Dear Friends,
I want to share a specific and very significant achievement we reached this week – it says a lot about ACRI’s work. This success belongs largely to one young woman, who refused to give up on her rights and inspired us to do everything we could to defend the human rights of one of the most vulnerable groups in Israel. I’ll call her ‘Smadar’.
Smadar is a single mother of two daughters, who recently returned to live in the town where she grew up, Sderot. Due to her economic situation, she turned to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services and requested help with after-school care for her girls, and for buying food and household equipment. These are her basic needs.
She was horrified to realise that the social worker assigned to her case was the same worker who had once asked Smadar to consider putting one of her daughters up for adoption, and against her will. Smadar felt that they would not be able to develop a trusting relationship, as is necessary in social work, and therefore asked to be assigned a different social worker. This request was rejected outright: ‘This is not a supermarket”, said the municipal Department of Social Services.
For months, Smadar knocked on every door, but to no avail. She turned to ACRI for help and last week Attorney Maskit Bendel filed an administrative petition on her behalf demanding another social worker be assigned, and that a clear procedure be put in place for handling such requests.
It turns out that in Israel the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services has not yet established clear procedures for cases like these. Each municipality uses its own criteria, and with absurd results: People move apartments in order to change social workers, in order to change social worker clients must submit their application together with that social worker etc.
The day after ACRI filed the petition, the Sderot municipality announced that it accepts all our demands. However, Smadar knows that there are many other women in her situation, and insisted that we keep working on the issue in order to affect real change. We conveyed this to Sderot municipality, who responded that they will implement a policy so that this will not happen again. ACRI will continue to work with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services in order to establish a nation-wide policy.
How can you help? Support ACRI to defend basic human rights. Your contributions enable us to create real change.
Yours,
Sharon
Sharon Abraham-Weiss
Executive Director
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
