Orr Shalom`s Emergency Foster Care Program

Orr Shalom`s Emergency Foster Care Program was established in 2008 and upgraded in partnership with Ashalim in 2011. The program was established with the understanding that in cases when very young children suffering from neglect or abuse are urgently removed from their homes by the welfare services, they need to be absorbed in a family framework, even if for only a short transitional stage. The program is comprised of five foster families from the entire spectrum of Israeli society: secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox and Arab, that each take up to five children (from NB-6, and siblings up to age 8) at any given moment. These families and the children are accompanied by a multi-disciplinary treatment team. The children stay for three to six months.

Tools and processes have been developed to communicate with very young children, including pre-verbal infants, as to their current circumstances, the reasons for it and that to be expected. Subsequently, work is done with the birth parents including dyadic sessions with their children to evaluate parental abilities and build the parent-child relationship with emphasis on constructing a joint narrative, regardless if the child returns home or transfers to permanent foster care.

In the conference, I will present the Emergency Foster Care Program, through the moving story of M (3.5) and the process she went through from her arrival