Shelly Korn | Director: Glendale home
Shelly lived in 4 countries and worked across 4 continents. She speaks three languages and has a funny accent in all of them. She holds a BA in Marketing and MA in H.R. from Middlesex University in the UK. She considers Dyslexsia her superpower and the real secert to her success in life.
Shelly spent 9 years working in the private sector for multinationals and Fortune 100 companies in the pharmaceutical and financial industries. She also spent 11 years working with various Governments and NGOs across the globe, specialising in social and organisational transformation. In her spare time she likes to geek on technology and its impact on disability.
Life for some in our community presents particularly tough challenges. Those with intellectual, mental and physical disabilities are more vulnerable than most and often struggle to access the most basic social services such as healthcare and education. This makes them even more vulnerable than they already are. As a result, they struggle to advocate for themselves, become sicker and more socially isolated, as they get stuck in a perpetuating vicious circle of inadequate care.
And, yet, since disabled people have rights just like all of us, many of them in recent years have been challenging our society to rethink our approaches to care for the disabled. This is a debate affecting many of the welfare organisations within our own community, most notably Glendale home. “Historically,” explains Shelly Korn, Director of Glendale home, “the focus of the medical care model was on survival. By shifting the focus from disability to wellness helped us move away from just surviving towards thriving, by infusing holistic wellness principles into day-to-day care practices.”
Shelly continues: “In essence, the new thinking is about moving away from seeing a facility like Glendale as a place of medical care – an institution. But the alternative way of managing our residents is based on a human rights model.” This change of thinking affects a wide range of elements of the care environment. “Even what we call ourselves came in for a rethink,” Shelly explains. “We used to be ‘Glendale’ but now we are ‘Glendale home’ – the word ‘home’ signifies to the people who are living and working there that they are part of one big family.
This significant change in care strategies was initiated in 2019. Interestingly, for all its negativity and harm, the Covid pandemic surprisingly served as a catalyst for many of these changes, since we were forced to rethink everything we do and rapidly implement changes,” Shelly says. Today, the transformation of the approach to the care for the disabled is clear – and there are numerous benefits being seen.
Other important changes have come with the involvement of residents in making decisions about their own healthcare and food. In an institutionalised environment, the client is given little choice about what they eat, but at Glendale home the residents have been given the opportunity to vote on their preferences for certain foods and recipes.
When this was first implemented, Shelly was startled to realise that residents did not understand the concept of voting, and so an educational programme was introduced to teach the residents about the ‘Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down’ concept and about rating foods through a star-rating system.
Another realisation was that neither residents nor staff knew the names of many of the vegetables. Again, this resulted in an educational intervention – and so there is greater mental stimulation for everyone.
It was this, as well as the reality of hard lockdown during Covid – when no fresh produce could be delivered – that led to a vegetable gardening project at the Home. “Through the support of Ben Getz of Urban Harvest, we established a functioning vegetable garden – shaped as a Magen David,” Shelly says. “This garden has become a major source of food for Glendale residents – and people are kept more engaged through the work in the garden, they are all eating more healthy food, and we are having no negative impact on the environment because we have developed this project as an environmentally sustainable garden.”
The focus on healthy eating is just one leg of the holistic wellness approach that has been evolving at the Home. Again, lockdown was a big factor in this. Since people would have limited opportunities to stay active, a gym facility with exercise equipment was set up. “Interest in using the gym has grown a great deal,” Shelly says. “In the first year, eight residents used it; now we have 37 regular gym-goers.”
Taking the notion of a family space one step further, the Home has included staff in its transformation focus. Many of the staff members come from areas characterised by poverty and poor social conditions, but they work closely with the residents every day, and so it is beneficial for everyone if their wellness is also looked at. Staff members have been included in many of the fitness, nutrition and wellness education initiatives too – empowering them to better deal with their own chronic and other medical challenges. As a result, attitudes to their work are more positive, and there has been a decrease in absenteeism and sick leave among staff members.
A further element of wellness is spiritual health, and this is catered for through the Shabbat Circle project for women, a weekly story meet-up run by Rabbi Green, Bi-monthly Tea & Torah classes, regular Shul visits and the celebration of religious festivals.The positive outcome of the transformation is palpable, and donors are happy that the Home has reduced its medical expenses and improved its sustainability.
If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer at Glendale home, there are plenty of ways to help out. Please contact Shelly to arrange to do an activity you enjoy doing with some of the residents. For example: read stories to a group of residents, run an art class, go for walks or simply visit to spend a bit of time with a resident and provide companionship.
