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Annual Activities Report
STRENGTHENING OUR UNDERSTANDING AND RESEARCH OF FOSTERING IN THE CORONA PERIOD
| Dr. Shmirit Prince- Engelsman
In February of 2021, the Sapir Academic College held the 52nd Conference of the Israel Sociology Organization. Among the presenters at the event was Dr. Shmirit Prince- Engelsman, Foster Research Coordinator at the Summit Institute and a lecturer at the Ashkelon Academic College, alongside Shoshana Lubish-Omer, Director of the Disabilities Program in our foster service and Dr. Maayan Fine, a lecturer at Sapir. The topic of their presentation was “Crisis and Growth; Learning to Advance with Disabilities as Foster Children Amidst Corona”
The research was collated between April and May of 2020, during the height of the first Corona wave, and focused on
the experiences and challenges among foster coordinators who worked with disabled children. The objective of the research was to expose the specific challenges faced and how they were responded to.
An additional study also performed by Dr. Prince-Englseman and Dr. Shirli Ben-Shlomo, a senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University, focused on the impact of changes in learning environments, the interaction between professional and personal lives, and tensions between biological and foster families, as well as what resources are needed to help these families best adjust to life with foster children.
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