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Posted by sylvia on Friday, May 28, 2004 (23:39:40)
Haaretz 12/05/2004
By David Ratner
The Milman Center in Haifa, a unique facility that specializes in diagnosing, treating and helping autistic children and the only one of its kind between Hadera and Tiberias, is facing closure due to budgetary cuts.
The center treats some 100 children from secular as well as religious neighborhoods in towns, kibbutzim, moshavim and Arab villages throughout the north of the country. Tsofia Smoocha, the facility's director, and Dafna Ziv, the director of the non-profit association that supports the center, believe that approximately one-third of autistic children in Israel between the ages of two and seven are currently being treated here.
Starting January, they will all have to do without the unique treatment that is being subsidized at the center, or else have to pay large amounts of money to obtain it elsewhere. The situation of 14 other children is even more difficult. Their parents were notified at the beginning of March that the center has stooped accepting new children due to budget cuts.
M., a salaried employee from the Krayot area near Haifa, is father to a two-and-a-half-year-old who was diagnosed as autistic six months ago. The child is one of the 14 who have no place to get treatment, unless their parents can afford to pay NIS 4,000 a month.
"This sort of news can destroy a family, forcing it to sell their house if they want their child to receive good treatment," M. says. "The child goes to a regular day care center that costs NIS 2,500 a month, and now you need to add another NIS 4,000 for treatment at the Milman Center. That's simply not something that can be handled. Parents whose children began attending the center last year paid NIS 700 a month. There's a substantial difference there."
Dolly, a chubby, elderly Labrador retriever, is one of the most veteran, dedicated employees at the Milman Center. Dolly managed to elicit shouts of joy from Benny, a gaunt, curly-haired three-year-old, by running with a red ball between her teeth. Benny's mother was sitting next to one of the instructors at the center, watching the events unfold. Benny was throwing the ball, and Dolly was doing what Labrador retrievers do best - retrieve.
Children like Benny typically start out their two weekly visits to the center with a meeting with Dolly. The short time spent with the Labrador retriever is just one of 30 different treatments offered to the autistic child and his parents. Some 90 professionals in the fields of psychology, art and speech therapy, as well as other professions, take part in the diverse program.
The center is unique in that it devotes two intensive days a week to therapy that involves the child's parents, and it also has the ability to tailor a personal therapeutic plan to the needs of each child according to their diagnosed condition, which can change as the child grows.
A child such as Benny, for example, may be able with close support and great efforts by the team of therapists to eventually attend a regular public school, an achievement that cannot be taken for granted for an autistic child.
When the center opened in 1992, the Health Ministry set up a committee that decided that the Haifa municipality was to provide the building in a poverty-ridden neighborhood of the city, while the operation of the facility would be handed over to a parents' association called "Netzer."
The cost of treating an autistic child at the center is NIS 4,000 a month. The Health Ministry panel decided that the state would fund NIS 2,800 of that sum, while the rest would be raised by the parents and by outside donations.
Recently, with the large cuts in the Health Ministry budget, the management of the center received indications that after 12 years of operation, the money for operating the facility is about to run out.
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