Mother's Day, Outdoors, Carp Tank, Concerts and More

Dear friends

We’ve had quite a week at the Jewish Home Family and are looking forward to celebrating Mother’s Day with our residents and many of their family members. Our Mother’s Day celebration got underway in the Gallen Day Center today and it was a wonderful event. We had a “tea party” with all the trimmings and folks were dressed for the occasion. Every participant has a goodie bag to take home as a way to carry our celebration into the weekend! (More photos) There are festivities planned at both the Jewish Home at Rockleigh and Jewish Home Assisted Living.

Other Galllen highlights this week included a special art program, making picture frames using corks. The frames were all unique and interesting and a great time was had by all. We also continued with our specialized Parkinson’s program on Tuesday and Friday, which is continuing to grow and make a real difference for individuals with Parkinson’s disease.

At the Jewish Home at Rockleigh we had quite a week as well! We began with a musical performance on Sunday featuring students from the Kaplen JCC. There is nothing our residents love more than interactions with young people and talented young people, well, that’s truly the icing on the cake. We had more talented young people with us on Tuesday as we hosted a “Carp Tank” (our version of Shark Tank!) that featured students from Ma’ayanot High School. These students have been visiting residents and working in teams to develop innovative assistive devices to help individuals with Parkinson’s disease. They’ve learned a lot about Parkinson’s and the concerns of people who are living with this diagnosis. Their inventions were presented to a panel of judges, including residents and outside experts as well as an appreciative audience. (More photos)

The weather has helped us all to begin to think about outdoor activiites. At the Jewish Home at Rockleigh, the Recreation staff began a new spring wellness initiative. On Wednesday, they took nine residents on a “nature walk” around the perimeter of our campus. We see lots of folks enjoying the sun on the patios on both campuses and it’s great to see that coupled with activity as well. (click for more photos and a stop-motion video)

Jewish Home Assisted Living began a new program called “Generations2Generations” with Daisy troop 7101 from Park Ridge. The residents and children did a craft project together and then the residents took turns reading a book aloud to the troop members. Residents also appreciated a lecture on fall prevention by our physical therapy staff and had lots of great questions. Thursday’s highlight was a visit to the JCC on the Palisades for the annual Yiddish concert and on Friday we had a lecture from our favorite professor, Ian Drake. His topic this week was “Are Trade Wars Good for Anyone?”

It is also Nurse’s week (always the week that contains Florence Nightingale’s birthday, May 12) and we celebrated nurses across our system. We had luncheons and breakfasts on both campuses, gifts for our nursing staff and a chance to truly say thank you, which we can never say often enough!

We also had some great meetings outside of our area. Bob Bardach, Assistant Vice President, went to the SPRiNG Alliance meeting in Chatanooga, Tennessee last week. The SPRiNG Alliance is the group that brings together elder abuse shelters from around the country for an annual symposium SPRiNG stands for “shelter partners, regional, national, global.” We always learn a great deal from these meetings and come back with ideas to help strengthen our own shelter program, SeniorHaven for Elder Abuse Prevention. I had the opportunity to head to Indianapolis and participate in the LeadingAge Indiana annual conference. I was part of a new program to help develop stronger grassroots advocacy initiatives and it was a really interesting and enlightening discussion.

Don’t miss our musical production at the Jewish Home at Rockleigh! On May 17, you can catch either the 2 pm or 6 pm performance of Oklahoma! I have had a chance to hear some of their rehearsals and I promise you will enjoy every minute of this annual highlight.

All the best,

Carol Silver Elliott
President/CEO
The Jewish Home Family

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