Partner Article

Care Homes Praise Home Grown PR

Care homes embrace story telling as a powerful marketing tool as they praise a new, specific to the care industry, do it yourself PR toolkit.

Called Practical PR for your Care Home, the product is the brainchild of Colette Lowe from Chew PR and Simon Beck from Care Home Marketing Expert, who together felt care homes needed practical support to help them spread good news about the good work they do.

The toolkit doesn’t just provide a picture of what PR can look like, preferring to provide practical direction and knowledge to enable care homes to develop an achievable PR plan that’s raring to go, full of enthusiasm and easy to implement instead of purpose ready?

Already Auden House in Tameside, Arranmore Park Home in Lancashire, Ambleside care home in Bexhill-on-Sea and Goldcrest House in Goole have embraced the power of public relations as a tool to promote their services and create closer connections and understanding with their local communities.

John Evans, owner of Auden House Care Home says: “We’ve learnt lots from the Practical PR for care homes. We’re implementing and we’re not going to stop – it works for us!”

Beverley Peters, home manager at Arranmore Park care home says “We’ve whole heartedly embraced PR within our everyday operations. It’s fabulous to have access to the knowledge needed whenever we need it. Our residents love reading about themselves in the paper too – we really want to share what it is we do, using PR will help us to continue to do so.”

Colette from Chew PR says: “Not all care homes have the time or the budget to employ an outside agency to develop and maintain the right PR. We know people try and fail at this and sometimes that can do more damage to a reputation than not doing anything at all, so we set about putting my skills and knowledge on paper for people to follow. There’s no doubt this works; the care homes mentioned regularly feature in local and regional and care press and always let us know when they receive positive feedback.”

Simon Beck from Care Home Marketing Expert says: “Virtually every time one of our clients gets a piece published in the paper it results directly in an enquiry for a bed. Also, using positive PR has enhanced our care home clients’ reputation and standing in the community and has even led to one home developing a successful volunteer program. One care home told us after months of empty beds they are now full! Another received positive feedback from members of the public and another was able to develop a successful volunteer programme; all through using PR.”

Colette says: “An unexpected benefit one home has discovered through using the kit is that they are meeting the CQC’s pictorial evidence inspection requirements as their news is printed and shared throughout social media not to mention creating a more open culture.”

Practical PR for care homes is a full step by step print and audio guide that lifts the mysticism from the world of PR and provides an easy to implement blueprint for developing and managing your PR successfully.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chew PR .