‘State, NGOs not doing enough to help battered women’

New report says is lack of cooperation between 53 organizations dealing with battered women, government does not do enough to coordinate or supervise their operations.

By BEN HARTMAN
The state does not do enough to deal with violence against women, and state and donor supported organizations that deal with the problem leave much to be desired, a new report states.
The report adds that there is a lack of cooperation between the 53 organizations dealing with battered and abused women in Israel and that the government does not do enough to coordinate or supervise their operations.
The report says that the state doesn’t provide enough assistance to organizations that assist battered women or women recovering from sexual violence, in particular when it comes to women who are leaving shelters and in need of help finding a new place to live.
The study was compiled by Midot, a company that gauges the effectiveness of NGOs and charities.
According to Midot executive director Dubby Arbel, the study found that most of the organizations helping abused women “are computer illiterate or lack the infrastructure to check if what they’re doing is effective.”
Arbel added that Midot found that these charities lacked a mechanism for gauging the success of their programs and that “when we spoke to women who worked at shelters, they couldn’t produce figures for how many women are later physically abused after leaving the shelters, or any way to gauge whether or not they have been successful.”
Arbel said the organization is looking to gauge not only if enough money is being invested “but how that investment is being made and if the organizations and the donors are working effectively.”
The report was met with skepticism by Michal Hanoch-Ahdut, the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services national supervisor of battered women’s shelters.
She expressed bewilderment at how Midot came up with its figures and said that “on a daily level, there is great cooperation between the organizations and government offices across the spectrum, including the Education Ministry, the Health Ministry, and the police.”
Hanoch-Ahdut, who is responsible for Israel’s 13 battered women’s shelters which house around 700 women and 1,000 children per year, as well as the 10 temporary apartments for battered women, said the government invests a significant amount on a wide range of programs and services to help women in distress.
She added that the government invests around NIS 12,000 per month on each battered woman who comes to the ministry for treatment. This figure is multitudes greater than Midot’s figure of NIS 2,000 per year, which was computed by dividing the amount invested by the government in helping battered women by all women who are abused in Israel, including those who don’t come forward.
Hanoch-Ahdut also mentioned the Absorption Ministry’s programs to deal with abuse among new immigrants to Israel, and said that “while there’s always room for more investment, we experience a great deal of contribution and cooperation.”