Jewish Care’s Chair, Jonathan Zenios delivers his speech at our Annual Dinner 2023
Good evening.
Thank you for being here tonight. Your support means a very great deal. Our daily acts of Jewish Care are thanks only to your many acts of generosity.
That generosity is measured both in money and in time. This year we benefitted from over £17M in donations and 100,000 hours in volunteering. With over 3,000 volunteers and 13,500 donors, acknowledging every individual contribution would be a huge undertaking that I will not attempt here!
But I must thank our wonderful table hosts for making tonight such a success. There are also three volunteers, amongst our longest serving, that I personally want to thank for their unique contribution and endless support:
Our Honorary President and Dinner Chair Dame Gail Ronson our President and my predecessor Steve Lewis and the indefatigable Lord Michael Levy our Life President.
Collectively you have given over a century to Jewish Care and show no signs of stopping. Thank you for your extraordinary service.
Our appreciation goes too to the CST for all their work in keeping us safe and secure tonight – and for all they do for our community. Thank you.
Thank you too, to the Prime Minister for addressing us this evening. Your presence shows us the respect and affection our country has for our community. And those feelings are mutual.
This was captured by the coronation events we held across Jewish Care a few weeks ago. My personal highlight was attending a coronation tea party at a Betty and Asher Loftus Centre that was festooned with flags and cardboard cut outs. It was graced by the 104-year-old resident of Stella and Harry Freedman House who was handed the mike and sung “La Vie En Rose” beautifully. Sadly others were less impressed. “That’s the only song he knows” muttered the 95-year-old lady next to me. And in fairness, his “O sole mio” was by comparison a little flat.
At Jewish Care, moments like these are what we try to enable, not just on coronations, but every, single, day: that everyone should be permitted, no matter their age or health to keep, as Atul Gawande puts it “shaping the story of their life in the world”, “to make choices” and to “sustain connections to others” ”according to their own priorities.”
I think this sums up beautifully what Jewish Care is here to do: to keep people connected to others and to the Jewish community. How we try to do this is always changing. That’s because the senior leadership of Jewish Care is acutely aware of our responsibility to ensure that this amazing community asset of which we are the custodians will, for generations to come, be here and be relevant.
In this capacity I want to pay tribute to the hard work and tireless diligence of my fellow Trustees – Thank you – and to acknowledge the close and abiding partnership we all have with an amazing directorate team led by Daniel, which so brilliantly runs the organisation.
Collectively, we have to manage Jewish Care’s present and to guard its future. This sometimes necessitates difficult decisions. None more so than last July when we had to decide to close Hyman Fine House care home in Brighton. A significant medium term decline in occupancy and future demand, compounded by increased costs put Hyman Fine under enormous pressure. It was not a decision made lightly. Closure decisions are the hardest any care provider ever has to make. Happily, the residents were settled into new homes before Rosh Hashanah and in partnership with the local Brighton community we have appointed a senior social worker to deliver services and to coordinate programmes that will support people to live in their own homes.
Alongside closures, there have, in the past decade or so, been many openings. I am now delighted to announce that we are on the verge of getting planning permission for our new campus at Redbridge. A first class, modern and fully accessible communal space housing a centre for people living with dementia, along with a 66-bed care home. It will replace our Vi & John Rubens House in Gants Hill and be the hub for our North East London and Essex social work team, and Meals-on-Wheels services.
This new campus, long an aspiration, is now turning into a reality because of the tireless persistence of many and the exceptional philanthropy of its cornerstone donors the Sugar and Ronson Families, a continuation of both families’ decades-long generosity and support to Jewish Care. The community owes you a very great deal. For those of you who want to join in supporting this important project please do let us know.
Opening new care homes and closing old ones is but one part of our response to our clients’ wishes to make choices and to sustain connections to others.
Supporting people to live in their own homes is where demand is growing fastest. And as the baby boomer generation starts to need us more, Jewish Care is responding in many different ways.
Our Kosher Meals on Wheels for the isolated and housebound has more than doubled since 2019, with hundreds of volunteers distributing almost 4,000 meals to members of our community every month.
Demand for our befriending services has tripled.
Our virtual community centre, JC Presents, has had some 9,500 people joining online activities and events over the last 12 months, whether that’s from their homes or in some cases from their hospital beds.
And of course there are our centres for people living with dementia, our community centres, our Holocaust Survivors’ Centre, Social Work team, Family Carers team, our helpline and over 40 support groups.
Even with all this help and support, for some, living at home may stop being possible. But where this is no longer an option, our care homes are there to support and care for them.
Unlike many other providers, the majority of Jewish Care’s residents are funded by Local Authorities. Whilst we have seen a slight increase in Local Authority funding this year, unfortunately it does not compensate for the surge in inflation which has so materially affected us. What all this means is that Jewish Care must bridge the significant and widening gap in funding to meet the true cost of care for members of our community.
And this care is available whether it is carefully planned or has been urgently arranged. The severe shortage of beds across the NHS has meant members of our community are often given less than 24 hours from discharge to find a care home. For those in this situation Jewish Care can be the light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
People are entering our care homes more unwell and living in them for much less time. In some cases for very little time at all.
It has been said that there are only two days with fewer than twenty-four hours in each lifetime, sitting like bookends astride our lives: one is celebrated every year. But it is the other one, the one that we don’t like to think about, that makes each of us see living as precious. We think about that day often at Jewish Care. Being able to care for those at the very end of their lives is a privilege. And, we hope, for those they leave behind, a comfort.
Whether the Jewish Care we give is end of life or in the community, respite or residential, or dementia or nursing whether we are making moments or making memories, we can only do it with your support.
Because the support from the community enables us to support our community.
We need to raise £17M this year to continue doing what we do. So your support has never been more important.
It is only with your generosity that we can enable 10,000 people to each week continue to shape the story of their lives. Every one of those stories counts equal. The film you are about to see shares two of them.
Thank you for your support.