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Photo credit:
Nir Alon
The home
Keren Malki's work is based around
the idea that no place is better for a child with special needs than that
child's own home. Helping to enable that to happen is what drives our
activities, day after day.
The challenges facing a family with a seriously disabled child
are not simple. Neurological disorders, severe illness and developmental
problems in childhood change the lives of all concerned: the child, the parents,
the siblings and - in some ways - the society around them.
Experience shows that such families are rarely in a position to
stand up to these challenges without sustained, targeted help.
In Israel, sadly, the government
belongs more to the problem than to the solution.
That is where our role starts.
The Malki Foundation (Keren Malki in
Hebrew) was founded
in 2001 as a living memorial to a girl who
dedicated herself to caring for people with disabilities, among them her own
severely disabled sister.
The life of Malka Chana Roth, who
was fifteen when her life was violently ended by Arab
terrorists, is the inspiration for the foundation’s work. Her murder is the
reason it was created.
Three programs
Keren Malki’s work is channeled into
three active programs: one focused on providing specialized equipment in the home, and
the other two on home-based therapies. In all 3 tracks, the goal is to empower
families who want to give their seriously disabled child the best possible care
at home.
Most families benefiting from Keren Malki’s programs first learn
about them by word of mouth: via a social worker or from their child’s
neurologist or therapist. The number of families admitted to the program
currently stands at several hundred; the numbers are growing steadily. Fresh
applications arrive at the rate of some thirty a month.
Keren Malki’s limited but growing financial resources dictate
that we move forward very carefully, taking the trouble to clearly define goals
and manage expenditure conservatively.
Program #1:
Providing therapies in the home
The innovative Keren Malki
Right to Nurture Program was launched in 2003. It is based on the
principle that striving to meet the needs of a seriously disabled child requires
all the love and care the family can muster… and as much paramedical therapy
support as they can afford. The cost of therapies, and finding the money to fund
it, is a major factor in the lives of such families. Schools, both special
purpose and mainstream, provide some therapies, but never enough.
The message from Keren Malki to parents coping with these major
challenges is: You find the therapists who can best help you child, and we will
help you cover the costs.
But Keren Malki's Right to Nurture
program comes with conditions: families must first make full use of the
therapies to which the child is currently entitled under the law. Once they have
worked through the system and obtained what is available there, our role begins.
Keren Malki’s founders, Frimet and Arnold Roth, have had their
own battles with the public health bureaucracy over the past decade. (The
youngest of the Roth children suffers from blindness and other extreme
disabilities.) Their experience is a significant factor in moulding the
foundation’s direction and policies.
Applicant families admitted to our
Right to Nurture program receive financial support for any one or all of
the following: physiotherapy, occupational therapy, therapeutic swimming, speech
therapy and therapeutic horse-riding.
To qualify for Keren Malki support, the child needs to be
diagnosed as having a significant disability, and must reside in the family home
rather than in an institution. This is a fundamental issue for us. Many large
and fine institutions for the disabled operate in Israel. The guiding principle
in Keren Malki’s work, however, is that we support and empower parents who want
their child to continue living at home.
Unfortunately there are very few Israeli organizations which
promote this view, something we hope will change with time.
The rules of the Right to Nurture program require that
families seeking admission furnish a letter from a medical specialist certifying
that the child has a significant disability. A simple questionnaire is filled in
by a parent and the modest set of papers is then considered at one of the weekly
meetings of Keren Malki’s acceptance committee.
Families admitted to the Right to
Nurture program receive reimbursement
(normally 75%) of the therapy costs against the receipts which they
supply.
The therapist providing the service must be a licensed
professional in his or her field under Israeli law; and the receipt for payment
must comply with the taxation authorities’ rules. As a matter of principle, we
will not reimburse therapies provided ‘off the books’ or by unlicensed
professionals.
Program #2:
Long-term access to vital equipment
In Keren Malki’s second program, formally
called the Keren Malki Unit at Yad Sarah,
we provide specialized equipment for the home: items that generally are either
unavailable in Israel from any other source, or prohibitively expensive.
The goal, as with the Right to
Nurture program, is to
empower and support families wanting to care for their special-needs child at
home, rather than to institutionalize the child. An Israel-wide network of
volunteers aiding disabled, elderly and house-bound people, the Yad Sarah
organization has for years been devoted to making home-care an option. It has
gained a well-deserved international reputation for the excellence of its
performance.
Since establishing Keren Malki's
joint venture with Yad Sarah in
January 2003, we have had the privilege of providing home-care beds, standers,
walkers, bath-inserts, hoists and host of other items to households where a
seriously disabled child is cared for. The Keren Malki joint-venture warehouse at Yad Sarah has served
many hundreds of families from all parts of the country and from all demographic
segments of Israeli society.
Steady Growth
When we began supplying equipment for home
care, we had a general sense of the kinds of equipment needed, and not much idea
of how quickly the demand from families would materialize and grow.
Some years later, it is apparent to Yad Sarah’s
management and volunteers and to Keren Malki – and to anyone who watches the
steady flow of expensive equipment being taken home by grateful borrowers – what
a valuable service we provide. The faces say it all.
Our equipment includes about thirty different classes of item;
some are in greater demand than others. Our specialty focus makes us one of the
largest purchasers in the world for certain kinds of aids and therapeutic
equipment.
Program #3:
Therapists on Wheels
Starting in early 2011, and after a
year of preparation, our new and
innovative third track, the Zlata Hersch Memorial Therapists on Wheels Program, got
underway.
Currently in its early stages, the
program provides
mobile therapists who will travel to where the special-needs children live,
delivering quality paramedical therapies in Israel’s northern and southern
periphery (as of September 2011 - only in the south).
In those areas, access to such services is often inherently more
difficult; fewer therapists are available, and distance makes it hard to bring
the child to the therapy sense. We firmly believe this program, initiated and funded
by modest supporters in Jerusalem (who prefer their identity to remain private)
with a seed grant made in honour of a loved family member, offers a creative
solution to a serious challenge.
We are looking forward to see it
advance at least as well as our two original programs have done.
Your
support
The degree to which the Malki Foundation’s work will succeed is
directly related to how well we are able to maximize the effectiveness of money
raised from donors. This, in turn, requires minimizing our expenditure of time
and money on infrastructure and overheads.
Keren Malki has always had a lean management team –
currently (September 2011) one
administrator, and one executive assistant and a very part-time grant writer. We have no other salaried personnel, no
fund-raisers who earn commissions or any other payment, no cars, no waste.
A
small group of committed volunteers, including Frimet and Arnold Roth who
founded the organization in their daughter's memory,
contribute their time without payment, providing all the additional manpower we
currently need to do our work including the raising of donation money.
Keren Malki’s financial accounts are professionally prepared and
audited, and the organization is registered with the Israeli authorities as a
not-for-profit (an Amuta). The donations we raise outside of Israel are
channeled via Friends of Keren Malki voluntary groups in Germany, the United
Kingdom, the United States and
Australia, and are transferred to Israel with no deduction and no overhead expenses.
Keren Malki’s sharp focus and lean structure should never be
confused with amateurism. In our quiet way, we have already reached many hundreds of
Israeli families, and with your help we will reach hundreds more this year.
Follow-up
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For enquiries about day-to-day management of Keren
Malki's therapy and equipment services, call our office: +972-2-567-0602
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Keren Malki's legal structure is described
here
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About the
opening of the
Keren Malki Unit at Jerusalem's Yad Sarah
Organization (7th January 2003)
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Arnold Roth's
original September 2001 'Open
Letter' about the goals and aspirations
of the Malki Foundation
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