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What are the recent accomplishments of the Shabtai Levi Home?
In 2004, we set up three separate housing units, each designed to accommodate a mother-child pair for a period of a year or longer. This project was designed to promote mother-child bonding by enhancing parenting skills in a friendly and safe environment, and is the first of its kind in Israel.
We also absorbed and reactivated the Child Protection Unit, an ambulatory clinic designed for cases where a child does not require removal from his/her family. This clinic allows parents and children to receive vital diagnostic and rehabilitative services while maintaining routines at home, and serves the entire Northern District. The team includes social workers and clinical psychologists specializing in the treatment of abused and neglected children. Participating families are referred by welfare authorities, as well as juvenile and family courts. The clinic is currently able to treat about 100 families each year. Because the number of families requiring this service is on the rise, we plan to expand the clinic to meet the needs of the population.
The development of a variety of services addressing the diverse needs of families in the Northern District is our vision for the future. The entire staff of the Shabtai Levi Home is presently involved in adjusting to the current trends and policies for the care of infants and children. The residential home, emergency center, and foster family program will continue to serve children who cannot remain or be rejoined with their biological families, while sparing no effort to maintain the family's place in each child's life. Our final goal is keeping families complete, returning the child to the family whenever possible.
How was the Shabtai Levi Home founded?
During World War II, a group of concerned women--some of them prominent members of the pioneer generation--founded a daycare center for the young children of soldiers serving in the Jewish Brigade, an army unit formed by volunteers recruited from a Palestinian Jewish community who demanded to take an active part in fighting Nazi Germany. The pay of these men was often insufficient for maintaining their families; their wives had to work to supplement their income, and the problem of proper childcare became acute.
Without waiting for funding or premises, the women started a small daycare center in an apartment, relying on volunteers and forming a non-profit association for that purpose.
Shabtai Levi, the mayor of Haifa at that time, rose to the occasion and allotted a plot for building premises for the daycare center, using space on and around the water reservoir of the Hadar quarter. The present home, greatly expanded, remains in the same location.
How has the Shabtai Levi Home changed since its founding?
In the course of the home's existence, more than sixty years, it has undergone many changes in response to the needs of children at risk from a growing circle of families requiring help. In the early fifties, the daycare center changed to a residential facility. The children it accommodated were of the same age group, but belonged to families of varied background and origin, from the inflow of immigrants into Israel. The Home has always attempted to aid to disadvantaged children, providing them with a safe haven, responding to their special needs, and rehabilitating children whose families failed to adjust to their new surroundings or disintegrated. Approaches and strategies are constantly modified to suit problems as they arise.
In 1950, in response to a request from the Ministry for Welfare, the home opened a recuperation center for fifty babies; in 1952, a residential home for babies and toddlers was established. During the seventies and eighties, three stories were added to the building, generously funded by substantial contributions from individuals and charitable organizations. Social workers, psychologists and paramedical staff joined the childcare team--as a result, new approaches for the daily care of the children, the contacts with parents and the attempt to address the manifold problems involved in dealing with individual cases evolved.
In 1995, the Emergency Center was established, the only one in Israel specializing in the care of infants and young children. Towards the end of the century, the process of including parents and other significant family members as an integral part of the child's daily routine was completed and processes for extending the services of our Home towards the needs of families in the community as a whole were initiated. In 2000, the home implemented the placement of children with carefully picked and monitored foster families.
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