As a part of a three-year Strategic Planning process, Jewish Family Service recently sent out a community survey to gather input about areas of focus for the future.  The community rose to the occasion and took time to both complete the survey and provide thoughtful and insightful answers. JFS is committed to keeping the community abreast of their progress and ideas for future directions.   

The community response regarding what they believe are JFS’ top three most important services was: Aging Services, Food Pantry, and Mental Health Case Management for the Jewish Community. Other categories, which all ranked close to the top three, included: Support for Holocaust Survivors, Financial Emergency Assistance, Case Management to help navigate government programs, Passover Delivery, Homelessness Support, and Fee-based Case Management. Most of the comments indicated that they had difficulty ranking the services and felt that all of them were vital to the community. Feedback included:

“It is very important to have the services offered in formats that are generally not duplicated in the region. Be certain that while other agencies may be doing something similar, the quality of JFS needs to make it stand out as special as the people being served.”

“I believe essential basics--shelter & food--should be first priority.”

“To rank these is very challenging as the importance of each is great. Food, housing are vital, as is emergency assistance. Long term, mental health and case management are crucial as well.”

What does this mean to the Jewish Community of Cincinnati?  Jewish Family Service will continue to devote its efforts towards “strengthening lives in times of need,” and will leverage the Strategic Plan results to that end. JFS is striving to balance the needs of the community with the feasibility of providing those needs in a cost-effective manner. With strong expertise and qualifications among the staff, professionals and lay leaders, JFS is confident that the final results of the Strategic Plan will ensure a solid and straight-forward path for them into future.

More updates on the Jewish Family Service Strategic Plan will be released over the summer.