Welcome

Welcome from

Daniel Carmel-Brown, Chief Executive, Jewish Care

Since the last edition of Careline, we have certainly been busy at Jewish Care. In July, we were delighted to share the next stage of our plans for a stunning £25 million state of the art care and community campus in the Redbridge and Essex areas.

The campus will include a wonderful community centre space, which includes a centre for people living with dementia, alongside a 66-bed care home, which our residents at Vi & John Rubens House in Gants Hill will relocate to. Additionally, our Social Work and Meals on Wheels teams will also be based on site. We are very pleased to share that we have now submitted our planning application for the development to Redbridge Council and asked local residents to submit their support for the application. We now await a decision from the Council and will be sure to update you when we have more news.

Sadly, in September, we marked the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II across our services. The period of national mourning was especially meaningful for those we support within Jewish Care, because for so many of them, their memories will extend beyond the 70 years of her reign. On behalf of Jewish Care, I wrote to His Majesty King Charles III to send our collective condolences, along with condolence books that were positioned around various services at Jewish Care. May her memory be a blessing to us all.

In brighter news, we held our annual Volunteer Awards, recognising the amazing contributions that our fantastic volunteers make across our services. We are always so grateful to our volunteers; without them we wouldn’t be able to do so much of what we do. We also held our Staff Awards in person for the first time since the pandemic, paying tribute to our staff who have been nominated by their colleagues, for going above and beyond in so many ways. These awards are wonderful opportunities for us to thank staff and volunteers for their hard work and dedication. Across Jewish Care, Autumn usually brings so many opportunities to celebrate festivals together and our services have been marking these in lots of fun and creative ways. You can see plenty of examples of this in the coming pages of Careline. We are incredibly proud to launch our brandnew website this winter, which you will also read about here. Our new site includes some exciting new accessibility features, industry leading tools and a much easier to navigate layout.

In our last edition, I said that we had begun the process to close Hyman Fine House care home in Brighton, and we have now finished this process, with all residents now having found alternative accommodation in new care homes. Following continued conversations between Jewish Care, the Sussex Jewish Representative Council (SJRC) and the Brighton and Hove Jewish Welfare Board, Jewish Care were approached by national homelessness prevention charity, St Mungo’s about short term use of the building for their ‘No Second Night Out’ service. The service aims to limit the amount of time anyone has to spend sleeping on the streets. With winter weather and the high levels of homelessness in Brighton, this will provide much needed shelter and security to vulnerable people. The income from the rental of the home by St Mungo’s will go directly into supporting services for the local older Jewish Brighton & Hove community, whilst ensuring that the building does not sit vacant and at risk.

“WE KNOW THAT THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS WILL AFFECT MANY OLDER PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY, AND WE ARE DOING ALL WE CAN TO SUPPORT ANYONE AT JEWISH CARE IMPACTED BY THIS AND WHO MAY BE STRUGGLING AS A RESULT.”

During the colder months we are doing our best to stay energy efficient across Jewish Care. This is no small feat, and our energy bills, like many others’ have indeed increased. We know that the cost of living crisis will affect many older people in the community, and we are doing all we can to support anyone at Jewish Care impacted by this and who may be struggling as a result. We still need your support to enable us to do this, so please do consider making a donation this winter or as part of our Chanukah appeal to help us support the community.

Wishing you and your loved ones a warm and happy Chanukah.