EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In early 2004, leadership of the Jewish Home of San Francisco launched a collaborative and community-wide strategic visioning initiative. This process was undertaken in order to:

• Assess the changing needs of the Bay Area’s older adults and the Home’s capacity to better serve those needs.
• Examine how and where the Home delivers programs and services, and its ability to refine, improve and redefine those services.
• Consider ways to alter the methods and locations in which the Home delivers programs and services in the future, so as to serve a broader constituency of older adults – as well as new and emerging markets – who are looking for different types of senior living environments.
• Review and update the organization’s vision and strategic plan to ensure that the Home remains responsive and relevant as a provider in a rapidly changing network of services for older adults in our community.

Aging is the largest, most powerful socio-demographic facing the world today.

When we began developing a new strategic plan, it was with more of a specific focus on how the Jewish Home of San Francisco would deliver services to senior adults in the future. However, in response to what we have heard and learned during this process, it has become clear that the vision we are endeavoring to shape extends beyond our San Francisco (Silver Avenue) campus. Some of the trends affecting our understanding include, but are not limited to:

• Aging is the largest, most powerful socio-demographic facing the world today.
• Today’s social institutions are unable to handle the deluge of demands for health services. The current health systems must convert from an acute to a chronic system to meet the needs and demands of the future.
• Governments at different levels have neither the resources nor the commitment to our aging population necessary to effectively address these challenges.
• There is an opportunity and an expectation – even an obligation - for the Jewish community to meet this need.

The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties completed a demographic study in 20041 that highlighted the following key developments over the past 18 years:

• There has been a doubling of the age 65-plus population in the United States (from 17 million to 33 million).
• There has been a 50 percent increase in the 45-54 age group in the Bay Area, whose parents are in the 70-90 age category. These 70-90 year olds may become future Bay Area residents, who require age-appropriate housing and services closer to their adult children.
• The four highest priorities in terms of unmet needs among this 70-90 age group are: 1) transportation; 2) Jewish programming; 3) home care; 4) assisted living.
• The rationale for addressing these unmet needs by congregating people and services; in other words, physical proximity.

The national and local trend lines for aging services in both the Bay Area and the Jewish community create possibilities, but also the need to realign Jewish aging services. We recognize the necessity for developing a vision that can be used to set policy – and thus management – in the right strategic direction to address future needs.

In addition, we will be refining the Jewish Home’s master site plan that will allow us to realign the Home’s national reputation for quality and innovation, as established by our predecessors, into modern centers of excellence that both meet and better serve the current needs of older adults seeking our services, as well as accommodate new markets. The Jewish Home is our flagship, and the emotional and cultural epicenter of our aging initiatives.

1. “Connecting our Jewish Community” – 2004 Jewish Community Study of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, August 2005.

Next: Background