Jewish Family Service of the Desert

Provided counseling services, case management, information and referral support and therapy groups, all to the residents of the coachella valley on a non-sectarian basis. This includes counseling services for palm springs unified and Desert sands unified school districts' elementary schools. Jfs provided direct services to more than 2,650 men, women, and children in need.

Jfs offers many additional programs that benefit coachella valley residents. For instance: through generous grants provided by bighorn cares, the California department of social services, cities of indian wells, indio, palm Desert and rancho mirage, coachella valley wellness foundation, morongo band of mission indians, pacific western bank, scan healthcare, stater bros. Charities, and providedonors, about 203,900 in funds were disbursed for emergency needs for those withlow incomes. Disbursements were made directly to vendors for necessities such as overduerent and utilities, food and medications. the lets do lunch (ldl) program continues to offer in-person programming designed to significantly reduce senior isolation and the confounding deleterious effects known to be associated with being or feeling alone. All six locations continue to operate, offering once-monthly or twice- monthly programming, and program functions such as the quarterly distributionof a geriatric depression scale (gds) to check client mood and connections to other jfs services as well as to services provided by other agencies continue. While a small number of clients continue to wear masks, fears over covid or any other communicable disease seem to be waning in this client population. Cafe europa, the once-monthly educational and socialization program for local holocaust survivors also continues to be offered in-person at the Jewish federation of the Desert office. Although the tolerance education center has reopened, it is currently being run by a losangeles-based consulting team who has made little outreach to the local community. A small number of volunteers from the jfs auxiliary continue to assist the agencys director of community outreach to coordinate programming, and special events on hanukkah, purim, and passover continue to be held at temple sinai in palm Desert. During the reporting time period, a significant grant from the California department of social services was awarded, allowing jfs to offer substantial financial assistance to cafe europa members (holocaust survivors) through june, 2025 for items such as healthcare, durable medical equipment, dental, in-home support services, food, rental/mortgage assistance, utility payments, and case management services. In answer to requests for support for local children of holocaust survivors, cafe europa 2.0, a monthly live event taking place at the Jewish federation of the Desert, was initiated. the program offers an opportunity for clients to engage with those who may have similar experiences growing up with a parent or parents who are holocaust survivors, sharing stories, resources, and support. After suspending the program in response to the covid pandemic, the jfs express volunteer transportation program was relaunched. Transportation continues to be a burden for many coachella valley residents, especially seniors, despite the provision of transportation assistance by several insurance providers. Jfs continued its once-monthly volunteer-driven food distribution program in partnership with find food bank. On the first friday of each month, find delivers food boxes and fresh produce to jfs, and volunteers pack their cars with the food items and deliver them to jfs clients at several locations throughout the coachella valley. There is no charge to jfs clients, and this well-received program will expand commensurate with the recruitment of additional volunteers. This is a usda program with strict client requirements, but jfs makes every effort to offer needed food support for clients. the jfs counseling programs client scheduling paradigm was amended to ensure the ability to provide existing clients with a clinically- appropriate number of available appointments, reducing the number of unduplicated counseling clients seen. the move, though, improves the clinical Service offered by the agency as well as reinforcing the need to continue all efforts to increase the agencys clinical bandwidth. In order to address the need to increase clinical bandwidth in the face of therapist recruiting challenges, the jfs clinical intern program has been reinitiated under the title, increasing current and future access to mental health services. This program utilizes supervised interns to provide no-cost counseling to agencies with whom jfs is collaborating. During the reporting period, jfs partnered with fifteen local agencies to offer their clients no-cost counseling and accelerated scheduling. These agencies include, the Desert cancer foundation, Family health & support network, ymca of the Desert, mizell center, Desert hot springs senior center, variety childrens charity of the Desert, neuro vitality center, dap/borrego health, elder love usa, seiden-juku, refuge pregnancy center, socal adaptive sports, alzheimers coachella valley, alzheimers association of the coachella valley, and onefuture coachella valley. Jfs staff members continue to participate in community efforts to improve behavioral health andsenior services. the jfs director of community outreach serves as the chair of the local senior collaborative (a group of agencies providing services to seniors), and the executive director serves as the co-chair of the expanding access section of the coachella valley behavioral health collective, and he sits on the steering committee for the coachella valley resource collaborative (a group of Service providers coordinated by molina healthcare) and on advisory boards for Jewish Family Service of san diego and the riverside county transportation reimbursement and information project (trip). Jfs continues to provide needed community services, preventing homelessness and improving the quality of life for thousands of local residents annually.