The number of children utilizing welfare services has increased by some 40 percent over the last five years, according to an annual report published Wednesday by the National Council for the Child.

Some 382,000, or 17 percent, of children in Israel currently use welfare services, according to the report, which was presented to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Many of these children are granted aid alongside their families, while others, considered high-risk or victims of abuse receive aid of their own accord. Most of the children included in this percentage are between the ages of seven and 12.

"The annual abstract has in recent years been depicting a clear picture of deterioration in the condition of Israeli children," wrote Dr. Asher
Be

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Ben-Aryeh, Yaffa Zionit and Michal Kimhi, all of whom compiled the report.

The report also details a rise of 120 percent of children seen by social workers because of abuse or neglect in the last decade. There were more than 37,000 reports of abuse and neglect in 2005, 95 percent of which were found to be accurate. More than 55 percent of children in reported abuse cases were 11-years-old or younger. Some 37 percent of the reports referred to cases of neglect, 30 percent to cases of physical abuse and 10 percent to cases of sexual abuse.

The Social Welfare Ministry is placing increasingly fewer such children in institutions, preferring to integrate them within the community in which they live rather than remove them from their homes. The ministry placed 6,623 children in institutions in 2005, a decrease of 15 percent since 2003 and 30 percent since 1995.

Between 1988 and 2005, there was a 50 percent increase in the number of cases involving sexual offenses committed against children by their relatives, rising to 417. Some 30 percent of the cases have been closed.
Arab youths constituted 43 percent of the youths investigated for criminal offenses in 2005, although they constitute only 28 percent of minors in Israel. Twenty-three percent of criminal cases involve new immigrants - twice their proportion of the population.

Nearly 4,550 police cases were opened in 2005 in relation to violence in schools, less than 1 percent than the year before. However, the number of sexual offenses in schools that were reported to the police rose by 20 percent last year. Nearly 10 percent of Bedouin students reported being sexually harassed by faculty members, as did 3 percent of Jewish students.

There were a total of 2,326,400 children in Israel at the end of last year, constituting a third of the overall population. The proportion of children to adults is similar to the 2004 ratio, but represents a decrease of 34 percent since 2000. The number of births in the Arab sector, especially among the Bedouin, decreased slightly last year, while the number of births in the ultra-Orthodox sector rose.

The average number of children per family increased slightly last year, rising from 2.3 to 2.4, following an extended downward slope beginning in 1980, when the average number of children was 2.7. The number of children in single-parent families continued to rise in 2005, with such children
constituting 8.6 percent of all Israeli children, compared to 7.9 percent in 2000. The number of girls who joined the army dipped below 60 percent in 2005, for the first time.

The socioeconomic status of a community is inversely proportional to the
number of children living in it, the report found. Children constitute more than half the population in the poorest communities, but only a quarter in the more well-to-do ones. Some 12 percent of children live in communities in the three highest socioeconomic brackets, and more than 20 percent live in communities in the three lowest.