It has been a very busy seven years for Mina Tepper, president of the Jewish Home and Care Center and it associated organizations — Chai Point and the Sarah Chudnow Community — as she readily admitted in a recent interview in her office.
Since taking the reins in 2003 (see Chronicle, Oct. 10, 2003), she has presided over a lot of building — from the total remodeling of the JHCC facility on Prospect Ave., which was finished in 2007, to the construction of the Sarah Chudnow Community in Mequon, which opened in 2005.
But she leaves her successor, Michael I. Sattell, more than physical structures. She emphasized that she and the lay leaders and staff members have transformed the culture of care for the elderly at these institutions.
“We made the resident the center of all [and have] moved away from the medical model to a household model,” she said. As a result, these institutions seek to be “more like a home” than like a hospital or other institution.
For example, Tepper said, breakfast is now served from 7 to 10 a.m., and residents may eat at any time during that period, instead of serving everybody at 7 a.m. whether individual residents want to eat then or not.
Even in the care for people with dementias, activities are now tailored to the individual’s needs instead of to “the efficiency of the organization,” Tepper said.
Tepper will turn over the position to Sattell on July 1, but said lay leaders asked her to stay on for at least three months after that to help with the transition, and perhaps longer “at his [Sattell’s] discretion.”
But after that? “It is premature to figure out what will happen a year from now,” Tepper said.
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