Naomi Stuchiner prides herself on answering the needs of the disabled children and young adults served at her center in Israel.
These days, she’s found herself responding to a particularly unpleasant contingency: making special preparations in the event of a U.S.-launched war in Iraq.
“We’re in a state of emergency getting our shelters ready,” said Stuchiner, the executive director of Beit Issie Shapiro, a program in Ra’anana that cares for 10,000 special-needs children and their families each year.
Three rooms in the center, located 15 miles north of Tel Aviv, are being readied for biological and chemical warfare if there’s a counterattack on Israel.
The South African-born Stuchiner, who founded the center 21 years ago, recently visited the Bay Area during a fund-raising and publicity tour of the United States. Beit Issie Shapiro just opened an outreach office in Lafayette run by recently transplanted staff member Amy Slater-Ovadia.
Other American offices are located in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago.
“To have a healthy society you have to take care of all its citizens,” explained Slater-Ovadia, who is directing the local American Friends of Beit Issie Shapiro branch.
Back in Israel, that care has taken an unexpected turn with President Bush’s threatened attack against Iraq.
The center’s shelters have been equipped with special air filters, a water supply, toys, videos and even diapers.
“We’re set, but it’s a $25,000 unplanned for, unbudgeted expense.” said Stuchiner, who says the preparations are similar to those taken more than a decade ago during the Gulf War.
At any given time, 200 people work and receive treatment at the center’s campus. “I have to be sure the 200 people will be safe,” said Stuchiner.
“A lot of the kids are in wheelchairs. Every child has to be taken by the hand.”
Beit Issie Shapiro cares for infants to young adults with developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, autism and a host of other mental and physical disabilities.
The 55-year-old director named the center for her father, a South African who, inspired by a friend’s child, opened a residential center in Johannesburg nearly a half-century ago for the developmentally disabled.
Stuchiner, a social worker who moved to Israel in 1970, opened her center in 1981 with just 16 children. Beit Issie Shapiro has grown a lot since then.
Its services include the operation of what Stuchiner says is Israel’s first day-care facility for disabled children under the age of 3. It also has a day-care program serving 75 youngsters up to 12 years old.
It operates a sports center with a gym outfitted for youngsters in wheelchairs and with other mobility problems.
Two indoor pools are used for therapy for clients. The center also operates a dental clinic, staffed by more than 100 volunteer dentists and anesthetists, specializing in the care of youngsters with special needs.
Other programs include support groups for families, a four-night-a-week social club for adults, and research and training to other professionals.
“There’s nothing like it,” said Stuchiner, adding that the center combines multiple services for her clients under one roof.
The nonprofit program, which has a $3 million annual budget, supports itself with donations, government grants, fund-raising projects and fees from families.
“We never turn away a family that can’t afford to pay,” said Stuchiner, noting that the center cares for Jewish and Arab youngsters alike. Two years ago, the program received government funding to open a nursery school now serving 18 disabled youngsters in the Israeli Arab community of Kalansua.
Though focused on services for small children, “the family of Beit Issie Shapiro is extended all the time,” Stuchiner said.
One of the rewards for that network of services came recently when Stuchiner attended the bar mitzvah of a young client with cerebral palsy. He’d first come to the center as an infant, attended the nursery school, was mainstreamed into an outside school but returned for a special program started for youngsters with cerebral palsy.
He also received physical and speech therapy at the center.
“We were there at every milestone,” said Stuchiner.
Slater-Ovadia said the center is a leader in providing Jewish education to youngsters with special needs. That role will be recognized when Beit Issie Shapiro hosts an international conference on that subject next summer.
In the United States, “there are some programs [serving Jewish youngsters with special needs] but not enough,” said Slater-Ovadia, who is a social worker by training. “We do it well.”