Metal Hamsa Greeting Card

Add an elegant greeting card to your package and do a mitzvah by supporting the Children's Therapeutic Workshop at the Abarbanel Mental Health Center in Bat Yam, Israel

The Metal Hamsa Greeting Card includes:

- A color envelope (dark green, burgundy or dark turquoise). A folded card with a small metal hamsa and few colored beads attached.

- Your personal message elegantly printed in an inner paper sheet.

The Children Prevocational Workshop was estabilished by the young people at the Yehuda Abarbanel Mental Health Center, who, in their struggle to be no different from others, create for their own sake, for others', and to help them grow strong and find their place in the community. Buying their products will help them grow. The workshop was estabilished with the kind help of "Agudat Sa'ad LaHole BeIsrael", the Aid for the Infirm Association in Israel".

Rationale for establishing the prevocational workshop for the adolescent outpatient clinic - Occupational therapy

At the beginning of the year 2002, in response to the needs of the youth in our clinic, the transition to new quarters in a new building, and changes in the attitude of the community towards integrating rehabilitated patients within community frameworks, the need arose for establishing a prevocational workshop. The workshop's aim is to enable the adolescents in the outpatient clinic to become familiar with the work environment, its demands and its regulations, through a process of personal development and gradual reintegration into community life.
The project was established through the initiative of Keren Iflan, Occupational Therapist, based on a model used in psychiatric adolescent units throughout Israel. This model emphasizes the acquisition and development of work habits and has a functional-rehabilitative orientation. To ensure the project's success, we formed a planning team including special education professionals Noa Bibi and Negev Vardi. The team worked together to create and implement the workshop, with regular guidance and supervision provided by the occupational therapist with regard to the above mentioned points of emphasis.

The rationale

In our therapeutic work in recent years we have encountered increasing numbers of young people who have exhausted their capacities within the scholastic-academic field and at their present stage are uninterested, or unable, to return to it. In response to their need to find a place in the employment world, a setting or framework is required that will enable them to acquire the work habits and various other skills necessary to help them enter protected or ordinary workplaces outside the hospital. Our experience of the past years has shown us that the best type of workshop is one that includes varied productive activities and helps its participants become familiar with the work experience, its demands, rules and hierarchy - all this in a supportive and protected setting, where the guidance team can mediate between participants' needs and capabilities and the demands of the work environment. Besides teaching working skills, the workshop helps improve various capabilities of daily living (such as social skills and independence), reinforces self-confidence and self-worth, and increases motivation for finding one's place in the social and occupational world outside the hospital.

The theoretical approach underlying our workshop program is the Human Occupation Model theory (Kielhofner, 1955), which emphasizes the fact that human beings' occupational activities or behavior are a central force affecting their health, quality of living, personal development and psychological organization and balance. This theory provides a perspective that considers a person's occupational behavior or occupational dysfunctions resulting from disease, trauma, stress or other factors. As an applied model, it provides a framework for gathering information regarding the patients current state, and for choosing a course of therapy. The model focuses on the motivations for occupation, teaching occupational behavior patterns and making them into habits, life styles and the effects of the environment on occupation behavior.