The Department of Social Services
Background :
The Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council lies in the northwestern Negev, near the Gaza Strip, approximately 45 kilometers from Beersheva and 40 kilometers from Ashkelon. The regional council consists of 6,000 residents in one moshav and ten kibbutzim – eight of which are in severe economic distress. Since April 2001, the communities located near the Gaza Strip have been exposed to a frightening, unbearable reality. This includes numerous attempts by terrorists to infiltrate the nearby communities, mortar attacks and the firing of Kassam rockets. Consequently, this has increased stress and raised fears among the residents, especially the children. The council’s Social Services department provides social services to council residents of all ages, including teenagers. Due to the tough economic situation in the local communities, the department treats up to 80% of the population in some of the communities.
The department’s objectives :
The department’s objectives are to help people and the social system in which they live to help themselves, by identifying, preventing and coping in a system-wide approach, providing response to situations of crisis, distress and deprivation that impair the functioning and well being of individuals, families and communities, and by creating new modes of response by working jointly with other entities in the community.
Work methods :
The department works according to the integrated model of multidisciplinary (comprehensive) social work in the communities, in the format of one work day per week per community, and using various forms of expertise (the Unit for Preventing Domestic Violence, mediation in divorce, children and youth at risk and with special needs, the elderly, rehabilitation of handicapped individual and family, community work, group- and cross-system work). Anyone residing in any of the regional council’s communities is entitled to the department’s services.
Personnel:
There are eight employees in the department, in part-time positions (7.5 job-slots) – including social workers and management.
The range of services provided by the department:
1. Lawfully mandated services:
* Welfare and Youth Law Clerk (care and supervision). Protecting minors and their well-being; the address for reports on minors at risk; advice and training for professionals, educators and community officers in working with children at risk.
* A Court Welfare Clerk – providing support, advice and therapy for couples in the process of separation and divorce; presenting memorandum to the courts and the rabbinical courts under court orders; custody rights, visitation rights, appointing guardians, Hague Treaty, domestic violence.
* Nursing Law. Providing nursing services for the elderly, referrals, liaison with the National Insurance Institution, follow-up on performance.
2. Multidisciplinary (comprehensive) social work in the council’s communities:
In terms of the individual:
* Personal/individual social work: therapy, support, advice to the individual and family.
* Utilizing rights and connections with state bodies and public resources.
* Assistance with material help (domestic work, mentoring etc.)
* Mediating between the individual and the establishment
* Placement and mediating between social services, community frameworks and extra-community frameworks (boarding-schools, sheltered workplace, rehabilitation facilities, day-centers, etc.)
In terms of the system:
* Advice and support for office-holders and community leaders.
* Training, support and consulting to communities and work-teams involved in education, social services, human resources, and change processes; setting up emergency teams in the kibbutzim to cope - together with the community - with the security situation; establishing social service teams and various welfare services in the communities.
* Mediation and conflict resolution.
* Empowering and facilitating groups in the community (parents, preparation for retirement, youth forum, branch coordinators etc.)
3. Children and Youth at risk :
* Building and operating a prevention and treatment program for intervention by the system at both individual and community level.
* Raising the community’s awareness and enlisting its members to the relevant services and solutions.
4. The Unit for Treating and Preventing Domestic Violence :
* Advice, support, guidance and therapy in domestic violence problems, at the individual, family, group and community levels.
* Training the community and providing office-holders, counselors (informal education), parents, youth and therapeutic bodies with tools for coping , treating and preventing the phenomena.
5. Group and cross-system work at the regional level:
v Setting up and facilitating support groups, self-help groups and therapy in specific populations (single-parent families, the Third Age, children, parents of adolescents).
6. Developing new community services and boosting existing ones:
* For different populations in the community, region-wide (the Ma’avarim [Transitions] job center, Supportive Neighborhood, children at risk – the Kadima program – developing response at the community and regional level.
* Recruiting professional and financial resources for providing the above-mentioned services (training, supportive neighborhood, emergency budgets and so forth).
The department plays a central role in the processes of planning and designing solutions and mechanisms for coping with the challenges facing our customers, by bolstering community stamina throughout the communities and the entire region.
Marva Myseles- manager
Department of Social Services
revacha@mail.makash.ac.il
