Social Affairs Min.: 2/3 of Ethiopians in Israel need help of social services - Haaretz

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Last update - 02:47 08/10/2007

Social Affairs Min.: 2/3 of Ethiopians in Israel need help of social services

By Ruth Sinai, Haaretz Correspondent

Two-thirds of all Ethiopian immigrants need the help of the social services, recent data from the Social Affairs Ministry shows. In some towns, some 90 percent of Ethiopian immigrants require such care, numbers which underscore the need for the ministry's program to help them.

The Ministry has processed or is currently handling cases involving more than 17,000 Ethiopian families with 31,000 children across the country.

Among the families, almost 60 percent - nearly 7,500 families and a total of 41,000 people ¬ are experiencing problems between the husband and wife. Children in such families are classified as at risk of suffering violence or neglect. Nearly 75 percent of Ethiopian families are considered poor.

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Sources involved with helping the Ethiopian community said that despite good intentions and funds for helping the families, many counseling programs are not well tailored to answer the community's needs.

The various social service departments currently offer more than 200 programs for Ethiopian immigrants. These include enrichment courses for both adults and children. The programs are designed to help students enter the job market more easily in a host of fields.

However, only 20 percent of immigrants make use of the schemes. Moreover, only 6 percent of Ethiopian families enroll in counseling programs for the general population, as opposed to programs especially tailored for Ethiopians.

These data prompted the ministry to set up an inter-ministerial project headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to fully categorize and address the problems facing the Ethiopian community in Israel. "There is very scarce use of therapy sessions. They don't seem to fit in with the immigrant's outlook," a statement for the program reads.

The state has decided that everyone should get social services," says Dr. Edna Bustin, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University's School of Social Work. "But social care is a Western concept that Ethiopian immigrants are unfamiliar with. They're not used to intervention, and we do not have the cultural tools to address the familial problems that are endemic to the immigrant population."

Bustin, who runs a unique enrichment program aimed at helping Ethiopian social care workers deal with domestic violence, says that the problem of violence often stems from the immense frustration of the Ethiopian man in Israeli society.

"The men from the community are under exceptional stress. In Ethiopia, the man represents the family to the outside world. But here, all the social services are geared toward the women and the children," says Bustin. According to her, it doesn't help that the people who are offering the services are women.

"Social services in Israel are Western. That suit won't fit," says Magist Mengache, director general of the Ethiopian National Project and a social care expert. "Most immigrants won't even come to receive the services. We have to come to them."

Mengache, who immigrated to Israel 23 years ago, believes the answer to helping the community lies in recruiting more Ethiopian social workers. "They speak the language, they understand the mentality and they can raise awareness within the community. They can also encourage families to go ahead and receive help from preexisting social service programs."

But currently, the ministry reserves a quota of only a few Ethiopian social workers. "We have to ask for donations in the United States just to train an additional 10 social workers from the Ethiopian immigrant community. It's just shameful," Mengache says.

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