Lasell Village in Newton, MA, is implementing a resident-driven, employee-engaged framework called “Every Voice” that fosters inclusion and belonging by integrating voices across generations, backgrounds, and identities. This session will describe how residents and team members of the life plan community worked together to embed belonging into daily life through inclusive policies, respectful dialogue, and change-oriented programming. Presenters will offer guidance to help you build a culture of inclusion that aligns with your organization’s values, engages community members, and measures progress. You’ll return home with the tools you need to ensure that your community reflects the richness of the world while it continues working toward a more diverse future.

Are you looking to enhance your community’s operations, reduce costs, and attract new residents? This session will help you enlist your most effective allies—the older adults living in your community—to support this effort. Presenters will demonstrate how to achieve lasting success by creating a living environment that inspires resident enthusiasm for your community’s mission. That enthusiasm can spur authentic resident advocacy and resident-driven initiatives that will help enhance your community’s vitality, cultivate meaningful connections, and generate heartfelt word-of-mouth referrals. Discover how to engage residents as active partners in improving service delivery, optimizing costs, and fostering a positive community image.

Orchard Cove, a life plan community in Canton, MA, began reimagining its continuum of care in early 2021 in response to sweeping changes in the field of aging, feedback from residents, and business priorities. This session will detail the organization’s planning and implementation process, led by a multidisciplinary group of team members and residents. Presenters will describe how the Orchard Cove team developed a health and well-being navigation program, actively promoted the well-being of residents and team members, reimagined skilled nursing, and introduced a new array of services to maximize independence and enhance quality of life. You’ll gain valuable insights to help you engage with stakeholders as you launch a similar process.

Many residential care settings are reevaluating traditional views about the relationship between resident safety and autonomy. This session will outline practical decision-making frameworks that can help your organization determine the best approach to providing services and supports to older adults living with dementia. Presenters will incorporate the perspectives of various stakeholders as they explore options for honoring residents’ autonomy through the built environment, operations, and technology. You’ll hear from two organizations currently weighing their options as they decide how best to serve older people living with dementia. Attend this session to gain tools—not pat answers—to help you make thoughtful, responsible, and respectful decisions that benefit the older adults you serve.

Gaps in digital literacy and technology access can create economic barriers for affordable housing residents as they navigate public benefits enrollment services that are transitioning to digital platforms. This session will explore how National Church Residences has helped over 3,000 older adults access more than $11 million in public benefits through its Benefits Enrollment Center. You’ll learn how to make benefits enrollment processes more inclusive and accessible to all residents through interventions that provide alternative enrollment methods or offer digital literacy support. Don’t miss this opportunity to ensure that residents of your housing community receive the benefits they’re entitled to, regardless of their technology proficiency or access to digital tools.

How would senior living communities be transformed if residents and team members genuinely felt they were working together as partners? This session will help you explore that question. Presenters will share how HumanGood transitioned from a traditional “we serve you” model to a progressive “we partner with you” approach that strengthened collaboration among everyone living and working in its life plan communities. You’ll learn how HumanGood’s resident committee structure and comprehensive listening strategy have reshaped the dynamics between residents and team members. Don’t miss this inspiring call to rethink traditional dynamics and embrace a culture where partnership, mutual respect, and shared goals promote a strong sense of belonging, engagement, and agency among residents and team members.

Creating an inclusive board and leadership team is a requirement for any organization striving to foster innovation, adaptability, and alignment with diverse communities. This session will help you create leadership structures that reflect your commitment to inclusivity. Presenters will outline the five-year process that helped Episcopal Retirement Services in Cincinnati, OH, cultivate a “We Can Do Better” culture while striving to become more representative at all levels of the organization. You’ll leave this session equipped with the tools, ideas, and confidence to spearhead inclusivity efforts that foster listening, learning, and growth among all leaders within your organization.

Life plan community leaders, financial officers, and strategic planners must have a solid understanding of credit ratings before they can help their organizations secure financing on favorable terms. During this session, Fitch Ratings, along with a diverse panel of providers from multi-site and single-site communities will present an overview of credit ratings, explain how to obtain one, and offer guidance on incorporating credit rating considerations into your strategic planning. You’ll receive tips for aligning capital projects and funding needs with your community’s credit profile, identifying and mitigating risks that could negatively impact your rating, and implementing practices that enhance credit strength. Prepare to improve your community’s credit profile and secure the resources necessary for growth and sustainability.

Addressing everyday stereotypes and biases can create a more respectful and inclusive culture in senior care organizations. This session will provide practical tools and strategies for fostering effective communication and navigating difficult conversations about bias. Presenters will help you identify subtle biases and stereotypes and respond to them constructively. Senior living leaders will share their experiences implementing bias workshops, and you’ll view a video demonstrating workshop best practices and techniques. Explore how culture change can help you challenge stereotypes and build stronger, more respectful relationships among team members and between staff and residents.

Senior living professionals aspire to implement holistic, person-centered living in their communities. But how can this be achieved most effectively? During this session, leaders from Acts in Fort Washington, PA, will describe practices to help team members know, value, and connect with residents as unique individuals. You’ll examine common barriers to creating a more inclusive community culture, underscore the importance of breaking down silos between levels of living to promote inclusive engagement, and underscore the role all team members can play in supporting person-directed living. This session will emphasize the value of offering holistic engagement opportunities and well-being practices across the living continuum.

Are you interested in learning how to help residents, team members, and families develop a deeper appreciation for life and a greater ability to move forward after setbacks and trauma? This session will introduce you to an award-winning program designed to help everyone in your senior living community achieve these goals. Presenters will describe the SOARING Into Resilience workshop they developed and share research documenting the program’s success in helping staff, residents, and their families experience a heightened sense of belonging, connection with peers, meaning, and purpose. They’ll also offer you an opportunity to participate in immersive exercises aimed at enhancing individual, organizational, and communal well-being.

Have you ever participated in a meeting between a healthcare provider and a person living with dementia or mild cognitive impairment? You may have noticed an unsettling practice. The healthcare professional likely spoke to the caregiver instead of addressing the person with lived experience. This session will offer strategies to ensure that individuals with dementia always sit at the head of the table during discussions about them. Presenters who are living with dementia and mild cognitive impairment will help you understand how they lost, and eventually regained, decision-making authority after a dementia diagnosis. Representatives from the Dementia Action Alliance will offer tips for providing genuine, person-directed care that engages individuals with dementia at every step.

Enhancing the independent living options on your campus could help keep your organization competitive in today’s market. This session will show you how. The chief administrative officer of a multi-site organization will discuss how their organization is diversifying its independent living offerings to include standalone ranch homes, duplexes, converted loft residences, and conventional apartments. An architect will review design trends and considerations for various price points. A financing expert will outline how to model and evaluate different independent living options. Whether you’re facing low occupancy in older inventory or exploring new options to meet growing demand, you’ll leave this session with fresh ideas for strategic campus planning.

You don’t need a fancy C-suite title to become an effective leader and contribute to organizational culture. Leadership is a choice available to everyone in an organization, regardless of their position. This practical session will show you how to unlock your potential and discover how to use three essential tools to create engaged teams: leadership that inspires purpose, management that creates accountability, and coaching that fosters growth. You’ll learn valuable lessons to help you decide which tool to use and when to apply it. Develop the mental fitness to move beyond behaviors that limit your effectiveness and embrace frameworks that elevate your leadership impact.

Every senior living organization has a website that provides essential information about its programs and services to older adults and their caregivers. The most effective websites incorporate user-engagement features that enable prospective residents to navigate the site easily, find the information they need, and request additional details. This session will demonstrate how to design accessible and intuitive websites tailored to your target audiences. Presenters will draw on their experiences designing websites for senior living and affordable housing communities to provide actionable insights into web accessibility features, explain how to optimize content for users and search engines, and offer tips for designing intuitive navigation pathways. You’ll appreciate the impact of thoughtful web design on engagement and satisfaction.

Incidents of antisemitism continue to surge across the United States. Still, many providers of aging services may be unaware of how this ancient form of hatred could affect their organizations, regardless of their religious affiliation. This session will provide an overview of anti-Jewish themes and tropes, examine the manifestations of antisemitism throughout history, and provide insights that are broadly relevant—not only to those serving Jewish communities, but to anyone seeking to better understand and address anti-Jewish hatred. The session will also include real-world scenarios tailored to challenges relevant to aging services. A representative from the American Jewish Committee will present practical tools for recognizing and effectively responding to antisemitism, both personally and in the workplace.

Westminster Canterbury Richmond took deliberate steps to enhance transparency and collaboration during its 2022 strategic planning process, which laid the groundwork for a major campus expansion. During this session, the organization’s chief executive and director of strategic growth will describe how they engaged workgroups of organizational leaders, board members, residents, and staff to set organizational priorities and identify desired outcomes. Presenters will showcase the accountability tool they used to check in regularly with more than 35 of the organization’s leaders. They’ll also present two case studies detailing the organization’s recommitment to strategic growth and its evolving approach to wellness and fitness. Learn how to implement a strategic planning process that engages stakeholders, measures progress, and ensures accountability.

The serious health risks associated with loneliness among individuals living alone are well-documented. However, less is known about addressing isolation that persists even when people reside in a community with their peers. This session will explore the difference between genuine human connection and mere physical proximity. Presenters will identify ways in which isolation and loneliness can persist within communities and examine the additional challenges that LGBTQ+ older adults face when accessing care, shelter, and community support. You’ll discover new opportunities to promote inclusion and connection among older adults and team members, ranging from small cultural shifts to more significant changes in the design of the built environment.

*Closed to Press* The rare occurrences of bankruptcy among life plan communities in recent years have raised a compelling and provocative question: What role should state laws play in protecting these communities from insolvency? This session will explore that question. Presenters will provide an overview of the bankruptcy protections that certain states extend to life plan communities through existing statutes. They will also discuss the effects of state actions that either prevent a life plan community’s bankruptcy or worsen a community’s fragile financial position. Don’t miss this opportunity to join experts in the field as they delve into thought-provoking questions about the financial health of life plan communities.

Residents of “Blue Zones” in Italy, Japan, Costa Rica, Greece, and California share common personal characteristics that contribute to their extraordinary health despite geographic and cultural differences. This session will explore the valuable lessons aged care providers can learn from Blue Zones. A Netherlands-based strategic consultant will describe two development projects that successfully translate Blue Zone principles into the built environment. You’ll take home the tools you need to create similar future-oriented environments that are functional and support health and community well-being. Learn the lessons that Blue Zones teach so you can help older adults live long and healthy lives.

Are you seeking ways to transform the challenges facing your senior living campus into opportunities to address local service gaps and shape a brighter future for your organization? This session will provide a roadmap to help you make that happen. Presenters will demonstrate how strategic design, financial planning, and market analysis can ensure your community’s long-term sustainability while creating a vibrant and welcoming environment that exceeds the expectations of older consumers. You’ll gain actionable strategies for exploring current trends and opportunities in senior living, aligning your existing spaces with emerging trends, and developing a strategic repositioning plan that balances resident needs, financial goals, and operational priorities.