Los Angeles Four-year Study Gives High Priority to Six Jewish Needs

Six major community-wide service programs have been designated as current high priority needs in a report of the Jewish Federation-Council’s Community Planning Department approved by the JFC board of directors, it was announced by Dr. Max William Bay, president. The report represents more than four years of study by four subcommittees.

Cited as priority needs in the report, the first of several to be presented — which will be subject to continuing review and change as conditions of human need continue to change — are:

1. Strengthening Jewish identity and leadership potential in youth.

2. Increased service to the Jewish aged.

3. A fully integrated program of counseling services to Jewish families and children.

4. Improved procedures in community relations inter-agency relationships.

5. Preparing the “next generation” of professional Jewish communal staff.

6. Linking medical services to the home and to other institutions.

The listing of the recommendations implies no order of priority, Lawrence Irell, chairman of the Planning Department stressed. He said that upon the recommendation of JFC’s Budget and Allocations committee, the board of directors instructed his department to develop a set of guidelines by which the Budget and Allocations committee would be aided in making sharper distinctions in its distribution of funds, rather than relying too heavily on the past history of allocations.

PRIORITY REASSESSMENT EXPLAINED BY LEADER OF JEWISH COMMUNITY

“It was the aim of the priority reassessment process to emerge, not with a detailed blueprint for future community development, but rather with some conclusions suggesting fields of community endeavor that in the years ahead would require greater or lesser emphasis, ” Mr. Irell added. The overall plan for priority reassessment was conducted through three major phases:

1. A detailed self-study by each agency in an effort to examine its current program, project its needs for the next decade and set its own priorities.

2. An intensive review of the data submitted by the four subcommittees which did not consider the agencies per se, but rather the services performed by them. Research and consultation aided their efforts.

3. Study and recommendations of the full Community Planning Department who, in making judgments, considered patterns of need within the Jewish community, as well as the impact of the availability of services under non-sectarian auspices and government support. Certain programs, though socially important were, therefore, judged to be less relevant for specifically Jewish sponsorship.

As the organized Jewish community’s central planning, coordinating and fund raising resource, the Jewish Federation-Council is comprised of 29 citywide health and social welfare agencies and 486 constituent organizations with a membership in excess of 85,000. JFC sponsors the United Jewish Welfare Fund campaign which supports 169 local, national and overseas services.