Jewish Family Service of Utah, a non-denominational social service organization with offices in Park City and Salt Lake City, has received a $40,000 from the Park City Community Foundation’s Women’s Giving Fund.
Executive Director Ellen Silver received the news at an award celebration at Red Pine Lodge Tuesday afternoon. She said the grant will help create a support group and safety net services for people in caregiver roles, including those caring for older adults and people with a disability or dementia.
Statistically, the large majority of caregivers are women, who often experience extremely high rates of emotional and financial stress stemming from the added responsibilities of their roles. Jewish Family Services, or JFS, seeks to alleviate some of those pressures with support services including mental health counseling and emergency financial assistance for caregivers working to keep loved ones aging in place at home.
Silver said plans include opening a memory café, where people with Alzheimer’s or dementia can be cared for stretches of time while their primary caregivers take a break. The grant will help JFS fill a new position that will focus on Summit County’s needs for education, outreach and startup programming too.
"We've been doing this work in Salt Lake for years, and we began to recognize there were people up here who needed these services and were attending our groups virtually," Silver said. "And now we want to be able to do that for them in person. So this grant will allow us to do that - it will allow us to expand our senior services up to Summit County and to really assure that what I think is kind of a silent group of people, you know, their needs are addressed."
Elder adult care services need to expand, Silver said, as more people seek to remain in their homes and in the area rather than moving away. She said sustaining caregivers is the best way to empower aging in place.
JFS was one of 13 applicants for the annual grant from the women’s giving fund. The grant recipient is decided each year by a vote of members of that group. Two other finalists, EATS Park City and the Youth Sports Alliance, also received $15,000 each at yesterday’s celebration thanks to additional donations to the fund.
The Women’s Giving Fund began in 2014 with the goal of building an endowment by finding 1,000 women to donate $1,000. The goal then was to fund projects that would benefit local women and children in need. Since then it’s grown to a membership of more than 1,400 and a more than $2 million endowment.
Visit www.parkcitycf.org for more information on the fund.