Supported by the 2026 Xishan District "Xishan Social Good" public welfare venture capital program, the "Smart Warmth — AI-Assisted Home Care Empowerment Plan for Disabled Seniors," implemented by the Wuxi Xishan District Lingyun Charity Service Center, is making progress in Yangjian Town's Yangjian Village.
The project focuses on 30 disabled seniors in Yangjian Town and their family caregivers. It addresses practical challenges such as low care quality, physical and mental exhaustion among caregivers, lack of skills, and broken support systems, by building an innovative three-tier intervention model of "respite + AI empowerment + support." Additionally, social workers are providing case management for five high-risk families through a "one family, one strategy" approach.
The first tier, "Respite Services," involves sending professionals to temporarily take over caregiving duties at home, accompanying seniors to medical appointments, and running errands on their behalf. This provides caregivers with much-needed rest while ensuring disabled seniors still receive professional attention. The second tier, "AI Empowerment," brings in community resources by introducing AI-powered smart voice devices. These act as 24-hour online intelligent care assistants, offering voice interaction, health knowledge broadcasts, scheduled check-ins, psychological companionship, and emotional support. At the same time, AI caregiving skills classes and AI memory repair workshops are being held. The third tier, "Support," focuses on case management for high-risk families, integrating resources to resolve complex issues while offering psychological counseling and family networking events to build a peer support network.
The project uses AI smart voice devices as its core technological foundation, leveraging digital tools to address the four major gaps in home care: safety, emergency response, health, and emotional connection. In Yangjian Village, social workers are visiting homes one by one, using conversational engagement to learn about the real difficulties and emotional distress faced by caregiving relatives. They observe seniors' physical conditions and current home care situations, identify bottlenecks in caregiving, document individual needs, and build professional trust with families.
Covering areas such as home environment assessments, caregiving pressure relief, home modification measurements for elder-friendliness, and multi-channel resource linking, social workers are conducting risk evaluations. Special attention is given to hazards like floor safety, daily movement pathways, and indoor facilities. They complete on-site measurements for age-friendly renovations and compile lists of assistive device needs and environmental adjustments, reducing the risk of falls and injuries. At the same time, because long-term, high-intensity caregiving can push family members to physical and emotional burnout, social workers balance the needs of both seniors and caregivers, providing psychological companionship and emotional support to ease caregivers' mental strain.
The project operates on a "one household, one file, matched to needs" basis. Based on visit assessments, social workers combine respite services, AI smart voice care devices, and other resources to design customized follow-up support pathways for each family. To date, special files have been established for all five households, and urgent needs for modifications and caregiving support have been documented and registered. Going forward, resources will be allocated, and dynamic follow-up visits will continue, ensuring every concern is recorded and every service is tracked.
In the next phase, the project will deepen the "smart + compassionate" community care model for disabled seniors, improving home care efficiency and safety while building replicable, scalable practical experience.