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As the centerpiece of its efforts to help the Jewish community during a period of enormous economic distress, UJA-Federation of New York is launching Connect to Care, a multiservice initiative for New York City, Long Island, and Westchester.
The comprehensive program, with a budget of nearly $7 million through June 2010, will locate direct services as well as a wide array of information and referrals in seven regional centers, and use an expanded UJA-Federation J11 service (formerly known as Resource Line.)
For each location, lead agencies — UJA-Federation network human-service agencies and Jewish community centers — are set to coordinate and provide a range of services, such as employment, career, and emotional counseling, and legal services. The services will be offered in synagogues, agencies, and JCCs, and the project will build on agency–synagogue efforts already under way through the Partners in Caring program and Synergy: UJA-Federation of New York and Synagogues Together.
“It is strengthening the Jewish community at a time of extraordinary stress and dislocation,” said Roberta Leiner, managing director of UJA-Federation’s Caring Commission.
“While maintaining our unrestricted support for human-service agencies, Connect to Care reflects our commitment to care for the Jewish community,” said John S. Ruskay, executive vice president and CEO of UJA-Federation.
Tina Price, chair of the Caring Commission, added: “Connect to Care is responding to a time that is unknown in our recent history. The needs are vast.” She said the program would make a “real difference” in creating “a safety net for the Jewish community.”
This winter, UJA-Federation surveyed agencies it supports and found increases in demand for services compared to the same time a year earlier. These services showed the most increase in demand.
Services will be customized for a broad population in need. Connect to Care will offer access to help to newly affected members of the middle class along with some whose higher incomes have been drastically reduced, as well as the poor and near poor. Thousands of people in the New York Jewish community are expected to be served through Connect to Care in the next year.
UJA-Federation’s J11, in addition to providing general information and referral, will help steer individuals to Connect to Care services and serve as a clearinghouse of information and resources that will be accessible to all of the regional centers. J11 can be reached at 1.877.UJA.NYJ11 (1.877.852.6951).
Speaking of Connect to Care, Ruskay said, “This new effort will bring together the extraordinary resources of UJA-Federation and its network of agencies to provide vital human services in a comprehensive, compassionate, and efficient manner. The initiative will demonstrate again UJA-Federation’s unique capacity to respond to an urgent crisis affecting our community.”
In addition to the seven Connect to Care centers, there will be expansion of F.E.G.S. Health and Human Services System’s resource centers and ParnossahWorks, a web-based tool providing access to employment and job-search information.
Other enhanced services will also be made available across the region, such as New York Legal Assistance Group’s aid for those with severe mortgage and foreclosure problems. Some agencies, such as the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, will have fixed services at certain locations and “circuit riders” to meet needs elsewhere. Agencies running the regional centers will be coordinating closely with a broad range of other organizations supported by UJA-Federation, Leiner said.
Connect to Care was discussed when nearly 300 leaders in New York’s Jewish world gathered at UJA-Federation of New York on March 30 to engage in “Economic Crisis and Response: A Community Conversation,” co-convened with The Jewish Week. A main speaker, Daniel Doctoroff, president of Bloomberg L.P. and former city deputy mayor for economic development, praised Connect to Care as the kind of innovation especially needed during crisis. “Instead of shrinking from the problem, UJA-Federation has responded.” ♦
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