“Breathing a Sigh of Relief at the Otzma (Empowerment) Center”
Overview
‘Breathing a Sigh of Relief at the Otzma (Empowermemt) Center’ program, includes a range of solutions designed to improve the situation of families living in poverty and social exclusion in various areas of life while creating social mobility and increasing resources.
The program is based on the activities of the Otzma (Empowerment) centers in local authorities and offers a holistic response to service families, including a combination of emotional-social responses with material and financial solutions, guidance, while providing extensive knowledge in the process of economic rehabilitation of the family, increasing rights utilization, and more.
The program operates in 113 local across the country and is operated in partnership with the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, the Joint (JDC), and the Rashi Foundation.
In the last two years, the response has been expanded and includes several additional programs, including: MAPA program – Families Meet Opportunity, “Breathing a Sigh of Relief for soldiers” program that includes an intervention with soldiers and pre-military youth and their families living in poverty, another program for single-parent families, as well as a wide range of programs for at risk families, aimed at families where children are at risk and neglected.
The broad system includes two sub-programs:
Breathing a Sigh of Relief
A program aimed at improving the situation of families living in poverty and exclusion by providing emotional support and a system of intensive and varied responses for a limited period of two years.
Program families are accompanied in partnership with a dedicated family social worker, family mentors, and a flexible response basket. This support network is available to the family in the process of defining and achieving its goals.
Otzma (Empowerment) Center
A service operating within the departments of social services aimed at making responses accessible to individuals and families living in poverty and exclusion so that everyone, according to their needs and available possibilities, can improve their quality of life and participate in social processes in the community. The service operates under the leadership of a multidisciplinary team and managed by a dedicated social worker (center coordinator) who works with a rights utilization and community social worker and an Otzma mentor.
The center has a system of group responses aimed at addressing a variety of service recipients’ needs, as well as a dedicated budget for individual responses in the field of economic-occupational rehabilitation.
The service includes personal, group, and community guidance – in-depth and quality – by a social worker and mentor and provides a holistic response as much as possible combining several axes of intervention:
- Employment – assistance and guidance in finding employment, employment empowerment.
- Rights utilization – guidance, provision of knowledge, and realization of rights.
- Family budget management – budget building and debt arrangement.
- Work at the community level and in the field of policy change processes according to the needs of service recipients.
- Improvement of basic living conditions.
Paamonim’s Activity within “Breathing a Sigh of Relief”
Paamonim is the entity that operates the system explained above in the Jerusalem district. The localities included in the program’s activity in the district are: Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beit Shemesh, Ma’ale Adumim, Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Kiryat Malachi, Beitar Illit, Modi’in Illit.
As part of operating the system, Paamonim is the organization that employs the district area manager, the team of area coordinators, and the team of family mentors in the district, which numbers about 75 family mentors. We also coordinate and lead all the partners’ activities in the district while implementing the system’s policy as determined by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs, JDC Israel, and the Rashi Foundation. All this in partnership with the district ministry representation and in the spirit of the poverty-aware social work paradigm.
The families and service recipients of the system are placed at the center of intervention with the belief that see the family as a part of a whole world and serve as full and active partners in all intervention processes and at all levels, both individually, in groups, and in the community.
Paamonim sees the opportunity to operate the “Breathing a sigh of Relief at the Otzma Center” system as a fortunate one, as we can take a significant part in leading change processes among the system’s families and social services departments and in-depth processes in improving society in Israel.
