Report: Richest locales receive most social services

Haaretz, September 16, 2008

Avirama Golan

In contemporary Israel the affluent communities are allocated more money and social services workers (despite their having few needy residents), while the poor communities have less money and fewer social services workers (and many needy residents). The term "social services" no longer refers to a state social worker, but to a migrant caregiver or an organization funded by donations, which operates for profit. This is the new reality presented in the report published by the Adva Center on Sunday.

The report indicates that this inequality is most pronounced in the average annual expenditures on social services. Savyon-Ganei Yehuda tops the list, followed by Herzliya, while the 25 lowest spots are held by Arab locales. This although only about 5 percent of the residents in the well-off local authorities need social services, while that figure stands at 20 percent in the poorer locales.

In economically strong local authorities, such as Tel Aviv, significant sums are invested in social welfare, but these monies come from donations as well as the municipality's budget. Thus the municipality's social welfare budget is relatively small, allowing the city to invest more in education and a variety of social networks that also affect residents' quality of life. In 2006 Tel Aviv's social affairs budget was NIS 267 million, to which were added NIS 90 million in donations.

Peripheral towns also invest relatively large sums per resident on social welfare, but the residents' economic status and level of education is not improving - because the large social welfare budgets take up a significantly larger portion of the municipal budget. Lacking additional outside funding, the socioeconomic gaps remain.

The report's authors feel the most worrisome figure concerns donations from abroad, which have become the permanent base for the social welfare budget, allowing the government to constantly reduce its budget allocations. Thus the Social Affairs Ministry's 2008 budget was NIS 3.66 billion, while the National Insurance Institute's budget for nursing stipends for the elderly was NIS 3 billion. American Jewish organizations donate some NIS 840 million annually (this number does not include bequests and emergency donations, whose figures vary); the Sacta Rashi fund grants NIS 140 million; the New Israel Fund gives NIS 70 million a year to various social action groups and Mifal Hapayis state lottery invests another NIS 23 million a year.

The low budget also forces private social welfare organizations to be more creative: non-profit organizations become commercial profit-making centers and the welfare network relies on cheap female labor. Thus for example, a 2006 survey conducted by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that 75 percent of its social work department graduates - mostly women - were hired as manpower employees by private organizations.

The biggest change is in the nature of the services: "Social services" now involve mainly caring for the elderly and the disabled, with the caregiver, who is usually a female migrant worker, living in the home of her charge and earning NIS 2,800 a month, with little government oversight. For all the others - at-risk children, disabled children and adults and the mentally ill - especially those in the weaker locales, the state no longer takes responsibility.