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"Get up every morning for war": parents of children in special education tell about the closed system Israel today

2022-08-14T09:28:12.321Z


Children are placed in inappropriate settings • There is a shortage of assistants and professionals • The basket of services that can be limited • The lack of human and financial resources has existed for years, but this year it is more acute


About 290,000 students are currently studying in the Israeli education system, who belong to what is known as "special education".

The main goal of special education in Israel is to integrate those children into society as much as possible and to help them with various educational means, such as tutoring and individual treatments designed for each girl and boy in particular.

But the treatment that those children and their parents receive from the system is far from that.

A host of problems, such as placement in settings that are not suitable for children, a lack of assistants, assistants and professionals who provide paramedical treatments, a particularly limited basket of services and more, make the routine of parents of children in special education in general, and children on the autistic continuum in particular, a real war.

Fountain.

"The reform in special education is bad", photo: Michelle Dot Com

The lack of human and financial resources has existed for years, but this year it is more acute, among other things due to the increase in the proportion of children diagnosed on the continuum, which leads to an increase in the demand for emotional and paramedical teams.

If in the past one out of every 200 children in Israel was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum, today one out of every 65 children is diagnosed as such.

Parents of children in special education talk about an opaque system and the reform of special education that failed.

"There are no resources - the children do not receive treatment"

Mayan Shaked-Shahar, mother of Yedin.

Yedin Shaked-Shahar, 7 years old from Haifa, is a student on the autistic spectrum.

He is an "integrated student", studying in a regular class with a close assistant.

"His functioning is high, so he did not fit in a communication class (a class for children on the continuum) in a normal school," says his mother, Maayan.

"With no choice, I enrolled him in a regular class accompanied by an aide. But when we got to the regular class, we found out that there are not enough integration hours and even when there are hours - there are no caregivers."

A child in special education receives a variety of treatments, for example a communication therapist, an occupational therapist or emotional therapy.

A student who attends a school that is all about special education will receive these services at school, but an integrated child (with an assistant) should receive them within the school or in the community through a health insurance fund, or both.

The problem is that there are no resources and no caregivers, there is a very large shortage and the children simply do not get what they need and are entitled to.

Tali and Assaf.

"The teachers did not receive training", photo: Oren Ben Hakon

"We as parents are forced to go to the private market. Treatment by a speech therapist costs 350 shekels, if you need her two or three times a week - that's already an expense of thousands of shekels a month. I pay privately and don't get reimbursed. Parents who don't have money - their children simply don't have treatments The option left for them is to put the child in a school that is all about special education, even though he is high-functioning and can integrate into society. I have no words to explain how bad the reform in special education is."

"They talk about the bride, but in practice there is a lack of acceptance"

Tali Hirschfeld mother of Assaf, Itay, Alon and Avishi.

Tali Hirschfeld from Jerusalem is the mother of four children on the autistic spectrum.

Itay (10), Assaf (8), Alon (7) and Avishi (4), all in medium-high functioning.

According to her, the last school year started with Ati and Assaf in a regular class with a integration assistant, but she had to move them to a communication class.

"The two children studied individually with an assistant, which is what the reform actually pushed for - to integrate and accommodate students within the regular classes. But we discovered that this was impossible: Assaf got six and a half hours a day, which was not enough to begin with. Two hours were deducted from these hours on the grounds that they were more expensive hours. We were left with four hours a day, and they were consolidated into four days, meaning - out of six school days, during two days there is no assistant at all. The normal system is simply not built for children on the continuum. The assistant they assigned to us is lovely, but she has no training to deal with a child on the continuum. Asaf There was a very severe boycott by the children of the class, and the teachers did not at all understand the meaning of a child on the continuum, they did not receive training. One of the teachers asked me:

What do you want - that I force them to play with him?'

He lost the desire to go to school, cried a lot.

They talk about the bride, but in practice there is a lack of acceptance.

The principal told me: 'I don't have the resources to take care of your children.'

This is the elephant in the room, they did the reform only externally.

The Ministry of Education looks at everything through the hole in the dime.

If there was a good budget, my children could fit into a normal class."

"Black market of assistants - like another mortgage"

Shiran (pseudonym) mother of a child in the third grade on the autistic continuum.

As in the other frameworks, even in special education there is a shortage of assistants, especially integration assistants who accompany the student during the school day in the regular class.

The reason for the shortage is the low salary they receive, which is related to the fact that the position does not require any training and there are no threshold conditions for acceptance.

This shortage leads to an exploitative "black market", in which parents are forced to "supplement" from their own pockets an additional salary to help or assist in order to agree to work.

"The normal system is not built for children on the continuum": illustration,

"My son's helper receives NIS 30 an hour, but she is only willing to work if I pay her NIS 60 an hour," says Shiran (pseudonym), mother of a third-grade student, and explains: "I pay another NIS 30 per hour, that About NIS 3,500 a month, like her mortgage. You can't trust the municipality because they simply don't have helpers. I personally know parents who have two children on the autistic spectrum and they have to take out of their pockets every month an amount of about NIS 7,000 'under the table' for help.

"Within the community of parents of children with autism, there is a lot of criticism towards us, the parents who are willing to pay extra money for assistance. This creates an integration only for the rich. This is something that is prohibited and causes discrimination between parents who have and those who don't. Sometimes it really reaches a situation of extortion and exploitation of the hardship Ours is from the aides and assistants. Someone once told me: I know that they earn 70 shekels an hour, while the parents pay 40 shekels out of their own pockets. Poor parents reach the ninetieth minute and have no choice.

"Parents who don't have one are simply screwed, or they compromise on the aide that the municipality provides or wait for one to be found, or without a choice their children are pushed into special education even though combined in a regular class they can progress and flourish. It really hurts. We give up a lot of things to finance the aide. In the end After all, we believe in integration, I don't want an assistant who just sits and looks at my child. It's not a babysitter, it should be a real auxiliary force, and in reality it's just not like that."

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-08-14

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