עברית
Prevention in the Community
There are many families whose neglectful behavior and lack of parenting skills puts their children at risk of being removed from the home by the Ministry of Welfare. However, with the right intervention this can be avoided. Targeted professional guidance combined with increased awareness and motivation can help these parents improve their relationships with their children and build a healthy family dynamic.
Orr Shalom's Prevention Programs provide parents and children with the tools to overcome their pasts, live up to their potential, and prepare for their future as functioning families.
Parent Child Center
Orr Shalom operates a Parent-Child Center in Eilat, which treats the family as a whole, working with children and parents individually and together. Each family commits to 18 months of therapy and counseling. Licensed social workers and counselors work to strengthen parent-child connections and improve parental functioning and skills. Creative therapies are utilized to reach individuals who have difficulty expressing themselves verbally and have not progressed in conventional therapy. The Parent-Child Center treats up to 100 parents and children (approximately 25 families) per month.
After School Safe Haven
Orr Shalom’s Jerusalem After-School Safe Haven is a therapeutic center for children, aged 9-13, who suffer from emotional and behavioral disturbances and whose families are dysfunctional and unable to cope. This community-based program works with local children in the neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel in Jerusalem, known for its low socioeconomic status and high percentages of unemployment and crime.
The Israeli school day, for the most part, concludes at 1:00pm so working parents are forced to pay for afternoon activities to occupy their children until they return from work. Children of parents who cannot afford to pay privately for these programs are often left to their own devices until their parents return.
The Orr Shalom Safe Haven provides children who are at-risk of being removed from their homes and who would otherwise be roaming the streets, with a safe, educational and structured environment each day from 1:00 p.m. to 6:30 pm. These children come from families where the parents cannot cope with taking care of their children throughout the day. The Safe Haven provides basic needs such as hot nutritious meals, necessities for many children coming from households suffering from food insecurity, tutoring, homework assistance, and enrichment activities such as cooking, art, martial arts and films etc. Safe Haven staff also work with parents in an effort to guide them in raising their children.
The framework is based on a holistic, behavioral therapy program that provides tools to help the children improve and control their own behavior both at the Safe Haven and in school and with their families and friends.
By minimizing their time at home, Orr Shalom reduces the children’s chances of suffering from abuse or neglect. The program helps prevent their removal from their biological families by providing both a healthy space for children after school and a chance for their parents to improve their parenting skills. The long-term aim of the program is to help these children remain at home, and to provide them with a constructive, positive framework that will enable them to achieve emotional stability and, in time, join more normative after-school programs in their community.