On October 9, two days after the worst disaster in the history of the State of Israel and the worst in Jewish history since the Holocaust, while we social workers were running around the family center designed to allow family members to report their missing loved ones following the disaster, and while I was walking around among anxious families looking for their loved ones, I noticed him. A Bedouin walking around accompanied by a social worker who wants to share that he came with a photo of his shot and killed hijab-wearing wife.
The man, a resident of one of the Bedouin settlements in the Negev, was traveling in a car with his wife, their baby son, and toddler on the morning of October 7. On their way, they came face to face with Hamas terrorists, who sprayed the vehicle with bullets. His wife was shot in front of him and their baby son and was killed on the spot. The man managed to get their toddler son out of the vehicle and escape, when he had to leave his wife’s body behind.
He arrived at the family center at the police headquarters in Lod to report the incident and tried to locate his wife’s body. He was forced to reconstruct the traumatic event, to provide information, testimony, and DNA samples that would help locate her. He did this after he himself experienced a terrible trauma of almost death, hiding for hours with a toddler in his arms and the consequences of the bereavement and orphanhood on his eight children. This moment sharpened the intensity of the trauma experienced by the victims of the disaster, its complexity and the fact that they will need complex and prolonged social assistance from other systems besides the social services and welfare system.
October 7, 2023, will be remembered in history as the date that changed us all as Israelis, changed us as citizens of the country, and changed us as professionals as well.
Thousands of social workers in various positions and responsibilities showed up immediately, moved by a social and conscientious “call-up order” to support, assist and accompany people and communities who faced a trauma the likes of which communities in the State of Israel have not experienced since its founding.
During one morning when this terrible national disaster occurred, new positions and responsibilities were added to us and our office, for which no social work school or previous professional experience had qualified or prepared us.
IT STARTS with the direct and initial connection of delivering bad news messages to the families of the murdered and killed, a process that took two weeks. During this period, the social workers delivered thousands of bad news messages to the murdered victims’ family members. Although this is a role that is also routinely performed in the case of traffic accident fatalities, the numbers of the victims in the disaster and the uncertainty that characterized the period required the delivery of thousands of bad news messages – immediately and throughout the hours of the day, and for many consecutive days.
In addition, for the first time in the history of the State of Israel, Israeli citizens were kidnapped and taken captive by Hamas into Gaza, including babies, children, teenagers, women, and men, and senior citizens. As a result, new roles were also added to the “bad news message” teams: delivery of notifications regarding a “missing” or “abducted” status.
The Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services Ministry of the State of Israel has created and defined new roles of a social worker assisting families of missing persons, abductees, and returnees whose job it is to assist and accompany the families, support and help them to exercise their rights, solve problems and remove barriers, and to provide appropriate interventions for their needs. Moreover, we have social workers assisting displaced citizens and hotel social workers operating, and, in general, we have developed work methods and professional tools aimed at ensuring optimal treatment.
The urgency with which social workers had to respond to and intervene for such a large number of people in such complex situations obliged us to find quick professional and budgetary solutions that allowed us to make assistance available and accessible to broad populations. For many, this was the first time they needed help, agreed to receive support, and met social workers.
One of the first tasks was preparing to receive returning children and their intake. There were 40 children held captive by Hamas, the youngest of whom was a 9-month-old baby.
We never imagined the possibility that it would be necessary to prepare to receive and intake children who were violently taken captive by Hamas in Gaza. The preparation process included learning the children’s family structure, locating significant figures in their lives, professional guidance, dos and don’ts for the professional teams that would meet them at each of the stages, and preparation for the family members.
Another significant task was the construction of a professional methodology for the care and treatment of children left parentless in a disaster. These are minors for whom both parents were murdered or kidnapped and were left without a responsible adult. It required the construction of an expedited process for appointing a guardian for them and regulating the ways of treating them, while being extremely perceptive to the sensitive situation of the remaining family members.
Israelis suffered from multiple sources of trauma on October 7
IN THE first days, it was clear that many citizens experienced multiple traumas at the same time. The personal trauma they experienced on October 7 when they had to hide for long hours while feeling intense fear, witnessing difficult situations and sights, the loss of close people, and the kidnapping of others. Accordingly, the interventions that we had to provide were also complex and multiple. To this end, we have led inter-professional collaborations together with various professionals from the local government and government ministries such as the National Insurance Institute, the Education Ministry, and the Health Ministry with the aim of simplifying processes, making interventions more accurate and providing an immediate holistic intervention for each person.
Over the years, the social workers in the welfare services have developed professional skills through which they have helped and assisted hundreds of thousands of people who have experienced situations of crisis, loss, and violence. There is an understanding that any person may fall into a crisis, be drawn into the cycle of bereavement, and need welfare services.
Experience from the last decade transformed into universal services accessible to any person who needs assistance, accompaniment, or support. Along with this, the understanding grew; sometimes the support a person needs is particular and specific for a limited time, or alternatively, a crisis can also last a lifetime.
The emergency events that the State of Israel has faced in recent years and dealing with the COVID-19 crisis have included and expanded these skills, and have established the role of the social workers in the local authorities at the center of the activities of the local authority. The social workers teams are mobilized in real time for each crisis and provide immediate and direct professional service at all hours of the day.
The events of October 7 have led the welfare services of the State of Israel to formulate a professional doctrine and develop new skills for social workers during a severe national disaster. The work of the welfare services in Israel will greatly contribute to the field of professional research and many other nations will be able to advance improved preparations for future crisis situations based on the Israeli model. Despite this, we hope that no professional in the world will need the professional knowledge and experience we have acquired.
For many years we have seen social workers who prefer to focus on working in other fields or in the private sector. They are now returning upon realizing that the most significant social work takes place in the public sector and local government. The public, for its part, has also been exposed to the work of social workers and its importance, and students report changing plans and turning to retraining in social work studies.
These are intensely difficult times for the citizens of Israel and very challenging times for all the professionals. The social workers in the local authorities fulfill the new roles alongside the day-to-day tasks and do so with great dedication, compassion, and professionalism. I have never been more proud to be a social worker and a public worker, and I am grateful for the privilege given to my colleagues and me to assist and accompany these precious families during their most difficult moments.
We hope and pray for the return of all the abductees to their homes in good physical and mental health state, and we are fully committed to continue accompanying and assisting them as much as necessary.
The writer is deputy director-general and head of the social, family and personal services administration at the Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services Ministry.