Senior Residences In Pocasset Receives Accreditation For LGBTQ+ Training
Just a few months after introducing an LGBTQ+ Competency Training Program, Cape Cod Senior Residences in Pocasset has achieved a milestone accreditation from the program’s parent company for training up to 80 percent of its employees.
SAGECare is a division of SAGE, or the Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders, the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ+ elders. SAGECare provides training and consulting on LGBT aging issues to elder services providers such as Cape Cod Senior Residences.
Cape Cod Senior Residences recently earned the Platinum accreditation level from SAGECare, which demonstrates that the majority of the organization’s staff has been trained to gain a deeper understanding of the cultures, needs and concerns of older LGBTQ+ adults to help staff better navigate different scenarios, issues and conversations.
Lisa Chinappi, director of EnrichedLIFE at Cape Cod Senior Residences, recognizes that the training is important and valuable but admits that when it was first introduced, she did not quite understand it.
“At first, I didn’t understand why we were having the training,” she said. “But as I went through the process of the training, I realized, ‘Wow, this is important.’”
In a world where people tend to assume things, Ms. Chinappi said, it is helpful to get a new perspective. It can be as simple as choosing language more carefully, she said, such as asking a resident what their spouse’s name was, rather than assuming a woman has a husband and a man has a wife.
“The residents come from a world where it wasn’t something talked about and they were shunned for different things,” Ms. Chinappi said. “I just think, as a staff, it’s very important to welcome people on all angles. That’s what I get out of it, and I get very involved and excited [about] the training process when I’m talking it over with people and we’re going through the training. I think it’s something that everybody should have in the back of their mind.”
Ms. Chinappi is in charge of training employees at Cape Cod Senior Residences, which largely consists of an interactive slideshow in which trainees are presented with various different scenarios. Through these scenarios, trainees are exposed to hypotheticals that they may not have encountered in real life before such as interacting with a transgender resident and making them feel as comfortable and welcome as any other resident. In a scenario such as this one, exposure and education are incredibly important, she said, as it gives the employee a chance to become more comfortable in handling situations they have perhaps never been in before. People often fear things they do not understand, and this training gives visual and immersive examples for trainees to learn from before moving on to real-life interactions. The training offers advice on how to approach conversations and choose inclusive language, and it also offers general knowledge and insight into the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ elders.
“It is [important] because you don’t know the lives these people have had before they come here or what their story is,” Ms. Chinappi said. “You just assume they’re an average Joe, but everybody has a story. We really plug at that one here because everyone does have a story.”
According to SAGECare, there are about 3 million LGBTQ+ older adults living in the United States. By 2030, that number is expected to be around 7 million. Per its staff development and training webpage, SAGECare offers one-hour training suitable for employees at all levels and four-hour training for leadership, administrator and executive positions. These trainings can also be supplemented with specialized topics such as HIV and Aging, Enriching Care for LGBTQ Older Adults of Color and Asking Demographic Questions About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
The training mostly functions to raise the consciousness of employees at Cape Cod Senior Residences and make them more keenly aware of different experiences that residents may have lived. Though employees do not openly discuss training procedures with residents—or sexual orientation, for that matter—the training serves to help employees make all residents feel welcome and validated, regardless of identity, and prepared to have those conversations should the topic ever arise.
“We don’t talk about it with the residents, but we could if we had to,” she said. “We all know the importance of making sure that we welcome everybody to our community and [make them] feel comfortable. That’s what it’s all about. I think it’s important training. Before, I wondered why we were even having this because we treat everybody the same, but you know what? We don’t. It was an eye-opener [and] very educational.”