I have gathered the information, written, edited and/or prepared, or many reports.

Although the resultant product has always been a sense of pride for me, my experience in its preparation has ranged between challenging, enjoyable and horrendous.

I am pretty sure that I am not Robinson Crusoe in this experience. The planning stage of an annual report is critical to its success and given that it will soon be time to start thinking about your 2015/2016 report, I have put some notes together to keep in mind this year. It is never too early to start planning.

Planning the report

Take time to ensure that all relevant directors and senior executives are clear on how they want the report to portray the organisation. Don’t be afraid to bring in some examples of your own. Keep track of reports that inspire you and bring them to meetings where layout and presentation is discussed.

Presentation: Will the report be printed, sent out as a PDF or online?

An early decision on how the report will be presented will make a big difference to your planning

Theme: Having a theme that all directors agreed on early will also make a big difference

A theme helps you to keep the report cohesive and makes it easier to find the stories that will make it pop. Also keep in mind – Who is going to write it? Will there be a single cohesive voice or a range of voices from across the organisation. It will be more coherent if written by one person, or written by section leaders and edited by one person for consistency.

Timeline: Make sure that you have a timeline and that everyone knows what it is and sticks to it.

If everyone knows when they have to write/submit/report back on information, you have a hope of getting it ready by the planned date without a nervous breakdown, send out reminders and make sure that the timeline is reasonable

Quality of photos: Start going through photos; make a list of the types of photos that you still need

You want photos that engage emotions and they need to be the right quality for the platform that you have decided to use to present the report.

Availability of stories: Don’t wait until ‘Annual Report time’ to start asking for stories

Remind teams regularly that you need stories for the report and that they should be keeping track of them all year. If they are not used in the report, there are likely many other uses for them.

Understanding regulatory requirements on Annual Reports –

Governments require certain things from government departments and funded organisations. Make sure that you know what is required of you, but don’t let it get in the way of an engaging report.

Acknowledge sponsors/donors/VIP – Thank everyone who helped your organisation grow One of the many things that can go wrong in an Annual Report is that at the last minute you start scrambling for your lists of people, organisations and government departments to thank. Or that you

Now for the content

Your accomplishments are more engaging than your activities. Paint a picture – what were your results? What difference did they make? How do they line up with your mission and vision? How did they inspire your staff/clients/customers? How can they inspire those looking at your annual report?

Audience

Your annual report audience is likely to be broad. Brainstorm all the people who will be interested in your report and keep them in mind while writing it. This could include board members, staff members, volunteers, shareholders, members of parliament, advocacy groups, regulators, competitors, financial specialists, lenders, creditors and journalists.

Photos

Images are essential, if you want your report to be understood and appreciated. Many people will not read the report right through, so make sure that your images are remarkable and have captions that tell your story of how the photo relates to your mission or an accomplishment you made.

Do you have something in place to make sure that someone is responsible for taking photos at your events and celebrations? This is a great way to get a variety of images. Better yet, if there are no/ few proficient photographers in your communications team, invest in photography training so that staff have a few tips that will make a big difference.

Is there also something in place to ensure that every photo at your disposal has written consent for use? That is essential and that the consent forms area easily identified with the person in the photo and easy to call up at any time.

The financials

I know that if I am going to have trouble reading any of the report, it will be reading the financial statements and interpreting the tables. This is often exacerbated by a tiny font. Consider a narrative written in plain English as well as the financial statements and tables so that all readers and viewers can get a clearer picture of your financial situation.

Regulation

Parliaments require specific information included in reports written by government departments and some other organisations. Make sure that you comply, but don’t let it stifle your creativity.

Acknowledgments

Don’t forget to acknowledge All your donors, supporters, funders

Contact us for help with your Annual Report

We love annual reports and we can – advise, write, edit – anything but design… We should have included – get a professional designer!

The post The early bird gets the …. Time to start thinking about planning your Annual Report appeared first on Agility Communications.

‘Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.’

This beautiful quote from Carl Jung reminds us that if you present all of your information in the same way, regardless of the audience, you are presenting information that is of no use to at least some of your audiences.

One way that we can show respect for our clients and customers is to make sure that our messages will resonate with them. To do that we may need to find a number of ways to connect.

Every client, potential client and past client is important to us. We will always strive to make our messages meaningful to the very different people that we work with.

The post Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life…. appeared first on Agility Communications.

Just a couple of small issues. There is no sound on my computer, and each of us lived more than 100 kms from each of the other of us. Found the technology, (twice). It didn’t work either time. So while I go back to the drawing board for the rest of the year, I will present my topic and two guest speakers as an interview.

Our interview was all about the colour green. To be precise, Pantone’s 2017 colour of the year – Greenery.

Pantone describes Greenery “as a life-affirming shade, emblematic of the pursuit of personal passions and vitality”. Illustrative of flourishing foliage and the lushness of the great outdoors, the fortifying attributes of Greenery signals consumers to take a deep breath, oxygenate and reinvigorate.

Our first guest, graphic designer and interior designer, Alana Ryan starts off by telling us a bit about green from a design point of view.

Alana is currently working as an interior designer for a wholesale textile company. Alana’s passion for all things design, led her to further her skills by studying graphic design.

She works full time in the interior design industry, whilst completing small to large graphic projects under her own business name AR.C Design Studio.

Alana has done some graphic design projects for some of my clients and I can highly recommend her.

Welcome Alana

I am interested in your thoughts as a designer on using a colour of the year, whether it be in graphic design or in the new office – is there a risk that the colour defines itself as 2017 into the future?

The Colour of the year is selected as a trend forecast as the colour that is expected to been seen throughout fashion, design and culture coming forward.

Trends are trends, they do usually have an expiry date. However, working in design, I have seen the interest in the colour green increase in the past 1-2 years, although previously they were richer colours such as Emerald Green.

With the current trend and society pushing towards the importance of health and wellbeing, sustainability, and the current trends in Interior Design (in regards to indoor plants etc), this colour makes sense on a global scale.

It is great to see such a fresh and vibrant green like Greenery forecasted for this year.

Do you think being a colour of the year influences decisions about colour in graphic design?

Yes, to a certain extent. Design is always about being on trend or the next best thing. As Greenery becomes popular and known through use, the colour may influence the way of colour schemes, the overall feel and font colour choices.

However, in terms of web design and marketing design I think the colour of the year has less of an impact.

Generally the selection of colour for web design/marketing is selected to reflect the brand, and although it is important to keep up with current trends it is also important to create a difference whilst also reflecting the brand.

This colour will most likely be used throughout web and marketing purposes for business/websites/for marketing collateral day spas, wellbeing etc. due to green being related to peace, nature and relaxation.

Would businesses would use the colour because it is the colour of the year, or is it the colour of the year because people are using it?

In terms of interior design, I think we will start to see this colour throughout homes in coming months, through paint and decor accessories, but also in fabrics such as velvets and linens for upholstery and cushions.

I think the colour will be used in different ways – paired with warm colours such as reds and yellows for a tropical scheme or with blues for a cooler look and feel, or even with neutrals to make the colour of the year stand out.

Interior design is very much about what is on trend and how it can be used in relation to what the client already has or their needs. Whereas I find graphic design, particularly in relation to business, is more about the brand and what it reflects.

What does green mean to you as a designer?

To me, green is the colour of Relaxation, Calmness, Balance, Growth and Sustainability. It reflects our environment, our nature, our landscape. It’s part of our everyday life, Pantone describe it as ‘our nature’s neutral’ and I absolutely agree!

I would now like to introduce our second guest Dari Rees (of Dari Rees Colours).

Dari has been working with colour professionally for over 30 years. She originally qualified with Beauty for all Seasons USA which complemented her background in fashion and soft furnishings.

Dari’s focuses on how we can use colour to enhance our lives and see ourselves as unique with our own style expression, regardless of fads and fashion, regardless of income or status.

She has worked extensively with women in transition and is an Aura-Soma® Practitioner. Dari describes herself as a Colour Tarotist, an Intuitive Colour Catalyst, Soul Stylist and Wardrobe Warrior.

Welcome Dari, I wonder if you can talk to us about the colour greenery in an esoteric sense?

What does that mean for 2017?

Green in general will allow the space we need to do the things that need to be done. Thus, if we tune into green we will feel that we have more time and space.

Pantone’s colour of the year Greenery, has quite a lot of yellow in it and I feel that working with this colour may lead to more cooperation as opposed to competition. Bringing more feminine leadership. More like minded people joining together. This colour is a unifier, a lively colour which brings about the opportunity for regeneration and healing.

Everyone needs green in some form as it helps us with direction, making decisions, generosity, freedom and openness. An absolute breath of fresh air!

Some of the Pantone choices come and go but I feel that Greenery is of benefit to all.

Do you think that businesses are influenced by a colour of the year?

Businesses will always be curious about latest trends and will be influenced in some way. Even if it is coffee cups and cushions!

I feel that this is a great colour for business this year, as it lightens things up giving more hope and possibility. To be more consciously aware of this colour in business should bring results.

The post Green is the new black, but can a colour really influence your business? appeared first on Agility Communications.

For some reason, blogs about fonts and typography often show up in January. They are nearly always a good read and an opportunity to learn something new and this one from Hubspot is no exception.

The post Which emotions do the fonts you use elicit from your audience? appeared first on Agility Communications.

Email is a gift and a gaffe-in-waiting. The gift is its ability to let us communicate without catching the person at the right time on the phone; its record of things that need to be referred to later; its knack in scheduling a meeting or passing on a resource without having to catch all the parties involved.

The gaffe possibilities are endless – who hasn’t pressed Send and regretted it? However, concerns heighten beyond the ordinary oops, highlighted significantly by the current difficulties that have arisen in the US presidential campaign – notably the hacking and Wiki-leaks release of Democratic campaign email correspondence.

In an article in the NY Times (19 October 2016) titled ‘Whoever Wins the White House, This Year’s Big Loser Is Email,’ Farhad Manjoo puts it plainly:

Why were all these people discussing so much over email in the first place? Haven’t they heard of phone calls? Face-to-face meetings in dimly lit Washington parking garage? Anyplace else where their conversations weren’t constantly being recorded, archived and rendered searchable for decades to come?

This is not to encourage deception, but to question where to hold conversations that should remain private. (Not to say that phone calls can’t be tapped, of course…though if you are within the law, it’s fairly unlikely.)

However, it’s not just the matter of privacy. Manjoo points out some truly cogent questions for our review in regard to email use:

The deeper problem with email is that it has never quite settled on a social mode. An email can be as formal as a legal letter or as tossed off as drive-by insult. This invites confusion.

The tone and nature of emails need to be agreed on in an organisation’s culture and policies. And should emails on the intranet in an organisation be different from emails going out into the Internet?

Then we should consider time, as Manjoo explains (in relation to the Democratic campaign issue):

Finally, it’s worth noting how much time and how many emails — more than a dozen — it took the group to arrive at its decisions. Email sometimes tricks us into feeling efficient, but it rarely is. Because it’s asynchronous, and because there are no limits on space and time, it often leads to endless, pointless ruminations. If they had ditched email and just held a 15-minute meeting, members of the campaign could have hashed out the foreign-agent decision more quickly in private.

His conclusion?

In other words, limits often help. Get on the phone, make a decision, ditch your inbox. The world will be better off for it.

Our thoughts? Your organisation’s first concerns should be about how best to demonstrate your core values and meet your mission and objectives. Good public relations – inside and outside the organization – are crucial to success. Think about how your email practices contribute to or detract from each of these – core values, mission and objectives, public relations. If current correspondence via email isn’t quite up to the high standard you want, or presents risks you’d like to minimise, it’s time to make a change. If you’d like a hand with that, call us – all aspects of public relations are our core business.

PS: As Manjoo points out, there are alternatives to standard email, programs like Slack or HipChat (which allow for archiving after a few days or longer, taking the conversation off the system), or more elaborate apps like Signal, which encrypt the communications. You might want to explore some of these for your workplace.

The post Beyond Email appeared first on Agility Communications.

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I love study and learning, but I have a busy, work focused life and this wasn’t going to help me find time for a social life; but a few years of part time study was worth it. I thought.

Having almost finished my first subject, it is hard to describe how very disappointed I am.

Totally online. Sounds great. University of Melbourne. Great reputation, even better.

All sorts of resources – a discussion board where lecturers post messages for students, a webinar every second week to discuss assessments, uploaded within 24 hours in case you can’t join.

WooHoo

So first assessment written and uploaded by Turnitin, a universal plagiarism detector in week four.

Feedback due week 6. Looking forward to that with apprehension. Our final and biggest assessment is a follow on from our first. If we got it wrong the first time we need to know so that we can get it right the final time.

Second assessment due. Still no word on the first. But it is the University of Melbourne. We will hear soon.

Third assessment due. A Pecha Kucha – something that takes many, many hours to master. Finally, it is the best I can do. Follow the upload instructions. Fail, Again, Fail. Again, Fail. Call a friend and together we work out that Turnitin does not allow for video upload.

An aside:

Because I knew how important it was to give this study the time it deserved, whilst also giving my clients the time they deserved. I did quite a lot of preparation. I increased the hours of a staff member, I outsourced a few smaller jobs, I re-organised my business time and university time. I was taking it seriously and respectfully.

But, when I was doing all that, I did not take into account having to spend hours trying to upload an assessment before travelling interstate for work. Or how long it would take for the university to address the problem.

So the final and biggest assessment is due soon. But, hang on, it is now weeks late and I still haven’t received feedback on the first one. I still don’t know if I was on the right track. And I cannot make the final webinar on the final assessment because I am away for work.

Now, back in Victoria. Get up at 5am on Saturday morning to review the webinar and get stuck into the final assessment over the weekend.

The webinar was on Wednesday. We are asked to allow 24 hours to upload. It is now Saturday and not available. I look in all the spots where I would expect to see a message if there was a problem. Nothing.

I begin the assessment without the benefit of the webinar and go back time and again on the weekend. Nothing. Ah well, it is the weekend. Hope for Monday morning. Nothing.

Emailed the two lecturers. One response – away for several more weeks, the other response -away from the office, will be looking at emails, if urgent, contact one of these two people. (neither from the particular school that I am enrolled in). But tried both. One automated email back – no such person. No response from the other person.

I didn’t really expect her to respond. I knew that it was not her problem and I knew by now that customer service is not a priority and when customer service is poor, people say “not my problem” and delete.

I waited though, because I could not quite believe that the University of Melbourne could not upload a video and not let students know that there was a problem. That is customer service 101. What are we paying for?

Tuesday came and went. No announcements, no webinar, now only a few days until the final assessment is due. Stop worrying about that because if I am on the wrong track, it is almost too late to change it. What is worrying me now, is how can there be no response to emails, no marked assessments, no webinar, no announcements.

Come Wednesday (one week after webinar), I emailed online student support.

Thursday nothing. No email, no announcements, no webinar, fewer days until the final assessment.

At 2pm I rang them.

Aside#2

It is important to note that I don’t like to rock the boat, it is not in my nature. I don’t want to be seen as a grumpy old lady, I’m not usually. I don’t want to negatively influence my marks!! I don’t want to be in this position where I am going on line every hour to see if either the video is there or a message explaining what is wrong

Anyway, back to the phone call.

Maybe, somehow it is my fault? I am asked?

What have you done about it? Who have you notified? When? Then, We will notify you when it is up. Is there anything else that we can do?

Yes, post an announcement so that other students are aware that you know about the problem and you are working on it, respond to your emails, apologise.

Yes. An announcement is a good idea. We will do that. (three hours later it has not been done).

But I do have a response to my email:

Hi Noelene, 

Thanks for your email and your phone call earlier today. We do apologise for the inconvenience you have experienced due to the recording of the webinar not being uploaded. 

This issue was flagged within our team the day after the webinar was recorded and was escalated to the online webinar support team. This issue is still being investigated and as such, we are still waiting for the staff at Blackboard to locate the recorded webinar from that night. 

I apologise for the frustration this has caused you. You will be informed as soon as the recording has been located and uploaded. As this has impacted your ability to complete your assessments, you are more than welcome to apply for an extention for your upcoming assessments. This can be done by contacting the Subject Coordinator..

Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions or concerns. 

They have lost the recording.

They have not bothered in more than a week to let students who missed the webinar know that the recording is lost.

They can’t spell extension! (now I am just being bitchy I know).

They do not respond to students’ emails – ironically the only email that I did get was my invoice $2,876

I assume that this is a result of cuts to universities. Lecturers who do not have the capability to use the internet having to teach online. Webinar teams losing webinars.

I will probably withdraw. I am not in a position to pay for such terribly poor service. I am very sad about it.

The post Can customer service get much worse… appeared first on Agility Communications.

Love is at the core of caregiving.

What do you do when you want to keep posting insightful and interesting work, but you feel pulled in a range of directions and it keeps slipping down to a lower priority?

If you are lucky enough to have an incredibly talented and erudite friend and colleague nearby, you engage her to help out. That is what I did with Mary-Faeth Chenery and this is her first blog for me based on her experience of navigating the aged care maze for services for a family member.

Thank you Mary-Faeth

Diving in to build a new program or facet of your work

So it’s time to develop and promote a new program or a new facet of your work – and for that, you need some good, current information to build on. Where to start and how to streamline your information gathering efforts? Here is one approach to help you get started, make headway, and get it done!

I’ll use my recent experience with building a community program around caregiving for an ageing parent to illustrate this approach.

Phrase your new program/direction as a current issue – try expressing it as a question

My ‘problem’ was that I needed to learn about caregiving for an ageing parent – my partner’s dad – and I figured that if I needed this, so might others in the community. So the current issue was ‘Caring for an Ageing Parent’ , or expressed as a question:  ‘What do I and others in my situation need to know to care properly for an ageing parent, and how can we find out?’

Generate 5 keywords to guide your information search – the more specific the better

I started out with huge terms:  caregiving, aged care, home care, medical needs of the elderly. These were honed to more tailored and specific topics:  aged care in Hepburn Shire, transition from hospital to home care, Shire resources to support ageing at home, safety in the home, respite care

Identify 3-5 top sources for reliable, current information – people, organisations, journals, books, websites

I looked first for people who could advise me – the ones already engaged in the topic, who could give me shortcuts to what I needed to know. Found a few organisations – like COTA and Carers Victoria and a few terrific books that would show me the whole territory of my topic and identify the current issues and resources. Naturally, a few websites came into this, like myagedcare.gov.au

Read from 5 sources and interview 3 people about the possibilities

Aside from the reading, probably the best source of information were several local people who had recently gone through the process of caring for an aged parent. So they could tell me what they had learned, the best sources of information, and the hazards of the whole process. This certainly helped tailor the process of planning the program.

Mind-map as you go – write/draw/connect the ideas you are learning about from your information search on a blank page that you can turn into a map of the new program/direction

I am a visual learner, so it helps me to draw out the various elements of what I’m learning about, add concepts, show relationships, summarise ideas, make new connections between ideas. Out of this came a plan of the three key areas to cover in the forum that was emerging as the program design.

Stay wide open:  be prepared to – at least temporarily – suspend your present ideas about where you think the program is going

After the first stage of the program (where we held an information forum), one of the planning group members proposed the idea of broadening the program for the next stage – moving from a specific focus on caregiving to the promotion of ‘ageing well’ or ‘positive ageing’, which could include caregiving but took it much further. I had to suspend my preconceived notions of what the program was about and think about what the community needed and wanted. I think the program became better for that. So what started as ‘Stand by Me – An Information Forum on Caregiving’ became ‘Ageing Well in Hepburn Shire’.

Mentally – or with colleagues – test out a possible version of the new program/direction as you gain new information – ‘suppose it looked like this and worked like this – how good would that be? Would it meet the need?’

By this point we had a planning group of about 5 people, and ideas were tested here. Again, the program got better I think.

Ask:  where are the gaps?

One of the gaps we identified was that the need for caregiving often comes on quite suddenly – you don’t know you are going to need this information about aged care and caregiving until you need it desperately. Like, your parent with no warning ends up in hospital and is coming home to live with you. So the new program needed to convince people to learn about ageing and caregiving before it was needed. What are the best ways to do that via our program, we wondered.

 Plug the gaps with more information searching

We tried to get more and more specific and find those who could really help us with detailed information and strategies around the gaps.

Ask big questions:  is this the best we can do to solve the problem? What would we do if we did not have resource limits? If we had our best clients design the program/direction, what would it look like?

For the Ageing Well program, this is probably our next phase:  an evaluation that looks at whether there are better approaches, new ideas, innovations to learn from.

 Draft the first edition of the program/direction

A plan was sketched out for 12 months of work….

 Test out the first edition in discussion with colleagues and friends who will be helpful and honest in their feedback

We have a great planning group – honest and supportive – so the plans have evolved over time, with lots of willingness to change and also to contribute. Couldn’t ask for more.

This process is just one way – but one or two of the ideas just might get you moving toward creating something new and transformative for your work.  All the best!

The post I needed to learn about caregiving for an ageing parent – my partner’s dad – and I figured that if I needed this, so might others in the community appeared first on Agility Communications.

And let’s face it – everyone loves a celebration. It’s fun, it lifts spirits, it builds connection and community, and it makes us all feel better about who we, and each other, are.

There can be some really simple things you can do in your service to make those celebrations alive a vibrant for your clients. It doesn’t matter whether you have people at your service who identify with the communities that the various International Days commemorate – but of course it’s great if you do and, more likely than not, you will.

Here’s a list of some of the days you might like to think about including in your service’s program of celebrations:

•  May 15 International Day of Families
• May 17 International Day against homophobia, bi-phobia and transphobia
• May 21 World Day for Cultural Diversity
• May 27-June3 (including May 26, National Sorry Day) National Reconciliation Week
• 1 June Global Day of Parents
• 7 June Ramadan begins
• 19-25 June Refugee Week
• 20 June World Refugee Day
• 3-10 July NAIDOC week
• 7 July Eid Al Fitr

A good way to plan for these days is to include your clients in discussions about what might be done. Even planning a celebration can be as much fun, and as strongly building of community, as the celebration itself.

Each of these days celebrate different people, cultures and events. They all generate their own possibilities for something to mark the day. A day that celebrates families and parents, for example, could be celebrated by people sharing photos of their own families, their own children and parents, or telling stories. Your clients’ families could be encouraged to come along and be part of this.

For a day like International Day against homophobia, bi-phobia and transphobia, you could show a film like Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.

On days that celebrate particular cultures, or commemorate important events in their history, such as Sorry Day or the beginning of Ramadan, you could bring into your service a representative of the community being marked by the day, and they could chat with clients about the history of their culture, or even just tell their own personal story as an indigenous person, a Muslim person, and so on. Imagine the stories that could be told about the thousands of years of Aboriginal history of the place at which your service is located! Foods from different cultures could be part of the day, or displays of art and music.

For something like Refugee Week, chances are that there are people using your service who have themselves come from backgrounds where they needed to flee persecution and war. Many will still have memories and stories to share. You could spend a day encouraging them to do this, find pictures and old newspaper clippings about the journeys people have made to Australia, and have them on display throughout your service. Libraries and the Internet can be great sources for this sort of archival material.

All of these celebrations provide you with the opportunity to involve the outside community in your service, too. There are community organisations that are devoted to each of the issues commemorated on these days, and many of them will be more than keen to engage with the people using your service.

The possibilities are endless – and the important thing to do is to try to think what will resonate with and connect to the people who use your service. Even though some of these days are about very serious issues, the day can still be about having fun, sharing yarns, and encouraging respect. It’s a chance to discover, and to rediscover, that, regardless of age, life and communities are full of different histories, different stories, different ways of celebrating what it means to be a person.

Agility can help you with planning these sorts of days. We can come and spend time with your staff and talk about strategies you might want to adopt for planning a celebration with your service users in a way that will be meaningful for them, and in which they can be genuinely and meaningfully included. We can also help you to get media to your event to highlight your diversity and ability to connect with community.

No one should miss out on a chance for a party, or simply to sit down and listen to someone else tell an amazing tale about an amazing past.

For more on making your service accessible to a diverse range of people see Are your aged care services inclusive and supportive of your LGBTI clients 

Henna print on hand

The post Can’t find your point of difference? Make it diversity. appeared first on Agility Communications.

Rainbow slippers

Aged Care Services for GLBTI

One of the really great things about providing aged care services is that you are supporting one of the richest and most diverse mixes of people in our community. The aged and ageing population is made up of people with long and lively histories, with stories that have been at the core of who we all now are, and with identities that reflect the vibrant mix of people that make up today’s Australia.

While we are all getting much better at recognising and celebrating that diversity, especially in terms of the many cultures, languages and ethnicities that people bring to your services, one group that can often be forgotten in the mix are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people – or GLBTI people.

The terms can sometimes be hard to grasp, and you may feel they are changing all the time, and even people who themselves identify as members of the GLBTI communities may mean slightly different things when they use these words, or may describe themselves with other words altogether. While this can feel confusing, and you might be unsure about what terms to use and what they mean, it is actually a good thing because it reminds us that people all think and talk about themselves differently, even in relation to their sexuality and gender. When we grasp the value of those differences, and respect them, we have already begun to lay the right foundations to providing services in ways that will make people feel they belong.

The lives and experiences of GLBTI people will be as diverse as the people themselves. Today’s aged and ageing population has grown up through times of considerable change in relation to how issues of sexuality and gender are understood by communities, families, churches, the law and society more broadly. None of this, of course, has affected how many people are GLBTI – there have always been GLBTI people in all walks of life, and across all age groups – but it has affected how those people have thought about themselves, and how easy or difficult it has been for them to live their lives openly amongst their families, colleagues and friends.

So you can be sure that you will have GLBTI people in your service, but you cannot be sure how they will see or feel about this aspect of who they are. Some may have histories of being very open about their GLBTI identity; some may have told no one or very few people; some may just be beginning now to feel good about who they are and to feel like living their life more openly as a GLBTI person; some may still be struggling with all of these issues.

It is important that your service is able to be inclusive and supportive of your GLBTI clients, wherever they might be on this journey. Issues of sexuality and gender identity continue to be immensely important for people as they age – and sometimes even more so, as a decline in independence and loss of skills can intrude upon people’s sense of who they are and of what defines them.

There are many ways that your service can strengthen its inclusiveness of, and support to, your GLBTI clients. One is to consider undergoing Rainbow Tick accreditation. The Rainbow Tick was funded by the Victorian Government Department of Health and was developed by Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria together with Quality Improvement and Community Services Accreditation. It involves both self-assessment and external review, and is based on a set of standards that identify a range of areas and indicators for good practice in meeting the needs of GLBTI clients. A Rainbow Tick can be a great way of showing that you are a service that is committed to including GLBTI people in positive, progressive ways.

You might also like to check out an article about transgender issues in particular, which provides some simple tips about how to be more inclusive of, and how to avoid being offensive towards, your transgender clients. It’s only a start – but it’s a good start and a good way to keep mindful of some of the important issues. It can be surprising how much we don’t think about, when we are used to thinking only in conventional ways about gender and gender identity.

You can also engage the services of Agility to help you think through the issues, to strengthen your communications around GLBTI accessibility and relevance, and to talk to your staff about lived experience of GLBTI.  Agility can tailor its consultation and training services to the particular needs and focus of your organisation.

Remember, GLBTI people are already part of your client group. As GLBTI issues get more recognition in the broader community, and as GLBTI people and their friends and families become more attuned to their rights and their place in the rich diversity of modern society, you can expect not only that the demands on your services to be more GLBTI-friendly will increase, but so, too, will the pride you will have in adding The Rainbow Tick to your strengths.

GLBTI might seem like a lot of letters for a lot of words. But that’s only because it’s about a lot of people. And that’s why it’s important.

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