Successfully Bridging Generations
charlottesville, jaba, jefferson area board for aging, senior center, seniors,
While some communities struggle to meet the needs of their growing senior populations, Charlottesville residents of all ages benefit from a solid foundation of services and support established by the Jefferson Area Board for Aging.
Created in 1975, JABA serves the aging in Charlottesville and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson counties. Its nonprofit arm, JABA Inc., solicits private funding and operates JABA’s various properties and programs. It’s this blend of expanding its revenue base while adding new, innovative services that has made JABA a leader in the elder-care field and why the Charlottesville area has become nationally known as a place where seniors are served well, says Gordon Walker, chief executive officer.
“Our approach to the service side of what we do is to provide a continuum of opportunity, for both seniors and for their family and caregivers,” Walker says. “We provide services that are timely and with a minimum amount of intervention, so that once people have the information in hand, they can go about empowering themselves. On the other end of that continuum, we help with everything from providing information on things such as the new Medicare prescription plan, senior housing and nursing homes in the area.”
And then there are programs that pull in numerous volunteers who do things such as check up on seniors in rural areas, install grab bars and other assistive devices that allow someone to remain self-sufficient as long as possible. Other services include home delivery of meals, adult day health care, case management, health insurance counseling, home care and more.
JABA provides other signature services, such as Club Pathway, which helps individuals who are in the early stages of memory loss, and Cool Aid, which supplies free cooling equipment to low-income people of all ages who are medically endangered by high temperatures.
JABA also stands out among similar organizations for its commitment to senior housing, both independent and assisted. It built and opened Woods Edge Apartments, a senior facility, in 2001 and took over the management of what is now Mountainside Senior Living, a 118-bed assisted living facility in Crozet, in 2002.
“All these things focus not just on the senior population, but also on the adult children who live close by or far away and are trying to figure out what to do about elder care,” Walker says. “We see our job as serving multiple generations who are the recipients of our services. Now we’re extending that even further and sending volunteers into schools to work with at-risk kids, and working with local food growers so that 20 percent of our produce now comes from local sources.”
“We had to redesign our logo and tagline to reflect this broader scope,” adds Elise Thierry, JABA’s publicist. “Now our tagline is ‘Live better. Longer,’ a far cry from just saying ‘senior services,’ and it shows how what we do runs through several generations.”
The organization’s future will revolve around even closer pairings of current clients and future ones as JABA continues From Gray to Green, its eco-friendly, multi-pronged sustainability program.
“We look at things like childhood obesity and realize that we can put retired nurses into schools to work with kids, and work with a task force to provide fresh food and produce to low-income kids,” Walker says. “It’s all based on the fact that the younger generations are the future older generations.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Todd Bennett
