The Transition Program
The Transitions Program is a comprehensive framework aimed at developing social, academic and emotional skills that children need to thrive and enhance their personal and emotional development.
The program integrates individual and group meetings, and expands the circles of collaboration to include the child's peers, teachers, social workers and parents, in order to ensure maximum impact and outcomes.
The program provides guidance for the teachers and parents of extremely vulnerable children, and is implemented throughout the year, and, most importantly – during summer vacations. In essence, the program changes the reality of these children, who experience life as a constant thread of failure, which reinforces instability, as well as their sense of inability.
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Children who participate in the program work with certified therapists in order to develop vital skills for emotional wellbeing, such as expressing feelings and improving ability to process emotions. The children practice learning skills by experiencing positive feedback, thereby improving self-confidence and motivation. Each child in the program has one session each week for 30 minutes, and a group session for 60 minutes. Through fun and dynamic activities, children learn empowerment, interpersonal communication, self-confidence and self-efficacy. The principal goal is to reduce the child's problematic behavior (violence, withdrawal, compulsiveness) and enable them to function and express themselves in a normative manner in a learning environment.
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During the school year, the program operates within the child's educational framework and follows the children individually or in peer groups, with an emphasis on improving the children’s relationships with their classmates and teachers. Shluvim's specially trained therapists work not only with the children, but also with their teachers, social workers, and parents in order to ensure that the process is as comprehensive and integrative as possible.
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During summer vacation, when the children are thrown into an additional state of instability and change, the therapists continue to meet with them by conducting home visits. These meetings ensure continuity and create stability, which is of paramount importance for the children, who can have severely negative reactions to change. Meetings are aimed at fostering family ties, improving the child's parents’ functioning, and providing support for the children in their transition into the coming year’s academic framework.
The program is composed of three stages:
Training and Guidance for Educators/ Education Professionals
Through the work in Shluvim and the interaction with the children, arose the need for professional training and the provision of tools for the educational staff who are coping with immense challenges within their classes.
The professional training aims to promote the staff’s embracing capabilities of the children and assist them in becoming a significant figure for these children with extreme emotional and functional difficulties within the educational school system and among their peer group.
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The training assimilates a pedagogical and therapeutical approach for these children who are in dire need for support. It focuses on internalizing a conformed approach and implementation of practices and skills for the educational staff for a variety of needs.
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A handbook for the teacher accompanied by the personal training of the Shluvim therapist, who provides information and practical solutions for coping with the wide array of behavioral and emotional reactions of the children and their parents within their care.
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The assimilation program includes a training seminar for the Shluvim therapists as well which analyzes the handbook principals and how to implement its content as well as to supplement the educational staff with tools and skills for coping with the Shluvim children.
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An accompanying program for the educational staff that includes an initial meeting introducing the training material. The core of this stage is a monthly meeting for all the teachers of the classes where Shluvim operates. These meetings are aimed at sharing information and providing the educational staff with practical and effective tools to assist them in coping with the challenging situations they encounter in their classroom.
The Hands Program
The Hands Program therapy model is implemented within the child's natural environments – in school and at home.
The model integrates group work along with elements of social and academic empowerment.
By integrating components that encourage social skills, academic success, emotional processing/expression, and positive experiences, we foster the children's potential for success in their social and academic functioning.
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The program includes weekly individual and/or group meetings. At the group level, Hands brings together kindergarten children in pairs for 30-minute sessions or small groups of 3-4 elementary school children for 45-minute sessions. The goals are to help them—through age appropriate means—identify, express and work through difficult emotional crises, ultimately empowering them to modify their behavior and attitudes in order to better cope with or overcome their issues. It is critical that participating children be given the space and tools to identify and express their feelings to empower them to move beyond the impact of the trauma. The Hands model relies on therapeutic methods which are used as prompters, counseling and psychotherapeutic tools and communication enhancers, as well as social interactive games that include arts and crafts. The program also utilizes a unique, a self-designed system of animal-assisted therapy. All of these tools are highly effective when working with children who have experienced trauma and crisis.
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Hands reaches out to children with extreme social and behavioral problems, including, at one end of the spectrum, those who demonstrate serious patterns of hostility, aggression and disruption, and, at the other, those struggling with social anxiety disorders leaving them painfully withdrawn and non-communicative. Participants may be dealing with psychological, emotional or physical special needs, including autism, PTSD, dyslexia, selective mutism or ADHD. Most participate for 7-10 months; others require additional intervention and may take part in an extended program, such as "Transitions".
Social Welfare Intervention
Social Welfare Intervention provides supplementary guidance and support for the parents of children who participate in Shluvim's programs, with an emphasis on social and educational welfare.
The program is implemented year round, in conjunction with Shluvim's "Hands" and "Transitions" programs, and provides the very necessary element of working intensively with the parents to ensure that families receive all of the tools and services they require to help their children reach a level of wellbeing necessary for proper functioning within their main environments – at school and at home.
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"Social Welfare Intervention" is a project that has grown out of Shluvim's experience and the needs that arise from the field. In the vast majority of cases, parents of these children lack the knowledge and financial means for providing or seeking out assistance and support. In many cases the parents have reached a level of anxiety that keeps them from approaching welfare services for fear that their children will be taken from them.
Shluvim’s therapists, who work daily with the children and form trusting bonds with them and their parents, have a direct approach to expand their impact to more broadly affect the children, by ensuring that their parents are full partners in the process. In many cases, Shluvim’s therapists identify problems that overlooked by welfare and social services, and are in the very unique position to provide highly effective solutions.
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"Social Welfare Intervention" is implemented throughout the year, including summer vacations, when the threat of relapse and regression into previous behavioral and emotional states is most acute. Meetings are aimed at fostering family ties, improving the child's parents’ functioning, and providing support for the children in their transition into the coming year’s academic framework.