself.
The content that generates the most engagement is almost always personal. Residents who grew up on farms watch a farm life experience and can name the breeds of cattle, describe the milking process, explain the feed. Residents who travelled extensively navigate those places again and come back with stories that are entirely their own.
“You don’t get as much conversation from a person unless they’ve experienced it,” Lumen says. “Then they can go on huge, big stories about their previous life. That recall is very beneficial.”
What comes next
Lumen and the team at Southern Cross Care Tasmania is looking forward to using SilVR Pathways, a platform that builds individual resident profiles and generates personalised session plans. Her instinct about what makes the difference already matches what Pathways is designed to do.
“If it’s more specific to their past or their interests, they’re going to get more meaningful engagement out of it,” she says. “Rather than dragging them to the Taj Mahal when they don’t have any interest in it. But if you took them to England, and their family’s from England, it’s a lot more of a specific interaction.”
For providers yet to introduce VR, she has a direct recommendation.
“Best thing I could say is just to give it a try,” she says. “Sometimes you just need to try it to know how good it is.”
About Southern Cross Care Tasmania
Southern Cross Care Tasmania is a not-for-profit aged care provider delivering residential and community services across Tasmania. Mount Esk is one of their residential homes, located in northern Tasmania. More information is available at www.scctas.org.au.
