ANNUAL SUMMARY REPORT
THE GOLDIE KASSELL CENTER
September 2010 through August 2011
PREFACE:
This is the eleventh annual report on the activities of the Goldie Kassell Center, under the auspices of the Jerusalem Hills Residential Centers (formerly the JWI Residential Treatment Center).
The report sums up the third year of activity of the Kassell Center in Malkha, Jerusalem (outside of the Children's Home campus). The Kassell Center has been operating in its new location as of November 2008.
The geographic location of the clinic has, clearly, created expenses formerly unknown to the clinic, such as the rent and secretarial services. On the other hand, its new location has contributed to the clinic's accessibility and its ambiance as an independent and active center.
The Center serves as a point of junction between the community and residential care. Its staff, largely drawn from the Children's Home, brings to the clinic its experience and expertise in residential treatment and applies it to the ambulatory nature of the clinic's clientele. The staff's unique professional background impacts on the renown of the Center and on its clinical and variegated nature. As a diagnostic center, it attracts many difficult, complex cases of children that require highly professional evaluations to determine whether ambulatory or residential care should be the treatment of choice.
The Center has continued to grow as a training framework that provides professional seminars and professional supervision all year round, fulfilling a void within the professional milieu and thus fostering new generations of professional caregivers.
1. PSYCHOTHERAPY:
The main objective of the Goldie Kassell Center is to provide a psychotherapeutic response to as wide a population as possible – individual therapy and counseling, family and/or marital counseling, parental counseling and therapeutic mentoring.
We have continued to increase our fields of activity to include addressing the needs of parents to children with many different needs, including PDD children (Pervasive Developmental Disorders) and adopted children, in addition to the more usual needs for emotional care. The training of our professional staff, which began three years ago for treating PDD children, has led to an increase in requests for the Center's professional help and recognition of the Kassell Center as a leading authority on this issue.
The Center has developed its contacts with additional regional mental health & education services, such as from Efrat and Gush Etzion, Mateh Yehuda and Mateh Binyamin. This has brought an increase in the clientele for psychotherapeutic services.
Moreover, this past year the Center was the recipient of a generous special fund, established in memory of Miquette Weil (a children's clinical psychologist) by her husband and allocated towards providing subsidized support for individual therapy, thus allowing an additional annual caseload of ten children who can receive therapy at the Center for a minimal price. The fund will most likely continue through 2012 as well.
As mentioned in last year's report, one of the challenges we still face is the drastic change in the Israeli health services' provision to the general public, wherein a far greater number of psychological services are offered to the insured members, at a rate that has become competitive with the Kassell Center's rates. The Miquette Weil Fund has been helpful to us in this regard, enabling us to offer a lower rate to a limited number of clients.
We have continued working with the Institute of National Insurance (social security services) and the Summit Institute's foster family services, as well as the Rehabilitation Service of the Defense Ministry. In addition, several boarding-schools in Jerusalem (such as Amalia, Boyer and Ein –Karmit) continue sending us students to receive psychotherapy.
All the therapists who provide psychotherapy at the Kassell Center receive professional supervision on a regular basis from senior professionals (linked with the Children's Home as past or present employees).
2. PSYCHODIAGNOSTICS
Thanks to the professional experience accumulated by our staff at the Children's Home, and who work at the Kassell Center, our reputation has continued to grow and has drawn the most difficult psychodiagnostic cases, primarily in regard to children, adolescents and families.
The Kassell Center has become the permanent provider of psychodiagnostic services to a number of boarding-schools in Jerusalem, as well as having increased the awareness of our services amongst public clinics and welfare agencies. Amongst some changes that have taken place, the Jerusalem Municipality has continued hiring our services as well, completing the scope of our regional involvement.
This past year we have increased our case load by 20%, reaching sixty diagnoses. The number of requests from individuals is constantly growing, and we continue to maintain a six-month waiting list. Ten staff members of the Kassell Center provide the psychodiagnostic services on a permanent basis.
In order to remain up-to-date in this field, the Kassell Center will be purchasing the latest diagnostic tool, WISC IV, that will ensure the highest professional level of its staff.
3. SUPERVISION AND INSTRUCTION:
The Kassell Center continues its supervisory support of different frameworks in Jerusalem, all of them residential. In some facilities, our work has expanded to include supervision of child-care workers, wherein before we supervised only the facility's therapists. This is an important change in the professional perception of our work. In addition, individual professionals, not related to a specific facility, continue turning to us for supervision.
The Kassell Center remains the address for providing professional escorting and assistance in the field of residential care and education.
The professional escorting at Beit Hayeled Amit is continuing into its tenth year and we are completing the process of having this facility recognized as a training ground for clinical psychology internships.
In response to the demand and the success of its first year, the Kassell Center has provided a second year of training seminars on the topic of Residential Care, which served both the audience and the lecturers well. Many of the lecturers are newcomers to the lecture 'circuit', all of whom have previously worked at the RTC and have grown professionally under our auspices.
Kassell Center continues to offer training and supervision for therapy providers (psychologists, social workers), some of whom were Kassell staff members and others from outside, who have a private practice.
4. WORK WITH THE FAMILY COURTS:
Our work in this field has continued as before with no major changes.
As mentioned above, the family courts have increasingly referred to us cases that require our treatment and not only professional assessment. This shift in the courts' perception of the role of the Kassell Center reflects its strong presence and establishment within the judicial system.
Our expertise in this field has brought about an increased demand to train and lecture on the subject of assessments for family courts. These lectures have addressed social workers involved in family court work.
5. SPECIAL PROJECTS:
We have now concluded the ninth year of our program: "Preventing Non-Normative Behavior in Jerusalem's Junior High-Schools".
This year we renewed our activities in three schools (last year our budget limited us to one school, Gymnasia, where a group of ten boys and girls completed the second year of the two-year cycle.)
After having received a donation for the funds (totaling $60,000) via the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation, the program was reinitiated in Gymnasia, L'yada and Kedma junior high-schools in Jerusalem.
Needless to say, the schools that re-joined the program were thrilled at this opportunity, as the program had left a significant positive impact on the schools during the past years.
Without doubt, this program continues to prove successful and is one of Kassell Center's unique and rewarding activities. It has been operating independently for nine years, yet has also created referrals to the Kassell Center of some of its students for individual care.
The Kassell Center continues searching for a financial solution that will ensure the permanent operation of the anti-violence program in the schools. Beyond the three schools that are now enjoying this program, the Kassell Center has been approached by additional schools, from Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh and the periphery, to introduce this program amongst them as well. There are no funds to expand the program beyond the current scope of activity, but it is essential that a permanent fund be established to create annual financing for this highly important intervention project.
6. FACING THE FUTURE:
a. Expanding our horizons – new programs:
1. Cinema Seminar: A partnership with Misholim (Center for Group Therapy through the Arts), to create and implement a yearly seminar of five sessions to train therapists via the use of cinema as a media. Additionally, to create a study seminar jointly for the staff of both groups as ongoing clinical training.
2. In-Service Training for Lawyers: in order to complete our services to the family courts, we have been asked to provide training seminars to lawyers working within the family court system.
3. Additional therapies: Within the framework of our outreach to increase the psychotherapeutic case load, the Kassell Center will offer a new program of Photo Therapy and Art Therapy, focusing on individual work.
4. Training Manual: Following the publication in 2005 of "Treatment in Life Space", the Home's highly popular training manual used throughout Israel, the publication of a second training manual is now in the planning. It will serve to continue our role as the major source for training residential care professionals, bringing new and updated materials to Israel's professional community. Additionally, the new manual will be a sounding-board for our staff, enabling their papers and work to receive far greater exposure.
7. SUMMARY:
With the conclusion of the eleventh year of activity, we witness the continued growth and widening scope of the Kassell Center.
On the other hand, we continue facing the financial challenge of balancing the Center's budget, which has been forced to maintain high rental costs. Historically, the Kassell Center was established and operated on the grounds of the Children's Home in Jerusalem. The move of the Children's Home to Abu Gosh dictated finding new facilities for the Kassell Center, which unavoidably increased the expense of its operation.
In view of the changes both at the Children's Home and in Israeli society, we are facing a paradox wherein, on the one hand, we have established our name and are a renowned center, but on the other hand, we have not been able to break the 'glass roof' of our budget.
We are currently discussing and weighing a variety of solutions and/or change of direction that will help us cope with this new situation.
It is essential to preserve the therapeutic nature of the Kassell Center. Towards that end, our major thrust now is to increase our case load by 50%, which will turn our financial situation into a viable one, from which we can only continue growing. We are also aiming towards an increase in diagnostic services, an expansion of seminars and a small increase in the fees of supervision.
We cannot overemphasize the significance of the Kassel Center and what it contributes. Besides the direct services to the general public, the Kassell Center provides for the professional growth of the Children's Home staff, ensuring the highest professional standards at the Children's Home and Group House. During the year, 45 professionals work at the Kassell Center, with various degrees of involvement (lectures, supervisions, long-term psychotherapies, diagnostics, etc.) At least two-thirds are 'graduates' of the Children's Home or are currently employed there. Thus, the Kassell Center fulfills one of the goals for which it was established: to create a framework that will provide a milieu for further professional growth of its professional workers, who can contribute from their rich experience to the entire field of special education throughout the country. No less important, the Kassell Center has become the focal training ground for the professional community of residential care in Israel.
The Kassell Center will make every effort to attain a balanced budget, as it continues to grow professionally and mirror the unique importance of the work done at the Children's Home and Group House. This goal, in fact, has already been achieved.
Dr. Jean Pisante
Director
August 2,2011