By Dr. Michael Mandel, JFS President &
Wendy Kreuter, JFS CEO
As JFS’ 2023 Fiscal Year comes to a close, it offers us the opportunity to reflect on our impact over the past year and look toward the future. Lately it seems like every passing year is JFS’ most exciting, most challenging, most important.
These are a few examples of how, with the support of our friends and community, JFS Transformed Lives and Strengthened our Community over the past year:
Memory assessment services, our newest offering, provided 419 people experiencing cognitive decline with diagnoses and care recommendations.
We welcomed more than 100 Ukrainians to Richmond without the federal support we relied on during our last resettlement effort.
Connecting Hearts received two substantial multi-year contracts from the Virginia Department of Social Services to provide adoption services for children and teens in foster care. We’re adding staff to provide those expanded services to help find families, homes, and better lives for kids currently in foster care.
Our partnership with the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation and the Bob and Anna Lou Schaberg Foundation allowed us to value and support our In-Home Care Aides and their work by increasing their compensation, offering specialized training, and providing a dependable system of backup transportation.
The population of older adults in Richmond will keep growing for another 30 years, but the number of agencies accepting Medicaid for home care or counseling keeps dwindling. We must build our capacity to meet the needs of low-income seniors now and in the future.
To enhance our spectrum of care, we also collaborated with Beth Sholom to create Kirva Hospice, which is now serving its first patients and their families with dignity, kindness, and respect.
Last year was a time of growth, but also a time of sorrow, as we said goodbye to many outstanding members of the JFS family: Jacqueline Viener, Joan Goodstein, Marjorie Davids, Sheldon Shapiro, Linda Mays, and Shelley Birnbaum.
Their memories, leadership, and generosity bless JFS and all we serve.
The first President of JFS in 1849, Fanny Heller Straus, probably couldn’t have imagined 2024; electric cars or cellphones. But we’re sure she could envision her then fledgling Jewish Family Services celebrating 175 years.
Our tradition of service and compassion has already survived world wars, economic crises, and global pandemics. Any one of these events would stop most, yet they’ve fueled our work.
We invite you to join us, North America’s oldest Jewish Family Services, as we begin to celebrate our 175th Anniversary. JFS history is Richmond’s history.
It’s women’s history.
It’s Jewish history and American history.
It’s our history, and it’s your history too!
Jewish Family Services is supported, in part, by a generous annual contribution and programming grants from the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond.
