The Rosh Hashanah appeal of Jewish Care highlights the cost to the charity of helping service users through the pandemic. It needs to raise an extra £5 million beyond the £16 million it normally needs to generate from the community.
Since lockdown, 1,200 community members have depended on Jewish Care for meals on wheels. Some 1,400 clients and their families are relying on the support of its social work teams and inquiries to the Jewish Care helpline are up by 40 per cent.
The appeal proceeds will go towards personal protective equipment and sanitiser, infrared thermometers for care homes and independent living schemes, trained advisers for the helpline and meals on wheels.
Jewish Care chief executive Daniel Carmel-Brown said he was “humbled by the way our staff and volunteers kept going” during and beyond lockdown.
“But coronavirus hasn’t gone away and we have to make sure we can continue to protect, keep safe and support vulnerable members of the Jewish community who need us.”
Featured in the appeal is Rabbi Tony Bayfield, whose father Ron, a Jewish Care resident, died from coronavirus.
“Back in the middle of March, my mother was getting worried about dad,” Rabbi Bayfield recalled. “I got a phone call telling me that he’d been taken to hospital. It was hugely painful for me because I couldn’t be with him to reassure him over those last two weeks of his life.
“But Jewish Care was there every step of the way. I cannot imagine how I and my family could have coped over the last five years without them.”
