IMPACT 2026
By Ann deVillafane, BS, ADC/EDU, CDP, MassCAP Program Chair Update
Hi, everyone Happy New Year! The MassCAP Board was busy in 2025. MassCAP celebrated 50 years as your state Organization at the 2025 MassCAP Conference. This was our first MassCAP conference since COVID. On October 15th & 16th at the Doubletree in Leominster, MA, we had 55 people that attended the conference and enjoyed the speakers and networking with their peers and the vendors. Kathleen Carville & Laura Friis from the MassCAP Board presented Wednesday night with “Differentiation in Arts and Crafts” and “Crafts for Every Season” each sessions attendees found interesting & provided them with creative craft ideas. Our opening speaker on Thursday, Dr. Randi Lebar presented “Music in Dementia-Finding the Piano” which was amazing and extremely inspiring. “Building A Bridge to Recovery: An Interactive Introduction to SUDS” by Jack Maroney and Dr. James DiReda was very informative and many activity professionals in LTC have had residents that are dealing with substance abuse disorder and found this session very helpful. The “Vendor Spotlight” presented by Sandy Sarza, MassCAP President, attendees enjoyed connecting with the vendors and finding out different services they can provide for their facilities. Cassidy Salvatore, presented “Plan It, Post It, Play It: Tech Tools for Every Stage of Activities”, she provided attendees with new tech sources to try and ideas to enhance their activity programs. Anne Cabral, was the ending session “Empathetic Leadership in Elderly Care: Raising the Standard of Service” and she helped attendees understand and reflect on their methods and practices of leadership. A big thank you to all the speakers and the MassCAP Board for all their support and hard work. Overall, the MassCAP 2025 conference was a great success!
The MassCAP Board is working on providing workshops and speakers for MassCAP members for 2026! Our next workshop will be in March at Care One Millbury in Millbury, MA. More information will be coming soon. I am always open to new ideas and suggestions and would like to thank those people who have already reached out to me with speaker names and topics they are interested in hearing about. If you are interested in hosting a workshop or speaking at a workshop, please reach out to me at ann.devillafane@yahoo.com
We are working on trying to increase the MassCAP membership, so don’t forget to renew your 2026 membership now and encourage a other activity professionals that you know.
Knowledge is power!! And keep yourself powered up with MassCAP!
