‘It’s almost magical’: how robotic pets are helping UK care home residents

Oak Manor care home’s activity co-ordinator Lynda Endersby holds a robotic dog next to a resident, Frances Barrett. Endersby says the pets have helped the care workers to avoid medicating some residents. Photograph: Anna Gordon/The Guardian

“You’re bloody lovely ain’t you,” said Frances Barrett, as the robotic cat she was stroking flicked its ears and whiskers one lunchtime this week at the Oak Manor care home in Bedfordshire.

The resident was one of several who live with dementia playing with the home’s small menagerie of animatronic animals that were originally designed to entertain American girls aged four to eight but have found a growing market in British care homes.