The Chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council has set out the organisation’s plans to strengthen the UK’s Jewish community, including the first ever national conference of Jewish care homes, as well as key initiatives in the areas of education and mental health.

Speaking at the Limmud Festival on Sunday, Jonathan Goldstein described four key areas - Education, Elderly Care, Young People’s Mental Health and Financial Sustainability - which the umbrella organisation had identified as “the biggest issues we have to address to ensure the continuing vibrancy of the Anglo-Jewish community”.

Citing an Elderly Care Commission report produced by McKinsey, Mr Goldstein pointed out that in 2016, 14 out of 21 Jewish elderly care homes around the country were in financial deficit, with the aggregate deficit being approximately £3 million. By 2022, he went on to highlight, 17 out of those 21 are projected to be in deficit, with a potential aggregate annual deficit as high as £14 million – and that the “impact will be seen most quickly in small communities because of the declining demand for care.”

In response, Mr Goldstein said that “the first ever national care conference of Jewish homes” would take place on January 22, in Birmingham, and that most Jewish homes from around the country would be represented.

“The old saying that a problem shared is a problem halved could not be truer than when you sit organisations around the table”, he said.

“The most important thing that will come out of this conference is that people are sitting and talking about issues – and hopefully solutions will come out of it.”

In terms of education, Mr Goldstein said that a number of areas had been identified for improvement. He cited a “teacher training and leadership development programme, set up in the last two or three years which has been very successful in bringing on the talented young Jewish teachers within our networks”, as well as the JLC having “invested in a curriculum to advance and promote and improve the level of Hebrew reading within schools.”

The organisation, through its educational partners, also intends to roll out a new curriculum to certain Jewish schools next September, for students in year eight and year nine, focusing on Jewish educational elements which it feels have been neglected.

“This [issue] was brought to me by the last two Israeli ambassadors in London,” Mr Goldstein said.

“They said to me, ‘we went around the schools and we talked to them about modern Israeli and Jewish history in the context of the formation of Israel – they don’t seem to know their stuff.’ How can they possibly be equipped on campus if they don’t leave their schools knowing the basics?”

 He said the curriculum would “tell the story within the context of the two-state solution”, and would include “the order of the wars [in Israel], what created these situations, what triggered environments within Israel, what are the basic dynamics within Israeli social society today.”

Another major issue which Mr Goldstein said he had been approached about many times since becoming chairman of the JLC 18 months ago was young people’s mental health.

“I think we all know that our teenagers are in distress", he said.

“There have been two suicides at Jewish schools in the last two and a half years. If you speak to Dr Mark Berelowitz [Clinical Lead for child and adolescent mental health services] at the Royal Free Hospital – our main consultant on this, he’ll tell you it’s not just Jews in north London, this is an epidemic amongst young Jewish children."

The JLC sat down with a number of Jewish communal organisations involved in mental health.

“What came out of this was the need to identify and signpost issues earlier than was previously being identified,” Mr Goldstein said.

“Parents were in denial, schools weren’t equipped, signposting wasn’t occurring, facilities weren’t available…”

The JLC has consequently raised approximately £300,000 to fund a three-year pilot programme “appointing wellbeing practitioners within schools, monitored by professionals, to try and see what should occur in schools early to identify these problems.”

Mr Goldstein confirmed that the programme will run in five schools; “three primary schools and two secondary schools, four in London, one in Manchester”.

Finally, the JLC chair discussed financial sustainability, telling the audience frankly that he believed “we’ve got too many charities.

“We’re raising £90 million a year from private donations, trusts and individuals – that’s a huge amount of money. Yet I know there’s duplication all over the community.

“Ultimately, over the course of the next ten years, I bet you that of the thirty-five organisations [which are part of the JLC] five to seven of them will have merged together.”