Jewish Family & Children's Service of Sarasota-Manatee, Inc. was recently awarded a $516,670 Supportive Services for Veteran Families grant from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, enabling JFCS to expand its targeted Operation Military Assistance Program (O-MAP) to veterans and military families in Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto Counties.
 
The O-MAP services will focus on case management, securing affordable permanent housing, supportive services and emergency financial assistance. The goal is to prevent homelessness or re-house recently homeless Veterans and their families of low-income veterans and their families and provide access to community resources including coordination of VA and public benefits in order to improve their independent living skills.

Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis' Nurturing Our Retired Citizens Program (NORC) is currently the featured community on Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities' website. The mission of the project is to help older adults remain in their own homes for as long as possible with the resources they need to be safe, healthy engaged citizens. The vision is to inspire residents of all ages to work toward this goal. In developing the program, JFCS learned that the community was rich in resources but was challenged by impediments to services access. People did not know what resources existed, how to access the resources, or who qualified for the resources. In response, the NORC program was designed to educate the community about aging issues, help people learn about resources, and help the community create programs that strengthen the safety net for seniors. 
 
Through this initiative, JFCS created community wide resource directories, both hard and electronic forms. Read more about NORC here.

Jewish Family Services of Columbia has appointed Laney Cohen as Director. Cohen replaces Elysa Sexton. AJFCA congratulates Laney on her new position and welcomes her to the AJFCA community.