Kav Baruch, Israel's first all-English-speaking crisis-
intervention and counselling service for religious teens and
parents, is entering its second year of service to the
community. Kav Boruch offers counselor training courses and a
counselling telephone hotline. The project is fully endorsed
by HaRav Mendel Weinbach, rosh yeshiva of Ohr
Somayach, HaRav Menachem Mendel Fuchs, moreh tzedek of
the Eida HaChareidis and mora de'asra of Ramot Dalet,
and HaRav Asher Weiss, a mora de'asra of Ramot
Gimmel.
A crisis intervention and counselling hotline was chosen as
the most effective means of dealing with the alarming
situation in Israel's religious community.
All telephone crisis counselors (aside from the director) are
unpaid volunteers who have completed intensive training.
Administrative operating expenses are also kept to a
minimum.
A call-in service reaches a much larger segment of the
population than one-on-one or group counselling programs. Kav
Baruch runs two distinct yet interconnected programs to
achieve its primary goals.
Beginning in June 1999, Kav Baruch began offering a
comprehensive, 12-week telephone crisis counselor training
course to groups of men and women. Each participant pays a
nominal fee for the course, and attends weekly, two-hour
sessions.
The course covers topics such as how to listen, unconditional
love, chinuch, discipline and punishment, counselling
techniques, drug abuse, and problems in school. Sessions are
conducted by the director, with occasional guest
lecturers.
Graduates who wish to volunteer for Kav Baruch are screened
by the director. They are then trained via intensive role
playing, actual case discussions, and manning the hotline
under supervision. Approximately 15% of graduates have been
called upon to serve as telephone crisis counselors, and a
smaller percentage has provided in-person follow-up in
several cases.
To date, nearly 200 men and women have enrolled in Kav
Baruch's 12-week telephone crisis counselor training course.
Participants came from Netanya, Bnei Brak, Ashdod, Kiryat
Sefer, and Jerusalem. The demand for new courses and venues
continues to grow.
Although the course was originally designed to teach
telephone crisis counselling skills to lay men and women to
work as volunteers on the hotline, approximately 60% of
participants take the course only in order to improve their
own parenting skills. Twenty volunteers with additional
intensive training are ready to staff the hotline when
needed.
The Kav Baruch crisis counselling hotline opened in October
1999. The hotline hours are: Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday
mornings from 9:30 a.m.- 12:00 noon, and Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Saturday evenings from 9:00-11:00 p.m.
Non-English-speaking callers are referred to established
Hebrew-speaking crisis hotlines.
Based on the initial call, the director determines whether
personal follow-up counselling is necessary. The director or
follow-up volunteers met with either the parent, the child,
or both, in over 25 percent of cases.
Kav Baruch's telephone log over the past eight months shows a
steady increase in callers. This is credited to continuous
advertising in religious newspapers and on religious radio
stations, as well as broader awareness of the hotline.
Following two feature articles in an international, English-
language Jewish newspaper, calls for advice were also
received from parents in the United States, England, and
Belgium.
Approximately 90% of callers are parents, and 90% of them are
mothers. Contrary to the original expectation that only
crisis cases would come in, Kav Baruch fielded a wide range
of issues from callers with problems of boy/girl issues and
general behavior problems, yeshiva placement, negative
influence of friends, adjustment to aliya, depression,
and other problems.
In more than 80% of cases, it was either admitted by the
caller or was self-evident that a parent- teen relationship
problem also existed. The average length of each call is 30
minutes. While 20% of calls are one-time conversations, 80%
of calls involve ongoing discussions over a period of weeks
and even months.
The director frequently calls back parents, often several
times. In a few cases, the director met personally with
parents. This type of activity moves the hotline into an
active force in crisis counselling.
In its second year of operations, Kav Baruch plans to expand
its services to reach a wider segment of the English-speaking
religious public in Israel by increasing its operating hours
to six mornings and six evenings per week. It will strive to
expand awareness of the hotline among the English speaking
public, as well as offer additional training/parenting
courses.
