Make plans to recognize Senior Citizens Day

Senior Citizens Day is Aug. 21, and it’s an occasion you don’t want to miss. It’s a time to celebrate the nation’s fastest growing demographic and all of the contributions they continue to make to our communities.

Help celebrate the spirit of the day by recognizing the efforts of the seniors in your area. Here are some tips to get started.

• Contact your local chapter of Service Corps for Retired Executives, or SCORE. This agency matches volunteer mentors with small businesses. Offer to support the group by facilitating meeting space, providing refreshments, or hosting a small-business networking event. By supporting these seniors, you are reaching a vital, active section of the community with great connections of their own.
• Remind your community about the vibrancy of your senior community by printing out meaningful quotes from notable people about seniors and aging. Post them on bulletin boards and in the offices of referral sources and senior communities throughout your area. Don’t forget to include your agency’s name and contact information. Find great examples of these quotes at the Emily Fund's website.
• Team up with a local gerontologist’s office and offer an on-site mini senior fair with about six noncompeting local vendors in a doctor’s office parking lot. Have food, marketing brochures and promotional items at the ready. Call TAG Partners at 866-232-6477 or email erica.johnson@partnerwithtag.com to discuss options for promotional items, such as stress balls, hand fans or mini flashlights.
• Contact the producers of a local television morning news show and offer to speak on the air about the importance of aging in place and ways to help seniors do this. Don’t forget to highlight your services.
• Organize and host a caregiver resource fair to help those who are caring for a spouse, parent or other loved one at home. Get tips on organizing the event here.

Spread happiness and build relationships this August

August is Happiness Happens Month, an observance initiated by the Secret Society of Happy People.

The idea behind the month is to make happiness a habit for a month and allow it to take root as a great attitude change all year long. Spread the cheer throughout your community, your client population, and your organization. You’ll be glad you did.

• Start by visiting the sponsor organization’s website for the observance.
• Make an appointment with your favorite assisted living facility activities director. Plan an event centered on residents telling stories about their happiest or most uplifting day. Offer a small treat to those who participate and share their happy stories.
• Send out fun e-cards to all your contacts and remind them to stay happy. Be sure to tell them to call you when they see clients who may need a consultation visit for your services. Here are some fun and free e-cards.
• Host a happiness seminar at a local civic meeting place or church. Ask inspirational speakers with positive messages to address the group, and invite church and civic groups from your entire market to attend. Hand out refreshments and happy-themed promotional items and spread the good news about your services. Contact TAG Partners at 866-232-6477 or email erica.johnson@partnerwithtag.com to discuss promotional items and signage ideas for your event.
• Launch a contest to find the happiest person in your physician referral sources’ offices. Take in a ballot box with entry forms and encourage the entire office to vote on the happiest person. Come back during the first week of September and count the votes. Award a happy face button and a small gift basket to the winner. Make this an annual event in all your referral sources’ offices.
• Organize a “happy moments” essay contest open to all patients and their family members. Ask them to write about the happiest time in their lives. Publish the winning stories in your newsletter and website, and contact your local newspaper and television news stations about this truly feel-good story.

Show the Sandwich Generation how you can help

All across the country, adults expend their time, energy, money and love caring for their children or grandchildren while also caring for their own parents. This group, known as the Sandwich Generation, takes caregiving to new heights.

July is Sandwich Generation Month, an observance initiated by the Sandwich Generation Resource Group. Make a point to reach out to members of this group and show them how home care can help ease their caregiving responsibilities, allowing them to enjoy more of the time they spend with their children and aging parents.

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Host a family day at a local museum, zoo or park. Encourage your clients’ caregivers and their families to attend.
• Partner with non-competing providers and host a large multigenerational family picnic for your community. Have snacks, music and fun activities for people of all ages. Be sure to have plenty of agency brochures and flyers available to educate about how home care can help with a family’s caregiving duties.
• Create a flyer about the Sandwich Generation and include tips to help these caregivers manage their many duties — don’t forget your agency’s contact information. Leave them in the waiting rooms of your community’s general practitioners. Find great articles with relevant information here, here, here and here.
• Contact a local television news station and pitch a story about the Sandwich Generation. Tell them about a client’s family that is doing it all — adults caring for children and aging parents while maintaining full-time jobs. Offer yourself as an expert resource on how to cope with the situation and the kind of help available for members of the Sandwich Generation.
• Partner with a financial planner and elder law specialist and host a workshop at a senior center or place of worship on planning ahead to protect a parent’s assets. Topics can include estate planning, long-term care options, Medicare and advance directives. Focus your agency’s presentation on ways to make caregiving easier, including how home care can help.

Health education: A marketing opportunity you may be missing

Hosting regular health-related classes for seniors is a simple and direct way to reach out to your community’s older members and help them see you as an expert when it comes to senior care. You will establish a meaningful presence in the locations they frequent (senior centers, libraries, ILFs, ALFs, etc.) while you provide relevant and useful information they can apply to their lives right away.

Free health-related education classes are also a great way to build relationships with facilities that serve your area’s senior population because they help strengthen their own image, too. After all, that’s the place they’re turning to for this great programming.

It may be daunting to consider setting up an education program from scratch, but there are ready-made classes designed to make it easy.

TAG Partners’ Health Matters Education Series is a collection of senior-focused classes designed for a non-clinician to present. Topics cover a broad range of issues important to this community, including understanding Medicare, fall prevention, heart health, and depression.

In addition to instructor guides, other available presentation elements include a pop-up screen to draw attention to your event, informational flyers for attendees, posters and postcards to promote your event, sales brochures to assist in setting up your event, and a marketing kit to help you tie it all together. Items are available in a package online, but email erica.johnson@partnerwithtag.com to ask about individual pricing.

Download our free e-book “12 Steps to Strategically Improve Your Home Health Referrals” to learn about other ways you can engage with this community and build referral partnerships.

Celebrate senior independence this July 4

Maintaining the independence they’ve enjoyed their entire lives is one of the most important goals for many seniors. This Independence Day, celebrate more than the birth of our nation. Celebrate the great strides your community’s seniors have made in maintaining their independence — and show them what you can do to help.

• Studies have shown one of the best things a person can do to maintain health and independence throughout life — and especially during older age — is to engage in regular physical activity. Learn more about the amount of physical activity recommended for older adults in this CDC physical activity information sheet. Sponsor a fitness activity at your favorite local senior centers and encourage the attendees to make an effort to get more physical activity, such as walking, in their everyday routines.
• Call your local VA hospital and offer to sponsor a local talent and patriotic musical event. Include sing-alongs, skits, and musical performances. Use this as a great opportunity to get to know the decision makers at this hospital a little better.
• Challenge your community’s seniors to exercise their mental and competitive skills by hosting a patriotic trivia contest. Topics can include the Fourth of July, civics, modern government, or wars such as WWII, Vietnam, and the conflicts in the Middle East. Find facts and quizzes here and here.
• Sponsor a Stars and Stripes dinner dance for all your referral sources by teaming up with a local senior center. Offer other non-competing healthcare providers the opportunity to play a role in the event — it could become an annual community celebration!
• Take strawberry, vanilla and blueberry ice cream to a local assisted living facility and deliver a quick 30-minute presentation on identifying and avoiding depression. Find helpful information here or use this ready-made class on depression that a non clinician can present.
• Offer to chaperone and assist with SNF or LTC residents who want to attend a local fireworks display. Attending a July 4 fireworks display is fun and requires very little physical activity. Some events are even accompanied by orchestra concerts or other musical performances.