Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep. # 101 How Jewish Home Family's 110-Year Legacy Is Revolutionizing Senior Services
Carol Silver Elliott's journey from communications graduate to President and CEO of Jewish Home Family reveals how passion for service can transform an entire field. After holding leadership positions in hospital systems and career development, she found her true calling in long-term care – a field some find depressing but that she describes as a daily gift of wisdom and connection from the elders she serves.
Under Elliott's leadership, Jewish Home Family has evolved dramatically while honoring its 110-year legacy. What began as an orphanage in Jersey City now offers a full continuum of care across two Bergen County campuses. Most revolutionary is their implementation of the "greenhouse homes" model – smaller, more intimate living environments where care is truly elder-directed. This means residents decide when to wake, eat, and participate in activities rather than conforming to institutional schedules. Multi-skilled staff function more like extended family members, creating genuine relationships with residents.
The organization's commitment to innovation shines through their state-of-the-art rehabilitation center, which opened in December 2022 after breaking ground just as COVID was beginning. Their warm water therapy facilities have proven transformative – helping individuals who haven't walked in years regain mobility and independence. This exemplifies Elliott's "culture of yes" philosophy: finding creative solutions to enhance quality of life, regardless of challenges.
Looking toward senior living's future, Elliott emphasizes the growing need for housing with supportive services that combat both physical limitations and social isolation. For families navigating elder care decisions – whether locally or across the country – Jewish Home Family stands ready to provide guidance, connections, and compassion.
Discover how Jewish Home Family is reimagining senior living by visiting jewishhomefamily.org or reaching out directly with your questions about elder care options.
Jewish Home Family
Carol Silver Elliott
10 Link Drive
Rockleigh, NJ 07647
201-784-1414
info@jewishhomefamily.org
Admissions Fax: 201-256-4100
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group, based out of Bergen County funny enough. In Harrington Park, new Jersey, just down the road from where our guest is from, it's Carol Silver Elliott, the president and CEO of Jewish Home Family Carol. Just down the road where our guest is from, it's Carol Silver Elliott, the president and CEO of Jewish Home Family Carol. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks, doug, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So Carol has been the president and CEO of the Jewish Home Family for how many years now?
Speaker 3:Ten and a half.
Speaker 2:Ten and a half. So, for those of you who don't know, the Jewish Home Family has two main locations one in Rivervale, new Jersey, which is just down the road, and then another one in Rockley, new Jersey, just a few miles away. So, carol, I like to get into a little bit more before we talk about what you're doing now. How did you get to this place? How did you become the president and CEO of an assisted living community?
Speaker 3:So we're more than assisted living, we're a full continuum of care for older adults. But how I ended up here? I'm a big believer that life is a lot of serendipity and sometimes the door opens and you say, oh, I think I'll walk through there.
Speaker 3:So, I started. I went to college in Ithaca for communication arts. I did a master's program in communications and when I finished graduate school I ended up doing an internship in a hospital. So started my career in health care marketing and public relations and communications and ended up getting my first real job in a hospital as their very first director of public relations in a small hospital in Wisconsin and worked there for a number of years, moved to a larger tertiary care facility and then was fortunate enough to be recruited by Stanford Hospital in Stanford, connecticut, where I had the gift of not only being vice president of public relations and marketing but then was able to add strategic planning to my role and ended up moving to Rochester, new York, also working for a hospital system, and was recruited to run a small organization as the CEO that did career development and career planning for people, and I really wanted to be in the C-suite. That was something I desired, but I also knew that doing it in a healthcare setting was going to be more difficult because I wasn't a line function. I was a staff function in the marketing piece.
Speaker 3:So I left hospitals for a little bit, went to work and found two things that I loved being the CEO, I must be glutton for punishment, I guess, and that helping people find fulfillment in their work lives is a wonderful thing, but it wasn't where my heart was. Where my heart was was really in more of the basic human services. So I was fortunate enough to find long term care my career in long-term care in 2007, when I became the president and CEO of Cedar Village Retirement Community, located just outside of Cincinnati. I was there for eight years, really longing to come back to the East Coast, where we're from, where our family is. So the opportunity here at Jewish Home Family was fortunately brought to me by a recruiter. And you know, as they say, the rest is history.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So my brother went to Cornell.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And lived in Rochester. Sober above Rochester called Victor New York.
Speaker 3:I know Victor well. I mean, Rochester is my hometown. I was there this week, as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I say every time I'm there. You know it will always feel like home here. It's probably the only place in the world that I don't need GPS to get around.
Speaker 2:That's funny. You know, we're from Long Island. My brother went to Ithaca and then he was in the hotel management school and his first job out of college was working at a hotel in rochester and that's where he met his wife, who was he was 23, she was 21 and, um, they were living there and then he got a job in maryland. So they moved to maryland, that's where his three kids were born. But then they, um, he got another job and moved back up to, you know, moved to victor, where she was from. So, uh, that's where they raised their kids. And it was funny, because when you get up there it's just so much open space, it's like a big sky. You know, one thing my brother used to say is like there's so much, you know, just you could just see the sky more than you know we have a lot of trees in Burton County or Long Island or New York City.
Speaker 3:So not really a lot of trees Well the population is a little less, but I actually went to Ithaca undergrad in Cornell, for grad school and then went back to grad school to get a master's in health care administration at Michigan. So our paths are your brothers and my paths were sort of paralleled there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I guess I misspoke when I said assisted living and I'll you know to speak for, I think, a lot of listeners and I've been educated over the seven, eight years that I've been in the business. I'm in now and learning more about the senior and long-term care industry. You know there was kind of a generic term of nursing home, right, and now maybe there's a generic term in assisted living. But you know there's so many different levels of long-term care that different communities offer. Right, you have assisted living, you have independent living, you have dementia care. So let's speak to what you, how you describe Jewish Home Family again and what that means versus how I described it.
Speaker 3:Sure. So I always talk about Jewish Home Family as a continuum of services for older adults and I normally say located in Northern Bergen County, new Jersey. And what I think is most important and you just said it is that people need different services at different points in their life and our goal is to be able to be there to help them and support them and enhance their quality of life. So the Jewish Home Family, interestingly enough, is celebrating a big birthday this year the organization's 110 years old.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Doesn't look a day over 100, right.
Speaker 2:Not at all.
Speaker 3:We started in Jersey City and, like many organizations in our age category, we started as an orphanage. Right From that became a place to house women who were in need women and children and then later became a specialty hospital and a custod New Jersey. But in the 70s the board realized that Jersey City was probably not the place that the organization needed to be for the long haul. So they began to look around for an outpost here in Bergen County and the first location was where the current assisted living facility is, right in the middle of Rivervale. They bought a small nursing home old nursing home, I understand with 50 beds we call them beds, multi-bedded rooms and really ran a wonderful facility there. While they continued to look for a place to build a nursing home, we're lucky enough that someone found the piece of property we sit on now at 10 Link Drive in Rockley and that this building was the headquarters of a manufacturing company that was in receivership. So they were able to buy it. They were able to get the approvals they needed. They were required to stay in the footprint of the existing building but were able to completely gut it and turn it into 180 private rooms of long-term care, which is a term I think is more descriptive than nursing home, but that's another conversation for another day. On the Rockley campus opened in 2001. Subsequently, they demolished the building in Rivervale and built a brand new assisted living facility. So assisted living is a lower level of care, right, it's more independent, and that building, again right in the heart at the four corners in Rivervale, has 107 apartments in it. Of those 107, 24 are for memory care at an assisted living level in an area we call memory lane, and the rest are pretty much your traditional assisted living apartments studio apartments, one bedroom, two bedroom, very large two bedrooms, the whole range of things.
Speaker 3:When I came in 2014, we began to look at really planning for the future and we set ourselves on a course of really two major initiatives that we wanted to begin with. One was to become a premier rehabilitation center. So one of the things that's changed since 2001, when we opened our doors on the Rockley campus, and even 2007, is that rehabilitation has become a bigger and bigger piece of the work that we do, and we're grateful for that. We know that we can help people, at whatever age, to recover, to optimize their quality of life, to heal, whether it's an injury or an illness or the effects of aging. We want to be there to support people. We began our project to build our new rehabilitation center, believe it or not, in February of 2020. Rehabilitation center believe it or not, in February of 2020. So life was crazy inside as we were dealing with COVID, and life was normal. I was watching them out the window moving dirt, while inside we were hanging up COVID barriers. But we opened that building in December of 2022 and it really has been a game changer for us. We have 60 private rooms for subacute, which is sort of that post-hospital rehabilitation 60 private rooms and we have a magnificent rehabilitation center with all of the latest treatment modalities, including the only warm water therapy center in our region. We're very, very proud of that. So, as a result of the opening of those 60 new rooms, we're in the process now of making changes in the long-term care in the nursing home, because that was our second priority transform the long-term care experience. We didn't keep those 180 rooms open. We have 60 new rooms. We have now 136 in the long-term care setting for a total of 196. And we're moving into something that's called greenhouse homes.
Speaker 3:Greenhouse homes the greenhouse movement was started 20 something years ago by a geriatrician named Dr Bill Thomas, who said you know, essentially there has to be a better way.
Speaker 3:There has to be a better way of caring for people, that what he saw in long-term care was so maintenance and so custodial.
Speaker 3:And he said you know, we have to give people real lives.
Speaker 3:So greenhouse involves multiple elements, including organizing people not in long units medicalized model, but in smaller households with staff who are multi-skilled workers, who look and feel like extended family, and creating an environment that, as opposed to being staff directed or what used to be called elder centered, is now elder directed.
Speaker 3:So that means that if someone lives in a greenhouse home and they want to get up late with me at four in the morning and drink their first hot cup of coffee, they can do that. And if you want to sleep till 1030 and have breakfast at one o'clock, you can do that. And if six people are in the room and one wants to play bingo and one wants to do crafts and one wants to read and one wants to bake cookies and another one takes a walk, that's what we should do, because this is not normal life and it's all about normalizing the experience. So these are the things we're working on right now. We've switched memory care and assisted living into two greenhouse homes. It's working magnificently, and now we're in the process of starting that big project on the long-term care on the Rockley campus. So lots of great stuff happening here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you mentioned subacute rehab, so that's when somebody, as you said, maybe had an operation, injury, illness, and they're only there for a short period of time, they're just there to be.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's, and they could be outpatient or they stay.
Speaker 3:So when I talk about subacute rehab, I'm generally talking about somebody who's a short-term inpatient somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 days, and then we also provide a very large program of outpatient rehab.
Speaker 3:So oftentimes that may not be someone coming from the hospital, but rather from their doctor's office who says I have a shoulder injury or I have a knee injury, I need rehabilitation. We have two centers for that rehab an outpatient center and an inpatient center. They're right next to each other and we also see a lot of outpatients coming in specifically for the warm water therapy. You know warm water therapy is a game changer.
Speaker 2:Anyone who has a joint injury? What types of injuries?
Speaker 3:Anyone who has a joint injury, anyone who has difficulty with walking, anyone who might have a chronic disease Maybe they have MS or they have Parkinson's disease. What's so amazing about warm water is that so much of the magic that happens happens because of that warm water, and when I say warm, I'm talking 92, 93 degrees is the temperature, and so the warmth relaxes the muscles and relaxes the body, and it gives people the ability to move in ways they can't move on dry land.
Speaker 3:We have one large saltwater pool, three foot six to four foot six in depth. People practice walking. Our very first client when we opened the pool was somebody who has MS, who hadn't walked in five years, who was now able to walk with the walker and function and live their life again. We also have two individual therapy pools. They're very jazzy. They're from a company named HydroWorks which is really at the top of the line. One of the pools has a hydraulic floor, so people enter the pool flat with the floor that they're on and then the floor lowers to the appropriate height so that the water is at the level they need it.
Speaker 3:Underwater treadmills, all kinds of equipment. The other pool same thing has a treadmill fills after the person gets in it very, very quickly from a tank. But both pools have the ability to have a therapist in the water working with the individual or just the individual. I can't tell you the comments, even when I take people on tours, that if there's almost always a patient in one of the pools who will say can I say something? Can I say something? This?
Speaker 2:is wonderful.
Speaker 3:It's changed my life. It's really a phenomenal service.
Speaker 2:That's great. So what have you seen in terms of you know 10 years or more, the trends in long-term care and senior care, because it seems that you know aging in place, having communities where you can stay in one place as you go from maybe subacute to now you want assisted living and then maybe you have Parkinson's, or you know now you need memory care, or you know now you need memory care. Is that like what trends are you seeing in the industry since you started and where do you see things going maybe in the next 10 years?
Speaker 3:So you know, one of the things that we all know is that the demographics are pretty clear, right, the aging population is expanding and people do need services to stay healthy, to be healthy, to live engaged lives. So we think a lot about what is that next group going to want, what are those baby boomers going to want when they hit the healthcare system, as I like to say, like a runaway freight train, because they don't want to live in a nursing home and certainly none of us want to live in that kind of a restricted setting. I think we're seeing a lot more people who are living healthier lives, longer. That you know. Rehab makes a huge difference at any age and stage. People have been more active, you know if I and people are living much longer.
Speaker 3:So you know, when I started long-term care in 2007, I remember doing my first rounds in the building in Ohio and seeing a woman in one of our nursing home dining rooms setting the table. I thought she was a volunteer. She lived there. You know it was. Today we're seeing people who are much more compromised. They have what we call multiple comorbidities, so they have a lot of disease processes going on and we want to make sure that they have the quality of life that they deserve. That being said, people want to stay home as long as possible, and certainly we can't blame them for that. I think we'd all want that. But what becomes challenging is not just the environment may not be conducive. Right, you have some disability. You can't walk the stairs, you can't do those kinds of things, maybe you can't cook for yourself, but, in addition, loneliness can't be, underestimated as a health problem.
Speaker 3:You know, people who are isolated, people who don't have stimulation.
Speaker 3:All of that has a negative impact. If I look in my crystal ball, I think that we're going to see more housing with what I call housing with services senior housing, where people can live comfortably but they can get support when they need it. When I look at the future for our organization and we talk about where we stand on a service level, you know that's the missing piece of our puzzle is that we would like to have housing that is independent living or active adult, that meets the needs of people before they need assisted living and that helps create a smoother continuum for them. And one of our challenges is the shortage. You and I were talking about population density earlier on. One of the things that challenges us, of course, is trying to find a place for a project like that and to really be able to find that chunk of real estate that wouldn't enable us to do it and perhaps a partner to work with us on it. So that's one of the things we're working on right now is thinking about what comes next.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, definitely space. If you're looking at, burton County is a tough stuff. So, yeah, not a lot of space there, so I want to back up for a moment and just talk about you, and you know 2022, you were McKnight's Women of Distinction Hall of Honor inductee. So what is McKnight's Women of Distinction and what did that mean to you to be an Hall of Honor inductee?
Speaker 3:McKnight's is a national publication that really focuses on senior living. They do an annual awards program and I was extremely honored to be awarded the Women of Distinction it. You know we don't do the work. We do because we're looking for the awards.
Speaker 3:We do the work we do because it's meaningful and it makes a difference in people's lives In 2022,.
Speaker 3:I was just finishing a term as the national chair of the board for leading age, which is the organization that represents about 6,000 nonprofit senior services organizations around the country and, lucky me, I became chair of the national board in January of 2020.
Speaker 3:So I have the distinction of being what people have called the COVID chair, and it was a very challenging period of time, certainly for all of us in organizations working with older adults. You know that's another conversation, but when you're operating as the chair of the national board, I did a lot of connection with people. I have said people know me, I go to conference. You know there are 7,000 people and so many people know who I am because I was on their computer screen doing a program or doing a talk or providing some input. I also have been the chair of the board of the Association of Jewish Aging Services, with which we're very involved. So I think for me, Women of Distinction recognized both of those things as well as the day-to-day work that we do and feel so proud of, and, yeah, I was very honored by that.
Speaker 2:That's great. So you talk about words to live by and I often ask a lot of my guests like what is it that drives them? What is it that they think they can attribute to their success? Or in some cases, you know, I've talked to people that have just gone off on their own. They've studied to be a doctor or a therapist, whatever it is, and for one reason or another felt the need to start their own business. But there should be, or there is in many cases, something that drives you. You talk about words to live by. Can you speak to that a little bit? Like, what are those words that you, you know, kind of drive you?
Speaker 3:I. You know it's interesting during COVID, when I was working with LeadingAge, we were doing they were doing for a while an everyday webinar and I used to be a guest once a week and I would always start by riffing on a word right, all those words that were, that really were meaningful.
Speaker 3:I think for me, one of the words that's most critical is service and to be of service and to know that you're making a difference. You know when, when you work with older adults, people will say how that's such depressing work. You know people are at end of life, but I don't agree with that at all. I say this all the time that we get a gift from our elders, every single day. You know, we have incredible people who are sharing the latter part of their lives with us, who share their wisdom, who share their love. There's an elder who lives at the Jewish home at Rockley and we've taken quite a few we'd like to take outings. We've taken quite a few amazing outings.
Speaker 3:We recently went to the Anne Frank exhibit. We went to see the Rockettes at Radio City at holiday time. So she's always my partner and she'll lean over and she'll hold my hand and she'll lean her face against the top of my hand and tell me how much she loves being here, how much she cares about me. You know those are moments where you see what a difference you can make. We are as an organization. We're really focused on compassion, we're really focused on quality of life, and we're really focused on what I like to call a culture of yes. Maybe I don't have the answer for this, but yes, I'm going to figure it out and we're going to find a way to make it possible, because we are working with people at vulnerable points in their lives, as well as with their families, and it's all about making sure that we're creative and innovative and focused on quality and really operating in a way that we would want our parents, our grandparents, ourselves to be looking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Well, carol, as you're talking and I'm looking at the clock, I'm like we have so much more to talk about and I think I'd love to have you back on the show. You know full disclosure. You write some great articles in Rivervale Neighbors Magazine and I think one of the things we could do is maybe expand on those topics. Sometimes I want to talk about your involvement in elder abuse in that organization, but we're running out of time, so let's just, you know, just go into basically, how people would you know? If they're, say, the child or a caregiver and or the person themselves and they're looking for their next home, so to speak? How would they reach you? Where do they go? What's the best way to contact you or the Jewish home family?
Speaker 3:That's a great question and I'll just preface that by saying a lot of times we get phone calls from people who say my mother lives in Florida or Arizona or California and I don't know what to do, and we're very well connected.
Speaker 3:I've been certainly in national positions. We are always happy to say, oh, I know someone who might be able to help you, let me connect you. Or here are the questions to ask, here are the things to look for so you are helping your loved one in the best way that you can. People can find us on the website, jewishhomefamily. org. They can call the building. All our emails are there. Just call and ask a question. We're happy to help you, regardless of what the circumstances are, to figure it out, and I appreciate the time today. I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about elder abuse prevention.
Speaker 3:That's a whole nother topic, doug, but I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, thank you. Thank you for being on and I'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, thank you. Thank you for being on and I'll be right back. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.