aSister: scheduling for homeless women with special needs

Abstract

Homeless women need special care and attention especially during pregnancy or while trying to overcome substance abuse. We present a solution to help counselors working with these women. The solution allows the counselor to send text messages, which can be used to remind women of their daily schedule, as well as provide them with health and nutritional information. The system will also serve as a persuasive tool to help them develop positive behavior through the delivery of encouraging messages. Cell phone technology usage is increasing rapidly among the homeless population. The system uses text messaging which is an inexpensive and non-obtrusive method of communication. Our study contains details on the design of such a system and also attempts to evaluate the efficacy of such a text messaging system.