Providing Vital Support to the Impoverished Elderly and their Families
Today there are approximately 45,000 Jews living in Odesa, Ukraine, many of whom are struggling to survive amidst the harsh economic and political situation. Since its inception in 1993, Tikva has played an increasingly important role in helping to care for the most vulnerable and at-risk members of Odesa’s Jewish community.
One key component that perpetuates the cycle of poverty is that adults are unable to work as they are carers for their elderly parents. Tikva has created initiatives to help support families overcome these challenges.
Tikva has implemented life-changing services to care for the physical, mental, and emotional needs of the community’s elderly population, providing the opportunity for their children to find and maintain a job. The elderly members of the programme receive an array of services including assistance in the home, meal and medicine delivery, social activities, and much more.
Tikva also supports the children of the elderly by providing them with the tools and guidance they need to seek and maintain employment, enabling them to financially support their families. Tikva has seen repeatedly that with financial security comes an improvement in a family’s overall sense of well-being, especially that of the children.
Tikva’s Services for the Elderly
For many years, Tikva has provided Odesa’s mobile elderly with communal meals in The Great Choral Synagogue as well as festive holiday programming via its synagogue meals and activities programme. Participants consistently look forward to the opportunity to celebrate the sabbath and holidays with traditional food in a warm community environment.
The meals continue to provide them with much-needed nutritious food, while offering an opportunity for participants to socialise and receive individualised emotional support. The family-like atmosphere goes a long way in helping to alleviate feelings of isolation and loneliness which are often pronounced in old age.
In addition, Tikva is continuing and expanding its long-standing meals on wheels service to Odesa’s impoverished and often immobile senior Jewish community members. Over the years, the meals delivered by “meals on wheels” have supplied critical nutrition to the diets of the many housebound elderly recipients who would otherwise be unable to afford or unable to prepare their own meal. Three times per week, a warm meal is delivered directly to their homes. The elderly look forward to receiving the hot meal and the emotional comfort which it affords.
An Expansion Of Critical Services
Since the new expansion in April of 2014, Tikva has grown to reach 600 elderly participants over age 60, including many Holocaust survivors. Tikva offers a variety of services to these individuals, including the following vital programming:
Home assistance assessment: When they are registered to the programme. A social worker is assigned. They attend the individual’s home to perform a comprehensive assessment to determine their specific needs including shopping, food, medical, emotional support and guidance, and assistance with daily living skills.
Full home assistance: Tikva goes to great lengths to assist the elderly who are frail, housebound, and immobile.
Of those we support in the programme, 33 individuals require daily full-time home-care, including assistance with showering and other basic needs.
Food parcels: Each month the elderly receive packages which include prescribed medicine as needed and staples such as oil, potatoes, corn, rice, vegetables, biscuits, eggs, milk and cheese. The parcels are delivered to the homes of participants who would otherwise be unable to afford these vital items. Last month 244 of the 600 received monthly packages of food and medicine.
Evaluations: Tikva supervisors perform weekly meetings with the programme’s head psychologist to monitor progress and the outstanding needs of the programme’s participants. Social workers perform routine on-site visits to ensure that participants are receiving the services that enable them to live with dignity having their most basic needs attended to.
Tikva’s Day Club for the Elderly
Tikva established a Day club for the elderly in Tairova. The day club’s renovated facility is a welcoming environment for Odesa’s Jewish seniors. It provides a variety of regularly scheduled activities such as, music, arts and crafts, games, exercise classes and special lectures and holiday celebrations.
The opportunities for socialising and the supportive community that the club offers are crucial in helping to combat the loneliness, isolation, depression and other related health problems that all too often are associated with old age.
The day club is open daily from 9:00am-4:00pm and participants receive free transportation to and from the club, as well as a hot lunch. Of the 95 people registered for the club, 25-30 people attend daily.
Services for the Adult Children of the Elderly
Tikva offers employment assistance to the adult children of the elderly population it serves. One of the main goals of the programme is to ensure job placement to increase the financial stability of the families. When the adult children are secure in knowing that their parents’ needs are being met they can confidently enter the workforce and begin earning a livelihood, which positively affects the family and the children’s overall well-being. Helping to end the cycle of poverty.
Tikva addresses many challenges that the adult children encounter including a lack of:
- Understanding in terms of work norms and culture
- Self-confidence and motivation
- Vocational skills
- Expertise in developing resumés
- Interviewing skills
- Familiarity with the Ukrainian job market
- Familial support
- Connections and networking skills
To help the adult children with these challenges, Tikva provides the following services:
- Performs comprehensive assessments for employment candidates.
- Provides emotional support in order to encourage and motivate participants to persist through the process of securing employment.
- Guides participants in choosing a specific vocation and connecting them to vocational training programmes.
- Assists job candidates in identifying and obtaining suitable employment.
- Supports participants with job placements.
- Educates participants on developing professional CVs and interviewing skills.
- Develops creative avenues to assist participants in securing gainful employment.
- Creates viable employment options.
- Performs home visits to ensure the seniors’ needs are being met and to encourage the adult children to seek employment secure in knowing that their parents’ are well-cared for.
