About Beit Hayeled
General Information
Founded in 1983, AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem is home to 100 children, aged 5-15. It is a place for these children, who come from neglectful, dysfunctional and in some cases even abusive homes, to find much needed warmth and love. The problems in these children's homes range from chronic physical and mental illness, to violence, drug addiction, imprisonment and abandonment. AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled is responsible for all the children's daily and long-term needs - physical, educational and emotional, such as food, clothing, school placements, textbooks, pocket money, extra-curricular activities, medical and dental care and rehabilitative therapies. AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled is run with complete cooperation and supervision from the Child and Teen Services Department in the Ministry of Social Affairs.
The children at AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled are from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. They are placed at AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled by the Child and Teen Services Department when their home situation becomes too insecure or dangerous to leave them there. In many cases, the children are removed from their biological home by court order. AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled is not a boarding school, the children who live there do not live there by choice. These are children who dream of having a normal family and living in a normal home.
The AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled campus contains accommodation, a clinic, library, playground and sports courts, synagogue/multi-purpose room, kiosk, club room, animal therapy house and Midreshet AMIT.
Philosophy
The children are placed with normative young families (Mishpachtonim) at AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled, where they are provided with a warm, nurturing and structured environment with good role models. By living with these surrogate families - a married young couple who very often have their own young children - these children begin to develop positive, loving relationships, learn responsibility, independence, cooperation, and are able to experience some type of "normal" family life that they lacked from their biological parents. Being emotionally stable will enable them to break out of the cycle of poverty and dysfunction and will allow them to be independent, functioning and happy adults, with stable families.
The children are encouraged to honor and love their biological families but not to imitate their behaviors. In cases where it is possible, the children are allowed to go to their parents for weekends, holidays and vacations. If they are cooperative, these parents are given psychological support and even psychiatric support through AMIT- whatever is needed to help the children. When it is not feasible for the children to visit their parents in their home(s), children are matched with foster families outside of AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled where they spend weekends and holidays.
All decisions relating to the children's education, therapy and general upbringing are made on an individual basis. This is in an effort to grant each of the children respect and dignity and to instill them with self-worth and a sense of stability and caring in their daily living environment. Since these children come from such difficult backgrounds AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled also works on teaching the children a certain amount of independence and responsibility. This is, for example, expressed through the fact the children have their daily family chores, as well as weekly pocket money they can use as they choose, and choosing and buying their clothes at the mall at the beginning of each season.
An emphasis is placed on the children not seeing themselves as only on the receiving end of care and assistance, but also as human beings capable of giving and caring for others themselves. As in all AMIT facilities, the children, especially the older ones, do volunteer work such as helping out in the local old age home and preparing Mishlochei Manot for the needy.
A number of years ago, AMIT Frisch Beit Hayeled conducted a follow-up study of its graduates. The very inspiring findings revealed that 92% of the graduates had succeeded in escaping the cycle of crime and violence and had continued their studies after the army.