Jewish Family Service of Greater Miami, founded in 1920 and incorporated in 1933, is the oldest continuously operating social service agency in Miami-Dade County and will celebrate its 80th anniversary next year.

David Saltman is executive of Jewish Family Service.

David Saltman, 59, executive director for 18 years and a Sunny Isles resident, said the agency has as its primary mission service to the Jewish community, but that there has always been a broader concern.

"For the most part, you don’t have to be Jewish to use the services of JFS," Saltman said. "If there are opportunities to serve the community as a whole, as well as serve members of the Jewish community, the agency does that. I would say that 45 percent of the people we serve are not Jewish."

JFS provides perhaps the broadest range of services and programs to the community than any other social service agency. Those programs include: counseling, addiction treatment, care management, disaster recovery, domestic violence, Jewish foster care, refugee resettlement, senior crime prevention and Family Lifeline.

These and all the other programs provided by JFS are offered on an affordable sliding fee scale, based on a person’s income level. JFS is able to provide its services at reasonable rates because its operation is funded by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, United Way, through government grants and with private funding.

Saltman describes JFS as a behavioral health agency involved in preventing and treating emotional disorders or emotional problems that interfere with people’s lives.

"Most of the emotional problems that people have stem from some environmental connection," he explained. "Many things that cause us to be upset are stress-related and many of the stresses in our lives are environmental, such as having expectations of family and those expectations not being met, or work not being as productive and satisfying as people would like it to be."

Saltman said JFS has psychiatric consultants who see people who may need some temporary medication in order to help them to stabilize their lives. And, psychologists are available to do psychological testing. He said JFS deals with issues of ongoing guidance and support, of anger, conflicts, addiction to drugs, alcohol, even food, and often provides guidance for months or years.

Saltman said the issue of technology addiction is becoming a major problem in American society and many people are coming to JFS with difficulties related to video games, computers and the Internet. He said people are getting so dependent on technology that it is beginning to impair their familial relationships.

"Parents, for example, are concerned about their kids because they’re sitting in front of video games or computers and don’t seem to have any real friendships or face-to-face contacts with other kids," he explained.

"We’re seeing couples who are coming to us where one of the partners has become too attached to the computer, what it can do and to the Internet, so that it’s beginning to impair the relationship."

Whatever the problem, Saltman says JFS — with five offices scattered around the county in Miami, Aventura, Miami Beach, Kendall-South Dade and Homestead — usually has a program in place to deal with it. All a person has to do is recognize a problem, then call the organization for assistance.