The JDC/Ashalim Trauma Initiative
In the two and a half years since the start of the current intifada, the entire population of Israel has endured the direct and indirect effects of living in a state of prolonged stress due to regularly occurring violence. Children have been recognized as being the most emotionally vulnerable and the most likely to be severely damaged by this chronic exposure to trauma and stress.
As part of the UJC Israel Emergency Campaign, JDC boosted Israel’s capacity to offer crisis intervention and post-trauma support. The program provides new tools for dealing with the overwhelming caseload facing Israel’s social services. Crisis therapy, crisis hotline, counseling for immigrants and workshops for troubled youth are just a few examples.
Now, the development and delivery of targeted programming for trauma response has been helped significantly when several American and Canadian Jewish federations began focusing on this need through special allocations. JDC assigned Ashalim, the Association for Planning and Development of Services for Children and Youth at Risk and their Families, to direct its resulting new Trauma Initiative.
The trauma services being implemented involve all areas of human services, including health, education and social welfare, but of particular interest will be those programs that bridge the traditional borders between these service areas by providing comprehensive responses to complex problems.
Some of the new initiatives include:
- Expansion of a Special Crisis Hotline for parents of young children.
- Helping the Helpers: programs to engage, train and provide ongoing assistance to volunteer helpers.
- Support for immigrant populations, particularly elderly immigrants from the former Soviet Union and families from Ethiopia.
- A Friend for the Family: volunteer support for families of children with special needs.
It is our hope that through these programs we can provide a human service system that will consist of professionals who are more knowledgeable and better able to respond to the critical challenged now facing Israeli society.
