JFCS also offers a full range of services geared specifically toward older adults. These services include having a JFCS staff member visit an older adult's home to perform a safety assessment to help older adults live safely in their homes for a longer period of time. They will also come to an older adult's home to assist with money management issues such as balancing their checkbooks and paying bills. In addition, JFCS fields more than 300 phone calls each year from families and seniors looking for information about assisted living, social security, senior transportation, and other relevant topics. Each of these hundreds of requests for information are researched and answered by a JFCS staff member.
How does JFCS manage to provide counseling to between 1,300 and 1,500 clients each year, field hundreds of phone calls, facilitate a variety of programs, and also work in partnership with the Alpert JCC and Jewish Federation on still more programs? “We have some amazing interns here,” Ms. Miles comments. “They make it possible for us to work with so many people on a sliding scale. They are Post-Graduate students who already have their Masters Degree in Marriage & Family Therapy, and need 3,000 hours of clinical experience in order to be licensed, so they are here, unpaid, volunteering their time to get those hours. Some of our interns are still working through their Masters program, and we also have some Masters of Social Work students who are also working on getting their clinical hours. They are really an amazing group.”
Ms. Miles is now into her second year at the helm of JFCS. With a Masters Degree in Business Administration in Social Policy and Management from the Heller School at Brandeis University, and years of experience in the non-profit world, Ms. Miles observed, “The programs and services (at JFCS) were already doing well. My area of expertise is the organization side.”
[ PROFILE | Kathryn Miles ]
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