WHAT WE DO
Laurence Rubin, Attorney
JFS Board Member, Past President

When I think of Jewish Family Service I think of Jewish people coming to Buffalo as far back as the 1850s, and the Jewish community deciding that we needed to take care of our own.

Whether they were widows or orphans, people falling on hard times or the sick or the elderly, we formed an organization to address that. And frankly, that’s very much what we continue to do today.

We expanded our reach as we found that our capabilities were sufficiently there to address more than our own local community needs. We continue to do that and I think that’s a wonderful thing, that members of any community or people within a community can feel that that they can help others who are in need.

That’s what we do.

I CAN COPE
Gail Wooding, Counselor
Geropsychiatric Assessment Program

There are people who have a lot of pain. So they have depression associated with their medical conditions. There are people here at JFS who are trained to help people with pain management. You could do relaxation training, meditation. Those kinds of things help people with pain.

Pain management is basically the idea that thought, behavior and emotions are connected in a triangle. Let’s say the thought is, “I can’t stand this another minute.” If you say “I can’t stand this another minute,” then the behavior may be even more agony and the feeling is despair.

If you change the thought and said, “I just need to get through this. This is going to last ‘x’ amount of time and I can get through this,” the behavior is “I’ll breathe,” or “I have some skills I can use.” And then the feeling is relief, or it could be “I can cope.” How you think influences your feelings, and your thinking influences your behavior. You can reverse any one of those.

ROOTED DIFFERENTLY
Maureen Hirschfelt
JFS Mental Health Counselor

One of the things that I've always liked about this agency is that it really does have a commitment to the clients.

I was raised Catholic, but I've learned over my years here so much about what it means to care about human beings. Other organizations are corporate-minded, and focus on the bottom line. Certainly JFS is concerned with the bottom line. But what makes it different is that it's richly steeped in the heritage of a community.

This organization was founded by people who know their faith. They know what they stand for. That's never shaken. That's rooted and seems to lead this agency. It is reflected by the board in terms of communion of what is best for the clients. It means, “If they're hungry, we'll feed them one way or the other. And if we don't give them food, we'll teach them how to feed themselves. Because that is what is best for the clients.” That always comes through.

A person I supervised said, “You've been here three times. Why do you stay?” I said, “Well, I get to do what I like with my work here. And I find that I get to serve in my life here.”

And then I had to think about the question in terms of the organization. And I thought, “It's rooted differently.”

Bright, cheerful and artistically talented, Burmese teenager Eh Paw had never heard her own voice and never been to school when Jewish Family Service resettled her and family to Buffalo from a refugee camp in Thailand.

“She had complicated health issues and severe hearing loss in both ears since she was a child. She couldn’t communicate verbally so used gestures, and she could lip read in her native language,” JFS President Marlene Schillinger said.

Because Eh Paw had never been to any school anywhere, registering her to attend classes in Buffalo was a challenge. JFS staff partnered with St. Mary’s School for the Deaf to have her evaluated and approved by New York State to attend classes there. Her family was also linked with the Buffalo Hearing and Speech Center, where Eh Paw received her first hearing aids.

For the very first time, she was able to hear her mother, her brother, her own voice and music. Her family was very grateful for this development, and Eh Paw was able to manage using her hearing aids properly on her own,” Schillinger said. “She excelled quickly once she started to attend St. Mary’s.