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Annual Activities Report
THE THEREPEUTIC CENTER
| Michal Drimmer
Director of Therepeutic Services
Deputy Director of Foster Services
Since 2012, the therepeutic center of the Summit Institute’s foster program has provided a variety of emotonal therapy services to our foster children and families. Since that time,we have opened 21 different treatment sites across the country; in central and east Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Kiryat Sefer, Gush Etzion, Kiryat Milachi, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheva, Ofakim, Dimona, Kiryat Gat and Eilat, with plans already in place for additional sites.
Our staff is made up of clinical psychologists and mental health experts, educational pyschologists, social workers and other experts in responding to the emotional challenges of foster children and families.
Like all across the world, our center had to enact special responsestotheCoronacrisis. Inaveryshortamountoftime, we had to adapt to new practical challenges and provide the services from a distance. It became very clear that the crisis would force us to be flexible in our approach as we shifted to online services and our staff shared creative ideas how to
bridge the “online divide” with the children and families and particularly the younger foster children. We also realized that while adolescents and teens were able to adapt to this new framework for younger children we needed to have shorter sessions held more often.
Our teams also needed to specifically respond to children who had experienced emotional traumas and how to make the sessions focused on the specific challenges the children were facing.
Our centers now provide emotional therapy services to around 250 children a year and provide pedagogical assesment testing to around 40 students. Educational therapy services- often provided by psychology students- are received by 25 students per year.
We take particular pride in being the first to provide our therapy services in a highly accesible format close to the homes of our families and in a setting that is best equipped to respond to specific social and emotional challenges of those areas.
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