Training and Guidance
The Grotta Fund for Senior Care also provides training and technical assistance to grantees. In addition, grantees are invited to special networking sessions and workshops. The Fund Manager keeps a close eye on all grants and grantees, to foster collaborations and enhance performance, as Grotta sees itself as a partner with each agency and project.
Featured Grotta Grantee
a•pha•sia (uh-fay’-zhuh) n. A language disorder that impairs the expression and understanding of spoken language, reading, and writing. It occurs most often from a stroke or brain injury. This frustrating condition affects a person’s ability to communicate, but does not affect his or her intellect.
With Grotta Fund’s funding support in 2012, the prime goal of this unprecedented project, to successfully replicate the Adler Aphasia Center model in Maywood, NJ, has more than exceeded our expectations.
When the Adler Aphasia Center at JCC MetroWest opened in June, 2012, we had one licensed speech therapist, five members with aphasia, two days of programming, a small handful of volunteers, no formal caregiver support group, and a Jewish Community Center with several thousand members and employees who didn’t have a clue about the meaning of aphasia.
Today we have two licensed speech therapists, 16 members who have enrolled with close to a 90% attendance rate, are preparing to expand to four days of programming, 14 committed volunteers, a Life Coach who leads a formal caregiver support group that meets weekly, a Speech Pathology graduate student intern from Seton Hall University, and a Jewish Community Center whose staff and members now embrace our members with aphasia by including them in much of their programming and events.
The participants attend activities of their choice, in the arts, technology, discussion groups, movement and more, all facilitated by licensed speech language pathologists, trained volunteers and student interns. Caregivers receive support through weekly discussion groups as well.
Grotta in the News
VNA receives Grotta Grant to continue efforts to reduce rehospitalizations
NJ.com, June 9, 2014
Care Transitions is the new “buzzword” in health care reform. Simply put, it is the change of care being provided to a patient from one setting of care to another, such as from a hospital to a rehabilitation facility or from a hospital to home care with a visiting nurse.
Newark Beth Israel Medical Center nurses improve readmission rates
NURSE.com, August 6, 2013
Staff at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Barnabas Health, recognized the need to decrease the readmission rate for patients with heart failure in 2010. As a result of their efforts over the last two years, that rate has dropped from a high of 36.6% to 20.5%
