Page 18 - Demo

The Summit Institute
MAHUT – PARENTS CENTER
The Mahut Center is a support and therapy service for parents and adolescents, working in partnership with the Jerusalem Municipality. The center provides parents with the opportunity to strengthen their interpersonal and family-management skills and better their relationships with adolescent children.
Over the past year, the “Corona year,”, we have been forced to confront a variety of new challenges and adapt our services to that new environment.
We welcome this chance to thank the staff of the Center, who worked tirelessly to maintain our services and respond to all the needs and requests that came our way.
At certain times our programing shifted to Zoom or by phone and we learned to adapt to the specific needs and interests of individual families. Naturally, just as many family relationships were challenged by this new framework, at times our work faced unprecedented obstacles.
Every month, we worked with about 120 parents of adolescents with sessions made up of single-parents and couples, as well as family sessions.
The year presented particularly complex cases including many reports of serious family tensions that arose because of Corona. Examples included children who had to leave their dorms because of lockdowns, parents who needed to work and couldn’t properly observe the children left at home, as well as many parents who encountered steep financial challenges which resulted in severe stress and anxiety. Of course, one report that we heard repeatedly was the concern from parents of children who were stuck for hours a day on their screens - and most often not for reasons related to their learning.
Zoom did however allow us to reach larger audiences and we were able to hold regular programming on different topics related to adolescence with the participation of parents and professionals. When the conditions allowed, we opened group sessions for mothers and fathers from the charedi community.
At the height of the pandemic, all of our parenting sessions were on Zoom. While initially, we wondered how the group dynamic could work in this format, we were happy to see that both the group leaders and the parents accepted this new approach and were able to have a meaningful experience. The programs were jointly led by Sara Taib and Dr. Avigayil Itam
Bach, the Merkaz Mahut therapists and they led 14 individual sessions in this format.
They summed up this unique period saying:
“Many of the parents found themselves confronting their very first interaction with this phase of adolescence. Particularly during this challenging period, we expanded our discussion to focus on how parents can serve as personal examples for dealingwiththeirchildren’sanxietyduringCorona. Forus,this wasourfirsttimeusingZoom. Anddespitetheinitialconcerns, we were surprised to see that we could quickly establish bonds with the parents, as well as seeing relationships created among the parents themselves. The conversation was defined by empathy and the support we were working to convey was able to be felt even over this online format and gave the parents the ability to share their personal experiences and difficulties throughout this time. It is worth noting that even when we could again meet in person, many of the sessions have continued on Zoom.
While we have been able to depart from many of the tougher aspects of the crisis and return to some degree of routine, we continue to focus on the many implications this period has had on us – both personally and as a community.