Social Workers’ Attempts to Navigate Among the Elderly, Their Families, and Foreign Home Care Workers in the Haredi Community

Abstract

Social workers play a central role, serving as a cultural bridge in the process of integrating FHCWs, as a way of addressing the needs of ultraorthodox elderly and their families, while also considering the needs of the foreign workers.

Perceived Discrimination and Well-Being Among the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel: The Mediating Role of Group Identity

“…This finding calls for a contextualized examination of RIM in situations in which the intergroup connections between minority and majority are more complex and conflicted, and this seems to be the case with regard to the Jewish Haredi group within the Israeli social context. The two groups, the secular majority and the Haredi minority in Israel, greatly differ in their customs, beliefs, and lifestyle (Freund & Band-Winterstein, 2017; Goodman & Witztum, 2002). Although conflicts arise with regard to certain volatile issues (e.g., service in the Israeli army), both groups still see each other as part of a larger ethno-religious community—the Jewish people of Israel.…”

“…From a social psychology standpoint, the Haredi community is characterized by high, and occasionally extreme, levels of collectivist thoughts and behaviors. According to Freund and Band-Winterstein (2017), members of this group are required to subordinate their personal aspirations, desires, and goals to the continuance and proliferation of the community. In the current context, this may indicate that perceived discrimination may play a unique role as a determinant of SWB.…”

The moderating effect of care‐burden on formal caregiver's mental health during COVID‐19

“…Due to the growing number of older people with severe illness and/or physical or cognitive functioning impairments, global care‐burden has risen (Barnett et al, 2012 ; Sherwood et al, 2005 ). In Israel, the number of seriously ill and/or functionally impaired older people eligible for publicly funded home care is continuously growing, reaching 20% of the older population (Freund & Band‐Winterstein, 2019 ). Of 197,700 older people who received home care benefits in 2019, more than 50% had a moderate to severe impairment level (National Insurance Institute, 2019 ).…”

“…In Israel, the National Insurance Institute committee, headed by physicians, nurses and social workers, uses both instruments periodically to determine the volume of care benefits allocated. According to quality‐of‐care policies, professionals make regular home‐visits to assess care recipient's needs and to supervise home care services provided by caregivers (Freund & Band‐Winterstein, 2019 ; Iecovich, 2011 ). These visits are considered as excellent opportunity to examine and address formal caregiver's care burden.…”

“…According to the complementary model (Chappell & Blandford, 1991 ), informal caregivers (mostly family members) and formal caregivers share the burden of care. However, the substitute model (Tennstedt et al, 1993 ) asserts that formal caregivers' burden increases when informal caregivers cannot attend to care‐recipient needs (Freund & Band‐Winterstein, 2019 ). An informal caregiver's burden refers to the emotional reaction to the situation's demands, which results from care demands being more significant than caregiver's resources (Sherwood et al, 2005 ; Williams et al, 2018 ).…”