In Israel today, legal guardians look after about 60,000 elderly and adults with disabilities who cannot make decisions for themselves about personal, financial, or health matters.<\/p>\n
In 2014, public pressure increased awareness of the need to provide greater protection for these wards by putting in place a better system of regulation, supervision, and ongoing monitoring.\u00a0 Thus, the Ministry of Justice decided to develop a system for monitoring how guardians are ensuring appropriate care and looking out for the interests of their wards.\u00a0 To turn this decision into practice, the Ministry turned to MJB, which has extensive experience in developing these kinds of regulatory and monitoring systems for the social services.<\/p>\n
Dr. Shirli Resnizky, who led this project at the Institute, explains that, first and foremost, the new system must ensure that the guardians are following their legal obligations to address the needs of their wards.\u00a0 Beyond that, it should assess how the guardian relates to their ward as an individual.\u00a0For example, is the guardian promoting the ward’s sense of personal dignity, autonomy, and self-fulfillment?\u00a0 Is the ward given opportunities to communicate and express him or herself?<\/p>\n
In developing the system, MJB’s researchers collected the input of stakeholders from across the guardianship system:\u00a0 from Ministry policy makers and social service staff, to guardians, family members, and even the wards themselves.\u00a0 The researchers combined the Institute’s own expertise together with some of the newest professional techniques in communicating with people with intellectual challenges or communication problems.<\/p>\n
A comprehensive database system was developed by MJB to facilitate the ongoing monitoring process.\u00a0 This will enable Ministry staff to have a much more accurate picture of the characteristics of the wards, their guardians, and the degree to which the needs of the wards are being addressed.<\/p>\n
As a basis for developing the system, MJB carried out a detailed pilot on 500 guardianship cases.\u00a0 The lessons learned during the pilot will help ensure that the Ministry is collecting the information it needs to make the system effective.\u00a0 In fact, the information that has been obtained is already helping the Ministry develop training programs to help new guardians understand the responsibilities and expectations of their role.<\/p>\n
This project was conducted as a cooperative effort between two divisions of MJB \u2014\u00a0the Division for Research on Disabilities\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>and the\u00a0Division for Research on Aging\u00a0<\/a>.\u00a0 According to Dori Rivkin, Director of the Division for Research on Disabilities, such cross-divisional cooperation helps to “broaden the perspectives, so as to ensure that the new system is applicable to the full range of guardianship cases.”<\/p>\n The new regulatory system will be introduced in 2018 in light of knowledge obtained in the research.\u00a0 In the meantime, MJB’s work has been extended to include developing a similar system for children with guardians.<\/p>\n This study is being funded with the support of MJB Board member Nancy Hackerman, from Baltimore, Maryland.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Israel today, legal guardians look after about 60,000 elderly and adults with disabilities who cannot make decisions for themselves about personal, financial, or health matters. In 2014, public pressure increased awareness of the need to provide greater protection for these wards by putting in place a better system of regulation, supervision, and ongoing monitoring.\u00a0 […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,74],"tags":[102],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging-en","category-disabilities-en","tag-guardians","population-adults"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n