We deliver our services and conduct our programs where our clients live, where they work, worship, and congregate, and on our campus at Menorah Park. We can help older adults continue to live in their community, and can help guide the discussion and decision making on the practical realities for a move – if and when questions of quality of life and safety make a move worth considering.
Where do all our services and programs happen?
SJFS is the community arm of Menorah Park’s Continuum of Care, which means most of the people we serve live in the community, though the majority of our services and programs are delivered on the Menorah Park campus, in:
- SJFS offices
- The Center for Healthy Living
- The Arts & Minds Community Room
A good number of our clients have limited mobility, so we meet them in their homes.
Over the years we have held programs out in the community, for example at:
- The Dunbar Center
- The Wescott Community Center
- Christopher Community senior housing
- PACE CNY locations
- Other skilled nursing facilities and assisted living housing
- Various synagogues, temples, churches, and senior centers
More recently, we have increased our programs to residents of Menorah Park:
- The Oaks – independent-living apartments
- The Inn – assisted-living apartments
- Jewish Health & Rehabilitation – skilled nursing facility
We Deliver Services to Match Our Clients’ Needs and Preferences
We try to offer our services and conduct our programs in a variety of ways, recognizing our clients have different needs and different preferences:
- What? Counseling, socializing, classes, learning groups, discussion groups, artistic activities (art, music) and outings (museums, concerts, events)
- Who with? Alone or with others
- Individuals, couples, families, family caregiver-care recipient duos, groups
- How? In-person, over the phone, through video calls
- How often? Single events, in a short series, as ongoing sessions
Thanks to multiple grants, SJFS opens BeWell Together, a unique space for virtual, hybrid and in-person activities
BeWell Together aims to serve older adults and their family caregivers and service providers in the Onondaga County and Central New York region. The project builds technological infrastructure into an existing group space, creating the BeWell Together suite. This facility will allow us to improve, expand access to and extend the reach of both longstanding and newly established services from SJFS and our partners, all of which support respite and assistance to caregivers to older adults. The newly created facility will enable on-site group attendees to join with remote attendees in respite, social learning, therapeutic, training, and supervision activities, overcoming limitations imposed by COVID-19, client mobility, and cost. Participants will have the option to attend from home, from other remote locations, and/or on-site – and to alter their attendance according to convenience.
We have called the project BeWell Together to emphasize its inherently community-building needs and benefits, bridging as it will the “geographical” divide between on-site and remote participants. We expect this project to flourish indefinitely once the facility is up and running in March 2021.
BeWell Together was made possible by generous contributions, first, to renovate an existing space in The Oaks, the independent living apartments on the Menorah Park campus. New York State Caregiving and Respite Coalition and the CNY Community Foundation provided grants to purchase and install flat panel displays, point-to-zoom cameras, microphones, and speakers that produce a fully-integrated hybrid experience for both in-person and remote participants.