Jewish Home Lifecare :: Caring as individual as you

Person Centered Care

Culture Change and Communities of Caring: Jewish Home Lifecare’s Ongoing Journey
The goal of creating communities of caring at Jewish Home Lifecare is to combine our high standards of service excellence with the creation of small home environments that are kind, gentle, and satisfying places to live, work and visit. Culture change transforms a “facility” into a “home,” a “patient” into a “person,” and a “schedule” into a “choice.”

Person Centered Care

Culture Change and Communities of Caring: Jewish Home Lifecare’s Ongoing Journey

The test of a people is how it behaves towards the old.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

The goal of creating communities of caring at Jewish Home Lifecare is to combine our high standards of service excellence with the creation of small home environments that are kind, gentle, and satisfying places to live, work and visit.

Culture change transforms a “facility” into a “home,” a “patient” into a “person,” and a “schedule” into a “choice.”

The three fundamental Principles of Care are:

  • We must recognize, appreciate, and promote each elder’s capacity for continued growth.

  • Our work must be defined by our elders’ needs and capacities, not by ours or our institutions.

  • “Treatment” can be intermittent and brief, but “care” must be continuous and long lasting.

Some of the specific changes Jewish Home is putting in place to help elders and staff share a strong feeling of community and belonging include:

  • Staff enters into caregiving relationships based upon elders’ individualized care needs and personal desires.

  • Decisions are made by elders and those closest to them.

  • Schedules and routines are flexible in order to match elders’ needs and wishes.

  • Spontaneous activities happen around the clock.

  • Work is relationship-centered. Staff have consistent assignments.

  • Staff bring their personal knowledge of elders into the caregiving process.

The process and ongoing journey of “culture change” is a complex one involving a myriad of smaller changes, including structure, systems, roles and responsibilities, policies, procedures, and programs. All of these factors must support the development of new behaviors within the organization.

However, culture change does not come about by just making changes in an organization’s “formal systems.”

To achieve culture change, Jewish Home will also continue to:

  • Create communication, networking and learning opportunities.

  • Build and support relationships and community.

  • Identify and promote transformations in practice, services, public policy and research.

  • Develop and provide access to resources and leadership.

This initiative as a whole is supported by ongoing training and education, to continually enhance staff’s abilities to meet our elders’ and family members’ unique needs.