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Welcome to the month of May!

It’s a time when we welcome blossoming flowers, warmer temperatures and the observance of Older Americans Month. In the next few days, aging services providers across the country will tip their hats to this annual event — perhaps going so far as to plan a promotion around it — yet we find that most providers don’t understand the history and true purpose of the celebration.

Older Americans Month was established in 1963 to support and recognize the small population of Americans aged 65 and over at that time. Fifty-five years later, if Older Americans Month were a person, it could join AARP and would probably start getting mailers about your communities and services. The impetus for the creation of the observance came from the National Council of Senior Citizens who worked with then-president John F. Kennedy to establish Senior Citizens Month, which has evolved over time into the annual event we know today. Starting with JFK, every president since has issued a formal proclamation, asking that the nation pay tribute to older Americans in some way — whether through a ceremony, a fair or some other activity.

The program is now under the purview of the Administration on Aging, in partnership with other agencies and entities. Each year, a theme is determined, with supporting materials provided to help community leaders recognize older Americans for their lives and service. The theme for 2018 is “Engage at Every Age,” which aims to emphasize that you are never too old (or too young) to take part in activities that can enrich your life. Specifically, the program is shining a light on mental and physical wellness this year, including traditional exercise-based ideas, as well as more unusual ones, like establishing a mentoring relationship.

We encourage you to explore the website for Older Americans Month and make use of all of the resources provided. The outline great ideas for programs that can help energize your residents and team members, as well as the greater community that your organization serves.

Click here to visit the website for OAM.

Remember: If you are posting about Older Americans Month on social media, use the hashtag #oma18! to share all of the great things you are doing!

This article is the third in a three-part series, offering a fresh perspective on a topic that aging services providers often overlook — older adults experiencing homelessness. For this series, we are interviewing Brother Damien Joseph of the Society of St. Francis. Damien Joseph works with people experiencing homelessness in California and offers some incredible insights.

You can read the first article here.

You can read the second article here.

In our last article, we discussed issues relating to the health of older adults experiencing homelessness. Are aged individuals more likely to seek assistance or less? Is there any discrimination in the services rendered? (Meaning that some shelters prefer to help young, homeless mothers — do they avoid the older population?)

I don’t know if there is a pattern in likelihood to seek assistance. I do know there is a sub-population of “chronically homeless” people, who by virtue of being defined as living on the street long term, are often older. This population is often less likely to seek assistance for a variety of reasons, including sheer weariness of trying to navigate a system of vastly inadequate resources.

Legal protections prevent most shelters from turning away an individual based on age. There are certainly specialized shelters for women with children and so on, but a shelter open to general populations may not consider age. What they MAY and DO consider is degree of medical need. If the shelter decides that a person potentially has more medical, mobility or assistance needs than it can accommodate, it does not have to accept that client. Obviously, older individuals are more likely to have these needs (especially if they’ve been experiencing homelessness) and, therefore, are more likely to be turned down. It’s legally not considered discrimination, but it has the same effect.

Just last week, I was with a group talking with the Episcopal chaplain at a large LA hospital. Looking at his current hospital census, he could quickly identify nine individuals who were admitted to the facility for a treatment lasting a couple of days but had now been there from three to nine months because their age and medical needs made it impossible to find shelter or program housing. This hospital, being a religious institution and committed to care over profit, will not put these individuals out on the street, but it has received no payment from Medicare or any insurer since the first few days of the hospitalization of these nine. Other hospitals would not be willing to take such a hit.

In San Francisco, a chronically homeless woman we knew well arrived at our door one chilly windy evening, barefoot, wearing only sweatpants and a thin T-shirt. She was heavily sedated by antipsychotics. The hospital where she had just been treated for pneumonia had discharged her with a taxi voucher bearing our address. Within half an hour, we had to call EMS again, and she was readmitted to another hospital for further care. If she had not knocked on our door, she might well have died that night.

Do you find that individual people are less likely to help an older person than a younger one?

I’m endlessly bothered by how much “compassion fatigue” I see in our cities. Most people walk past their unsheltered and needy neighbors as if they weren’t there. They don’t make eye contact, don’t speak to them and cross the street, if necessary. If it were possible to help less than “not at all,” then perhaps I could guess whether younger or older people were more likely to be ignored.

Are older homeless people more likely to have been homeless for a long period of their life and have just given up on finding a home? Or do they usually find themselves homeless later in life, through no fault of their own?

One of the most important truths of work with the community experiencing homelessness is that there is no typical story. There are as many stories and as many causes of homelessness as there are individuals experiencing it. It may have been common at one point for most older people living unsheltered to be among the “chronically homeless,” but I meet people in all varieties of situations.

Some have been chronically homeless. Many have been impacted by the ever-increasing cost of living and income gap. In cities like San Francisco and LA, where gentrification is rampant, many have fallen victim to developer greed, as building buyers find legal loopholes in rent control and force people out of places they’ve lived in for decades. Some have lost their retirement income to recent financial crises. Many were among the growing number of Americans whose full-time, honest work never left enough to save for retirement and now find that meager Social Security payments don’t go very far, especially in a city. Some have been made destitute by catastrophic medical problems, the onset of mental illness or addiction. Those who are new to being homeless as a senior are often especially at sea. Trying to navigate the system and compete for drastically insufficient resources is a huge and baffling adjustment. Many are just overwhelmed by it.

As we conclude our series of interviews with Damien Joseph, we must reflect on what we, as individuals and as organizations, are doing to help older adults that are at risk for homelessness. Each of our organizations can do something.

At Varsity, we’ve made a contribution to the Society of St. Francis to assist Damien Joseph with his ongoing ministry. If you’re interested in learning more about the work of the Society of St. Francis, you can visit the website at www.s-s-f.org.

If you’d like to make a donation to help the Society’s work, you can do so at http://www.s-s-f.org/give . There, you’ll find information about sending a check by mail or making an online donation.

This article is the second in a three-part series, offering a fresh perspective on a topic that aging services providers often overlook — older adults experiencing homelessness. For this series, we are interviewing Brother Damien Joseph of the Society of St. Francis. Damien works with people experiencing homelessness in California and offers some incredible insights.  

You can read the first article here.

There will be one more post in this series, so make sure to stop back next week as we complete the interview.

Many people think of the homeless as younger, or even middle-aged. From your experience, how many people experiencing homelessness are age 55+? What struggles might they face that the younger homeless population doesn’t?

Your point is well made. In most reports I’ve looked at, “young” is defined as under 25 or thereabouts. HUD reports to congress seem to use this division. The category of homeless seniors is often left out, but the older homeless population is growing alarmingly fast.

In my personal contact with individuals living directly on the streets, I am alarmed both by how many very young homeless there are and by how many older homeless there are. Increasing income disparity, cultural changes, individual social and moral attitudes and a deeply flawed social safety net are among many factors contributing to the fact that no age group is safe from homelessness.

The unique struggles for older homeless individuals are many. Many do use an age well below 55 or 65 to define “older” among individuals who experience homelessness, because the toll it takes on a person physically and emotionally is devastating and certainly reduces life expectancy. I’m often surprised when a person who has been unhoused for an extended period tells me his or her age. That “little old homeless man” you see wandering around your town may turn out to be 50, not 70!

I know that, even in middle age, I find that a night away with a lousy mattress is taxing. Imagine, as a senior, how uncomfortable it is, sleeping on hard surfaces like the ground, concrete, cots or metal shelter bunks! Plus, many are sleeping exposed to the elements. Even in shelters, temperature controls can be unpredictable, and leaks and dampness abound.

The “street” population explodes in numbers every day around 7 or 8 a.m. That’s the time that many, if not most shelters require most of their residents to leave for the day, returning again in the evening. During those daylight hours, folks will have to deal with whatever temperature, weather and air quality issues there are. Escape from the sun, heat, rain and so on may be possible, or individuals may be continually “moved along” by business owners and police who don’t want to see them hanging around. Many cities have been actively removing public seating areas, or at least designing them to make lying down impossible. In some cities, including in San Francisco, it is illegal to sit down or set down your property on a public sidewalk. In order to comply with this law, an individual would literally have to remain on the move, carrying all of his or her possessions all day long. Businesses increasingly install what activists call “violent architecture” or “anti-homeless measures,” placing raised or jagged structures on flat surfaces to prevent them from being used to rest.

Finally, we must address the lack of access to appropriate health care and medical treatment. While this affects all people experiencing homelessness, the older population is clearly hit hardest. Most are uninsured or underinsured. State/federal program coverage generally gives them access to care, but certainly not the best available care. Elderly individuals without stable housing may find great difficulty in receiving any medical care requiring privacy, storing medications in need of refrigeration or other special conditions, keeping track of times for dosages and so on. Add to this continual exposure to infection, trash, body fluids, vehicle exhaust, smog and so on, and it’s remarkable that older people in this context can ever be healthy.

Clinics that specially serve this population exist, of course, but the one where I volunteered in San Francisco was continually swamped with demand, had few providers (with high turnover) and lacked access to easy referrals, specialty equipment and procedures that would be readily accessible in a private practice. I performed routine record reviews for patients due for follow-up but often found that they had no phone or address at which to be contacted, or that, in the frequent instability of temporary housing, they had moved, and their Medicare now required them to start over with a new clinic. Consistent care is rare. Many, even the very ill, never seek medical treatment until they end up in an ER. I met an elderly unsheltered man last year who asked for help filling his prescription for an infection on his leg. He pulled up his pant leg to reveal his entire lower leg blackened and necrotic. Had he been a properly insured, or able to pay consumer rate, he would have been instantly hospitalized for so serious an infection. But somewhere, some provider gave him a prescription for some cream and told him to figure out how to pay to fill it. This really drove home the issues with health care for me.

Health care is such an important example of what aging services providers offer. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could survive for long without appropriate care from trained professionals. Assuredly, this is a problem for our whole society — one without an easy solution.

We hope you’ll join us next week when we conclude our interview with Damien Joseph and wrap up our discussion on the challenges faced by older adults experiencing homelessness.

This article is the first in a three-part series, offering a fresh perspective on a topic that aging services providers often overlook — older adults experiencing homelessness. Over the next few weeks, we will post sequels to this piece, so make sure to check back!

I had settled into the back seat of my Uber. My phone was in my hand, and I was scrolling through emails, trying to catch up after a flight to Los Angeles. As we drove under an underpass, bright colors caught my attention. I looked up to find a sea of brightly colored tents, many in tatters, formed by a small enclave of individuals experiencing homelessness. I was struck by how many of the people I saw were older adults. Later, during a meeting with our team at Varsity, I mentioned this. Our communications manager, Seth Anthony, said that he knew a man in California that was ministering to this population.

That man is Brother Damien Joseph, a friar in the Society of St. Francis, an Episcopalian-affiliated religious order based out of San Francisco. Three years ago, Damien Joseph gave up all of his worldly possessions and moved to California, where he found a calling working with people experiencing homelessness. Because of his vast firsthand experience with this population, we interviewed him, and he provided some fresh perspective on how older individuals experiencing homelessness are treated.

Can you give us a brief overview of those without shelter that you’ve interacted with?

There are multiple types of homelessness. While we automatically picture someone sleeping on the sidewalk, our homelessness crisis also includes people living in shelters (sometimes NOT a step up from the street), SRO (single-room occupancy) type shelters, transitional housing, unstable housing (“couch surfing,” for example) and so on.  It’s very important to recognize that the scope and complexity of the problem is far greater than just what we can all see driving around a big city.

Second, just as in any field, language is loaded. It’s worth noting that advocates are trying to steer conversation away from referring to “the homeless,” as it is seen as depersonalizing and as defining a person, and his or her worth, by his or her housing status. People working in the field prefer to use language like “people experiencing homelessness.”

Do you find it true that many older people who are experiencing homelessness didn’t have an opportunity to plan for retirement? Perhaps they don’t have any savings, or they lost the savings in some way? Do you find it common for folks to have not had any retirement plan and now find themselves in trouble?

I’m inclined to think more cases involve simply having no chance of preparing for retirement, rather than having simply failed to plan. Politicians want to find the “solution” to homelessness, but there is no one solution. Homelessness is a complex phenomenon perpetuated by elements out of our control and by elements we absolutely can control, both as individuals and as a society.

Addressing issues regarding seniors and homelessness, like any other problem, is best done by making changes BEFORE seniors become homeless. Increases in available resources, especially health care, is an essential, practical and right place to start. Additional shelter services are needed, but long-term supportive housing solutions are needed far more. What is needed most is also most difficult to get: a change in the hearts and minds of people.

When all of us believe that no one deserves to be left in the gutter, when we get it through our heads that no one “deserves” to be poor, when we realize how much of what we have is pure “dumb luck,” when we treat everyone with the dignity they deserve, then we’ll make some progress.

It’s all about people taking care of people.

I found that last quote resonate, as it’s something I hear from aging services executives all over the country: We take care of people. So, what are our non-profit aging services organizations doing to take care of those most at risk, such as those experiencing homelessness? 

We hope you’ll join us next week when we continue our interview with Damien Joseph and further discuss the challenges faced by those experiencing homelessness.

We were pleased to sponsor a basecamp at this year’s LeadingAge PEAK Conference. While much of our team was front and center, sharing knowledge and experience, I took the opportunity to attend other presentations and listen to what our colleagues in the aging services space were saying. After reflecting on the event, I boiled my experience down to three takeaways that really provided insight for me.

Design Trends

My favorite presentation from the event had to be “7 Hot Design Trends” from Gregory Scott of RLPS Architects. Greg is well-known in our space, and I really respect his insight. He covered a plethora of information in his 20 minutes on stage. From the desire for more urban-style living to hybrid homes and how to make the most of apartment repositions, it was a wealth of great tips and tricks. Certainly, I’ll always remember this — “When remodeling an apartment, don’t mess with the plumbing. Leave it where it is and build around it.” That’s some great advice!

Expanding Services and Communities

Across the country, we are seeing a trend of growth among providers. However, the form this growth takes can be very different from organization to organization. We heard from Bob Dahl of Elim Care regarding the community’s expansion to new parts of the country, spurred on by grassroots support, which, in turn, caused a realignment in strategic thinking for Elim.

On the other end of the spectrum, we heard from the Abramson Center for Jewish Life, which has found new ways to provide services to the wider community while not drastically expanding its campus size. By offering more home-based services, Abramson has seen rapid growth over the last 10 years, going from serving 400 people to more than 4,000 within a decade.

Both of these models have merit, and we’ll be interested to see how other organizations put these lessons into practice.

The Growth and Impact of Memory Support

Our team thoroughly enjoyed the Great Minds Gala, held on Tuesday evening. LeadingAge honored award-winning actress Marcia Gay Harden and renowned chef Madison Cowan with the Proxmire Award for their advocacy and activism for people impacted by memory diseases. The growth of the memory support sector within aging services is phenomenal, and at Varsity, we are working on some creative ways to bring awareness to the value memory support can provide, including a better quality of life for the individuals and their families.

We thank LeadingAge for a great conference and hope that everyone who stopped by our basecamp learned something valuable from our team!

At Varsity, we’re always looking for inspiration and ideas on ways we can improve communications and marketing for our clients. Like any industry, we review what thought leaders are doing to help us keep current with trends and innovations, but that strategy can only get you so far. If you’re always working to keep up with the competition, you’re never really taking the lead. This caused us to ask, “What industry is like ours, has a similar sales funnel and encounters the same kinds of challenges?”

The answer was simple, really — post-secondary education.

Today, colleges and universities spend millions of dollars each year trying to attract just the right mix of students to their institutions. They build beautiful campuses, filled with state-of-the-art learning facilities, luxurious amenities and grandiose sports fields, all in an effort to entice potential students to choose them over their competitors. They aren’t just selling the degree; they’re selling the lifestyle. It becomes about self-identity and being part of something bigger than yourself.

The marketing techniques being employed by these schools aren’t entirely dissimilar to those that retirement communities are beginning to use.

Selling someone retirement at a community isn’t about whether you have the right floor plans or enough square footage for their furniture. Today’s retirees are looking for a well-rounded community that provides a variety of engaging activities, high-quality dining options, beautiful living spaces, security and a sense of belonging. Just as students are proud to show off the school they attend, our residents are proud to talk about the community they chose to retire to — and why not? They spent their hard-earned retirement investments to enjoy their lives at a community full of their peers, just as college students do.

As we reviewed marketing materials from post-secondary schools, especially their websites and social media presences, we found similar themes to the messages we need to convey in retirement living.

Schools provide communications targeted at several varying audiences:

• Current students
• Potential students
• Parents
• Alumni and donors
• Employees

In the same vein, senior marketing strategies work to reach the same types of groups:

• Current residents
• Potential residents
• Families
• Community partners
• Employees

While not all of these groups will directly lead to a sale, interacting with them provides a complete and holistic view of our brand and communities. It shows that we care for all who support our mission.

This revelation has led us to look for inspiration. How do colleges and universities market themselves? How can this guide retirement living marketing? While the target audience is slightly different, the driving forces are the same. By understanding the drivers and emotions at play in that decision process, we can better communicate with our audience, providing them with easy access to the answers they’re looking for. This, ultimately, puts us in a better position to demonstrate that one community is the best place for them compared to others.

While your retirement community may not have a popular mascot, a well-known sports program or scientific research lab, it does have one important thing in common with college: heart. The years spent in retirement are just as important — if not more so — than the years spent in college. They are to be enjoyed and cherished.

That’s the message we try to convey every day at Varsity, and it’s a challenge we love.

During 2018, we have undertaken an ongoing blog series: We are taking a look at the opportunities and challenges faced by the diverse groups of Boomers and seniors being served by today’s aging services providers.

For our first article in the series, we examine a rapidly growing population in the United States: Latino Boomers and seniors.

The numbers don’t lie.

According to Pew Research, in 2015, there were 57 million Americans who identified as Hispanic or Latino. Between 2000 and 2014, 54 percent of the United States population growth came from Latinos. This growth hasn’t just occurred along the Southern borders, either. The top three counties for Latino growth in the United States are all in North Dakota, thanks to the Bakken shale oil boom.

Put yourself in the shoes of an aging Latino immigrant to the United States. You’ve probably come from a country with a lower standard wage and less opportunities. You’ve now worked in America, and you’re looking at retirement. If you were fortunate to work in an industry that provided retirement benefits, you might be in good fiscal shape; perhaps you can afford to retire to a community with quality care and a high standard of living. But is that community ready for you?

If we were to poll the sales & marketing directors at any number of communities around the country, they would say that their community is welcoming of Latinos and ready to meet their needs — and they aren’t being deceptive. From a sales & marketing standpoint, most aging services organizations are indeed ready for an influx of Latino residents, but the challenges don’t exist at the front door, so to speak; rather, they exist internally in the community and how the social structure of retirement may differ from the cultural norms that Latinos value.

Let’s start with marketing materials. Often, aging services organizations use a pastel palette, which conveys caring and relaxation. These colors traditionally appeal to women, who are often the key decision-makers regarding the retirement process, especially among Caucasians. According to Lester Long, who has studied Latino culture, the father is the head of the average Latino house, and while the mother is responsible for its maintenance, major decisions rest with the man. These family structures remain at the heart of Latino personal relations.

Family is one of the most important factors, if not the most important factor, for many Latinos. There is a strong sense of duty and honor for this demographic, especially when it comes to family hospitality. When travelling to other cities, Latinos opt to stay with family during the trip. Would that be allowed in your community? Could a Latino family stay with one of your residents for a few days? Offering this type of service could be a great addition to your marketing if you’re trying to attract Latino residents.

Appealing to potential Latino residents can also prove challenging because, as a culture, they place great importance on the present, with less concern for the future. Therefore, all of the “safety net” programs that aging services groups offer can fall on deaf ears in the Latino community. Concentrating on what your community offers today can prove more effective than discussing services that the potential resident may never need.

Latino residents are a huge opportunity for retirement service providers, but their wants and needs vary slightly from the position that senior sales & marketing professionals tend to take. By making some subtle changes to your strategy now, you could easily find your organization on the forefront of the Latino Boomer influx, giving you a leg up in the market.

In an era where the average person feels more connected than ever, the issue of loneliness among seniors is becoming disconcerting. Boomers, Xers and Millennials have adapted to a social world that revolves around mobile technology, yet seniors are becoming increasingly disassociated from their families. So, what’s the root cause of this problem, and how can we address it as aging services professionals?

According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, about 28 percent of people aged 65 and older are living alone. As one ages, the chances of living alone increase. This makes sense, as spouses pass away and children move out. Of course, living alone doesn’t immediately make someone lonely, but we can all agree that it’s a step in the direction of loneliness.

Becoming a single-person household can start a chain reaction that leads to larger, wide-ranging problems. Studies have shown that older adults that feel lonely or isolated will begin displaying behaviors that make them increasingly more difficult to interact with in social situations, thus pushing friends and relatives even further away. This, of course, only makes the person feel more lonely, creating a vicious psychological cycle.

The negative implications of a lonely lifestyle are numerous. Isolated and lonely seniors have a 59 percent greater risk of mental and physical decline and show a 45 percent mortality increase. Of those living alone, one in seven is suffering from some kind of dementia, which can go undetected if a person isn’t engaging in regular social interactions.

Family dynamics have also changed. At one time, a child might have gone to visit his or her parents once or twice a month. Now, the number of in-person visits is dwindling, being replaced by less-frequent phone calls or perhaps the use of Skype and FaceTime. These technological visits don’t have the same effect for seniors that in-person interaction does.

One statistic of special note for aging services providers comes from data reported by AARP: Forty-five percent of people aged 45 or older who have lived in their current residence less than one year reported feeling lonely. Let that sink in for a minute!

Even in our vibrant, active communities — filled with intelligent and engaged residents and staff — new residents can feel especially lonely and isolated. It can become difficult for them to make new friends, navigate the social structure of your community and become involved in a meaningful way. Ensuring that each new resident is paired with a neighbor to show them the ropes when he or she moves in is vitally important.

The social workers at aging services communities are on the frontlines of the battle against loneliness, but each associate at your community should be on the lookout for signs of self-seclusion or withdrawal. Protecting residents, both physically and mentally, is an important part of each team member’s job.

Sources:

https://www.aarp.org/research/topics/life/info-2014/loneliness_2010.html

https://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/10-17-14-facts-about-senior-isolation/

As the holiday season approaches, people are gathering to celebrate. During these festive times, families often discuss future plans, including retirement and aging services options for themselves or loved ones. This makes December a critical time for ensuring that your organization is present on social media and engaged with users.

With this in mind, we are proud to release our Aging Services Guide to Social Media. This booklet provides valuable information and tips for managing your organization’s social media presence. It covers the gamut from Facebook, to Twitter, to YouTube, to Snapchat and more!

Created by our in-house communications team, and based on real-world experience in operating social media accounts for aging services organizations, we believe this publication will be an excellent tool for your marketing and PR tool kit!

2017 was a trying year for aging services organizations across the country — and not just for the traditional reasons. Sure, costs went up, income from government plans went down, and the need to upgrade remained constant. But, as the year went on, it was the unexpected tragedies that caught the industry’s attention. Massive flooding permeated the Gulf Coast, wildfires blazed in the American West and, of course, there was a devastating fire that recently struck at Barclay Friends in Pennsylvania. These unexpected events can quite literally destroy lives and communities.

While we all like to think they could never happen to us, in 2017, many realized it could. This has led to a renewed interest in crisis communications plans across the aging services sector, with providers dusting off their three-ring binders, updating their plans and expanding them to include new media. One question that we often hear is, “What are the key things I should have in my crisis communications plan?” While an article such as this provides too little space to detail a full plan, we can share with you the three things that we look for in creating, revising or updating a crisis communications plan.

1. Is your leadership trained to talk to the media?

The aging services field has long benefited from sustained tenure in the C-Suite. Executives, especially CEOs, often stay with an organization for many years, becoming the face and voice of the brand. They become comfortable with local news organizations and inherently know how to speak to them through a lifetime of experience. Now many of those seasoned leaders are retiring, and a new crop of executives is taking over.

These new leaders may not be prepared to deal with a media firestorm that can explode after a tragedy. Taking some time, and budget dollars, for training your leadership in media relations could be a vital investment. There’s an art to speaking to reporters, especially when information is scarce and you are trying to be both honest with the public yet protect the privacy and safety of your residents, employees and volunteers. For these reasons, we heartily recommend media training for your leadership team.

2. Who is responsible for managing the digital media response?

When tragedy strikes, one of the first places people now turn to is digital media, such as Facebook, Twitter and the web. Have you incorporated these outlets into your crisis communications plan? Is there a system in place for the person responsible for updating these channels to receive approved messaging and post it in a timely manner?

Experienced social media and web managers are usually able to handle an onslaught of information requests, but in many aging services groups, the task of digital media management is left to the marketing team or a small team of communications professionals on the corporate level (who may not even be in the same area as an affected community). This is why it’s so crucial to identify a process for information disclosure through these channels, including who can approve a release of details, who will be doing the actual publishing of the information and a chain of command for answering difficult questions in a timely manner.

3. Are you prepared to deal with the aftermath?

The first 24 hours after an event occurs are the most critical — and, in the moment, may seem the most stressful. Are you and your team prepared for the intense scrutiny and stress that will come once the initial dust has settled?

For example, in the case of Barclay Friends, reporters immediately went digging for information about anything and everything related to the community. They quickly uncovered issues with fire protection equipment reported earlier in the year, placing a new focus on the community and creating another aspect for the media to latch onto. As investigations unfold and causes are determined, you should have a plan in place for managing media relationships in the weeks and months after an event occurs.

We get it — no one wants to think about dealing with a crisis. It’s also very difficult to show a return on investment for the costs of developing a crisis communications plan. At Varsity, we like to think of it as insurance. It’s a product that you pay for in hopes that you never have to use it, but it provides a peace of mind that can’t be overestimated Plus, should an event occur, you’ll be glad that you had a plan in place.