Fronditha Care is building a health and wellbeing framework that positions VR not as a leisure activity but as a measurable intervention, with SilVR Pathways set to become the evidence infrastructure behind it.
For most aged care providers, the engagement conversation starts and ends with lifestyle. Activities are planned, sessions are delivered, residents participate. The question of whether any of it actually changed how someone felt, or how they functioned, often goes unanswered.
Fronditha Care is asking a different question.
“We obviously want people to have fun,” says Nancy Andrian, Strategic Advisor at the Fronditha Care Foundation. “But we want to make sure there are measurable outcomes for our clients. We’re embedding something that has a genuine benefit for that person, not just something enjoyable.”
That framing, specific, evidence-focused and deliberately grounded in health rather than recreation, is shaping how Fronditha Care is building its new wellbeing framework. And SilVR sits at the centre of it.
A Framework Built Around Impact, Not Activity
Fronditha Care supports predominantly Greek-background residents across multiple sites in Victoria. The organisation has long understood that leisure and lifestyle programs matter. What it is now working to build is a framework that can demonstrate exactly how much they matter, and to whom.
The foundation of this work is a Wellbeing Index, a tool Fronditha Care is developing in collaboration with researchers at Monash University to measure residents’ baseline wellbeing on arrival and track changes over time. Claire Sturrock, General Manager of the Fronditha Care Foundation, describes the project as bigger and more complex than anyone initially anticipated.
“When it started out, we thought, ‘This is going to be great, we’ll have a dashboard, a wheel, and we’ll be able to measure everything,'” she says. “But the further we went into it, the bigger the project got.”
It is in that gap, between the aspiration to measure wellbeing and the infrastructure to do it, that SilVR Pathways has found a clear role.
“Pathways would actually lean into our Wellbeing Index,” Nancy explains. “When a resident logs on and uses the headset, that session is recorded. Over time it determines what they like, captures how they felt, and builds a picture. We’ll be able to track things like: ten residents have been watching a certain amount of hours, they’re leaning into Greece, their mood is good because they’re looking forward to the session. That’s the kind of data we can extract and use. Pathways will be a really good bridge until we build the index.”
Behaviour, Cognition, Isolation: The Three Outcomes Fronditha Care Is Seeing
Nancy is direct about the outcomes she has seen, and specific about why they matter clinically.
“We have residents with cognitive decline who can show behavioural issues, aggression, for example. When some of those residents put the goggles on and you take them to a beautiful place, it sparks memories, makes them feel good, creates awe and wonder.”
For a predominantly Greek resident population, the cultural dimension adds another layer. “Our clients are mostly Greek, so if we go to Greece and they see familiar places, it triggers memories. That directly supports maintenance of cognitive function.”
SilVR supports experiences across more than 30 languages, meaning providers like Fronditha Care can meet residents in their own cultural and linguistic world, not just their geographic one.
She names a third outcome that tends to receive less attention: social isolation. More than half of people who move into residential aged care, she says, remain in their rooms and become socially withdrawn. “Social isolation leads to depression, and depression can lead to people just giving up. This intervention specifically targets that.”
These are not soft outcomes. They are the kinds of changes that the Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards now ask providers to demonstrate.
Building Programs That Outlast Any One Person
Fronditha Care’s approach to VR has not been without its challenges. Some sites took to the technology quickly. Others pushed back.
Nancy traces the shift at one of their sites now running sessions confidently, to a deliberate change management process. “The initial resistance was just the unknown. The difference was that we built and curated that eight-week program, trained them properly, and made them not afraid of the equipment. Once they saw that it’s actually great, the shift happened.”
Claire adds another dimension: what the program means for staff themselves. “When they deliver the program well, they bring real professional value to what they do. A lot of our staff aren’t particularly digitally literate. That’s never been a requirement in their roles before. I think the upskilling aspect is a significant thing.”
Nancy frames it as a shift in professional identity. “They’re shifting from seeing themselves as leisure and lifestyle workers to seeing themselves as a bridge between fun and clinical care. They should be feeling important, because they are important.”
The staff dimension also matters for a structural reason that Nancy keeps returning to: sustainability. “Good staff don’t stay forever. If a program’s success depends entirely on one brilliant individual, we’ve got nothing when that person leaves. We have to build programs that are independent of any one person, programs that can be picked up and used by whoever has the passion and the ambition to run with them.”
It is exactly this problem that Pathways is designed to address. Resident profiles, session history, preferences and observations do not disappear when a staff member moves on. They stay in the system, available to the next person on shift from day one.
Where It Goes Next
Fronditha Care’s vision for VR extends well beyond the group session format most providers begin with.
Nancy sees growing potential in one-on-one sessions, particularly for residents who will not leave their rooms. “No matter how much we encourage some people, they won’t come out. So if we can streamline our methodology and get volunteers trained up on one-on-one sessions, we can reach those residents too.”
She also sees a stronger role for VR in supporting residents heading toward cognitive decline, and in Fronditha Care’s community care programs, where the same principles of meaningful, evidence-based engagement apply to people living at home.
The underlying logic stays constant across all of it. “If we create something that will make such an impact, it’s worth the investment,” Nancy says. What Fronditha Care is building is not a collection of activities. It is the infrastructure to prove that engagement has a measurable impact on how people feel, function, and live.
About Fronditha Care
Fronditha Care is a leading aged care provider serving Greek-Australian communities across Victoria, offering residential aged care, home care, and community support services. The Fronditha Care Foundation works to embed evidence-based wellbeing initiatives across the organisation’s programs. Learn more at https://frondithacare.org.au/.
