Exchange Deployment

Organization Information:

Organization Name:
Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles
City & State:
Los Angeles , 
California
Organization Website:
http://www.jfsla.org
Organization's Mission Statement

Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles is a multi-service Agency whose goals are to strengthen and preserve individual, family and community life by providing a wide range of needed human services to people in the community at every stage of the life cycle, especially those who are poor and disadvantaged

Submission Information

Impact Essay

Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles (JFSLA) provides a range of social services to Los Angeles residents of all backgrounds. Our safety net services include a network of food pantries, a shelter for homeless families and two shelters for battered women and their children. We provide home delivered meals to the homebound elderly, as well as comprehensive mental health services at our counseling and senior centers. But it is because of a donation from Microsoft through TechSoup that we are now able to take our full range of mental health services directly to the clients in their homes.

Through a grant from the California Department of Mental Health, JFSLA received funding to provide mental health counseling and case management to the elderly in their homes. For many elderly individuals, health problems lead to social isolation, which in turn leads to emotional distress, which can lead to greater health problems and isolation, fueling a cycle of deterioration and depression. Utilizing Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access application, we were able to send our social workers directly to clients’ homes to provide all the counseling and case management services which they need. We are using Microsoft’s Outlook Web Access to allow our social workers full access to the clients’ files through a fully secure connection from the social worker’s laptop to our server, without the confidential client files ever resting on the laptop. That innovation has allowed for secure, HIPAA compliant accessibility to client information, without the risk of data security being compromised in the event a laptop is stolen or lost. As a result, our social workers now “bring their office with them” when they visit clients in the field. This has both improved the quality of the help our social workers can provide, but also the quantity, as less time is now required back at the office completing paperwork and updating files.

Since implementing the Outlook Web Access solution, we have provided over 5000 hours of social worker direct service in the field, providing mental health counseling and case management to over 300 clients. This software solution has not only transformed our service delivery model, it has enabled us to help transform the lives of many Los Angeles elderly who, without this help, would continue to suffer in isolation and despair.

Submission Category
Transformations to Maximize Impact