What does Triad stand for?Triad is not an acronym. It merely
represents a group of three, or the three sectors of a
community that partner to keep seniors safe from crime:
public safety, criminal justice, and the senior community.
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What is Triad’s purpose?
Triad has two objectives, to reduce
crime against seniors, and to reduce the unwarranted fear of
crime that the elderly often experience.
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How does Triad accomplish its
objectives?
Triad is actually the concept of
partnering for the safety of seniors. Once a Triad is
formed, a SALT Council is created, which is a group of
representatives who implement programs and activities to
achieve the objectives.
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How does the SALT Council work?
A SALT Council is a group of community
representatives-similar to a PTA-who comes together to
design and implement programs and activities intended to
make seniors in the community safer. SALT stands for Seniors
and Law Enforcement Together.
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Are Triads set up as city-wide
or county-wide entities, or can they just be in a town?
Usually, the Triad is formed at the
county level and a SALT Council is established. Then
individual communities within the county (cities, towns,
municipalities, or villages) appoint representatives to the
SALT Council so that every community in the county is
represented
Sometimes, once the county Triad is
formed, individual towns or cities within the county form
their own SALT Council under the county Triad umbrella. This
model helps ensure that the specific crime needs of each
community are met. For example, Brown County leaders sign a
Triad agreement along with the police chiefs of the three
incorporated cities within the county. Next, a SALT Council
is formed for the county, and one SALT Council is formed in
each of the three incorporated cities within the county.
The greatest advantage to having
multiple SALT Councils in a county is that more senior
volunteers become active in the Triad. In addition to having
10-20 volunteers active in the county Triad, each smaller
Triad also has 10-20 volunteers.
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What is the very first step I
should take to start a Triad in my community?
Since Triad’s basic goal is to reduce
crime against seniors, you should first contact law
enforcement leaders in your community. This could be the
county sheriff or city or town police chief. Ascertain if
s/he is interested in leading the effort to create a Triad.
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Then what?
Law enforcement leaders face many
challenges every day, from crime enforcement and dealing
with traffic congestion to abating nuisances and ensuring
homeland security. Your local law enforcement leaders may
not be familiar with a Triad-style of community policing, so
your first job might be to explain the concept to him/her.
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Should I expect law enforcement
leadership to readily embrace the idea?
Virtually every law enforcement leader embraces community
policing. And, all of them strive to protect their citizens
from crime, especially the elderly. However, some leaders
have competing demands on resources. Others are in
communities with low crime rates and the leadership may not
feel it is necessary to dedicate resources to one group or
another. But Triad can do more than just combat crime.
Sometimes forming a Triad enhances a community’s reputation
just by exhibiting a commitment to a vulnerable segment of
the population.
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Okay, so my community leaders
agree to start a Triad. What’s next?
The next step is to have a Triad
signing, wherein the leaders publicly sign a document
expressing their commitment to partner to keep seniors safe.
This is the called the Triad Agreement.
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Where can I learn about the
steps to starting a Triad?
The Triad Implementation Handbook is available as a PDF file
on this website under Triad Tools. It is a comprehensive
“how-to” guide for starting and running a Triad. First, you
should read the guide, and if possible, contact others in
your state or region that have started Triads to discuss
their experiences.
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Who should be involved in
starting a Triad in my community?
First, the leadership in a given
community that is responsible for contributing to the crime
safety of seniors needs to be contacted. This usually
involves about 3-6 people, such as the police chief, the
county sheriff, the president of the local AARP or RSVP
chapter, the Director of the Office on Aging (or its
counterpart), the Fire Chief, and the local prosecutor or
DA.
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Who should be involved in the
beginning to start Triad?
Remember that Triad is a partnership
amongst law enforcement, seniors, and criminal justice. The
county sheriff and the city/town police chiefs within your
county should be your first stop. Next, the director of the
county’s aging office or its equivalent is equally
important, as is the director of the county’s primary senior
volunteer organization, such as AARP or RSVP. Other
important positions to consider would be the county or city
fire chief, directors of senior centers, and whomever
prosecutes crimes committed in your area, i.e., the
district, state or county attorney.
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Do we really need to execute a
Triad Agreement?
The Triad Agreement is the formal and
public declaration that the signing organizations support
the concept of partnering to help keep seniors safe in the
community. It establishes the commitment of the agencies.
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How many leaders should sign the
Triad agreement?
Usually, the agreement has 3-6 signers,
people who are heads of agencies and organizations whose
duties include seniors, crime prevention or reduction, and
community services.
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Who, for example, would sign a
Triad Agreement?
Examples of signers for a county-wide
Triad would be the sheriff, each police chief within the
jurisdiction, the head of the county’s aging services, the
head of AARP or RSVP (whichever is active in the community),
and the county fire chief. Signers vary by communities, but
should include at lease several of these leaders.
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Ok, so now I understand Triad,
but tell me about the SALT Council?
Triad is the concept of partnership. It
is based on a group of three-public safety, criminal
justice, and community-coming together to help keep seniors
safe from crime.
SALT is an acronym, which stands for
Seniors and Law Enforcement Together. The SALT Council is
the working arm of the Triad, much like a PTA.
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What is an ideal number of
people to serve on the SALT Council?
Most SALT Councils are made up of
between 10 and 20 members who represent agencies and
organizations whose duty and mission is to serve the
community seniors.
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Who should serve on the SALT
Council?
At a minimum, each agency and
organization that signed the Triad agreement should have a
representative on the SALT Council. Other members should
represent agencies whose duties sometimes involve seniors,
or safety, such as disaster relief agencies, emergency
preparedness, businesses whose primary customers are
seniors, and the like. As importantly, the best SALT
Councils have a significant number of senior volunteers,
usually making up about half the council’s members.
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Do we need to establish
leadership in the SALT Council?
Ideally, yes. The most effective Triads
have written by-laws, which includes language setting out
the various positions. Usually this includes a president or
coordinator, a vice chair, a secretary and a treasurer. Some
councils have sub-committees and chairs of those.
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How often should our SALT
Council meet?
Ideally, the council should meet
monthly. Many Triads suspend their meetings over the winter
holidays and in August, as many people are away.
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What does the SALT Council do?
SALT Council activities fall into two
general categories, Programs and Activities. Programs are
more formal and usually longer-term undertakings, such as an
RUOK Program, wherein Triad volunteers call senior shut-ins
each day to ascertain if they are okay. Activities are often
one-time events, such as mailing a postcard to seniors
announcing the passage of a law that affects seniors.
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Once we sign the Triad Agreement
and establish a SALT Council, what’s next?
The SALT Council should conduct a Triad
Survey, which, as the name implies, is a process of asking
the senior community what their needs and their concerns
are. In some cases, the things that seniors fear are
inconsistent with crime trends in the community. What
sometimes happens is that isolated crime stories appear in
the news and this instills fear. But the reality may be that
the type of crime reported in not likely to occur in the
Triad community. The Triad Survey will help the SALT Council
determine what kinds of programs and activities to run.
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How does the Triad Survey work?
The survey should be designed to capture
what it is exactly that seniors fear-crime-wise-and what
their concerns are. True community policing requires law
enforcement to listen to the voice of the community, and
this survey is a positive step in that direction.
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Where would I start with the
Triad Survey?
The Triad Survey will probably become
the basis for designing and implementing programs and
activities, so it is important that some thought go into its
design, distribution and collection. The survey need not be
overly formal, but it does need to capture crime-related
attitudes and concerns.
For example, some attention to
victimization is useful. Have you ever been a victim of a
crime while living in this community? Do you stay indoors
because you’re afraid to go out?
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How should we distribute the
survey?
You will first need to identify where
the seniors in your community live. The local office on
aging can help with this, as can the senior center. Blank
surveys can be left there, mailed to each home where a
senior lives, distributed through Meals-on-Wheels, Senior
transport programs, and the like.
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What should the SALT Council do
with the survey results?
Once completed surveys are collected,
the SALT Council, or its designated sub-committee, should
read them and decide what the needs of the community’s
seniors are. Keep in mind that sometimes what the senior
community is concerned about may not be a concern at all.
Popular media has, on occasion, erroneously convinced the
public of a threat that is not real.
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Where can I get a sample Triad
Survey?
The appendix of the Triad Implementation
Handbook found elsewhere on this site has a sample of a
survey. These are not copyrighted, so you are free to copy
at will.
