When Vinculum Care’s founder and director, Elia Hussein, first envisioned her company, she wasn’t just building another home health care agency — she was building a bridge.
“The word vinculum comes from Latin, meaning bond and connection,” Hussein explained. “It’s not just a name. It’s the heart of our mission. It represents the unbreakable bond of trust and understanding that connects our caregivers to our clients and their families.”
That bond is now growing through innovation. Vinculum Care’s new project, Dementia 360, is a virtual reality training program that lets caregivers experience what it’s like to live with dementia. Developed with Impart Alliance and funded by a grant supporting caregiver education across Michigan, the project holds deep connection for Hussein.
“I’m originally from Pakistan, where it is customary to take care of our elders at home,” she said. “Here, with smaller families and demanding work schedules, it’s often hard to give our parents the care they deserve, even when we deeply want to. Seeing seniors moved from the comfort of their homes to nursing facilities broke my heart.”
‘Experience is the best teacher’
After 15 years in senior care, Hussein founded Vinculum Care to deliver quality, personalized care with empathy, compassion, and integrity. But she soon recognized that even the most passionate caregivers needed better tools to understand the emotional realities their clients face. Dementia 360 became that tool.
Registered nurse Patricia Bartlett, who partnered with Hussein to develop the program, emphasized the urgency of the issue.
“Dementia affects 6.7 million Americans today, and that number is expected to double by 2060,” she said. “But these aren’t just numbers. These are your parents, your grandparents, your neighbors, your friends.”
Bartlett explained that traditional lecture-based methods often fall short of conveying the emotional and deeply personal reality of living with dementia. In contrast, the Dementia 360 VR simulation immerses users in sensory distortions that mirror the condition — such as tunnel vision, auditory hallucinations, and disorientation.
“Experience is the best teacher,” Bartlett said. “In Dementia 360, you actually feel the confusion, your vision narrows, sounds become overwhelming, and even simple instructions are hard to follow. I’ve cared for many dementia patients, but putting on that headset gave me a whole new understanding of what they go through.”
Jessica Thornton, a personal care assistant and one of the program’s first trainees, described how the experience transformed her caregiving approach.
“Before the training, I understood my clients’ needs only at a surface level,” she said. “But everything changed after stepping into that immersive world. I could feel their confusion, their frustration, their vulnerability. It opened my eyes and my heart. Now I approach every interaction with deeper patience, empathy, and confidence.”
Training with ease and understanding
Thornton regularly uses the program to train others.
“It’s easy to use, you can have one person play the caregiver and another the patient,” she explained. “It helps you learn how to redirect someone who’s agitated or confused. You come out of it with a whole new level of respect for what they’re going through.”
The impact has resonated beyond Vinculum Care’s walls. Fikadu Alemayehu, a Ph.D. student in Leadership Studies and Impart Alliance fellow, said the demonstration changed his perspective.
“This technology gives you the chance to switch roles, to be in the mindset of the patient,” he said. “It does something that practical training cannot do. When I wore the headset, I was scared at first, but completely taken out of the room, 100% shift. It gives you a picture of the depth of the problem.”
IMPART Alliance support fuels reach
As a Mini Grant recipient through Impart Alliance, Hussein credits the funding with helping her expand the program’s reach.
“I was able to hire more direct care workers, train more staff, and open a learning center,” she said. “We’ve trained over 50 direct care workers, and it wouldn’t have been possible without Impart Alliance.”
Though developing the system wasn’t easy, finding the right team and getting approvals was hard, Hussein admitted, the results affirm her perseverance.
“This is just the beginning,” she said. “Our goal is to keep growing and developing more programs that strengthen the bond between caregivers and those they serve.”
As the demonstration concluded, Bartlett reflected on the empathy the headset evokes.
“When I tried to redirect myself in the simulation, I realized how our patients must feel when we try to redirect them,” she said. “If this is how these poor people feel, I never want to make them feel that way again.”
That, Hussein says, is the heart of Vinculum Care’s mission.
“Care starts with understanding,” she said. “And understanding begins when you take the time to see the world through someone else’s eyes.”
