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ON OCTOBER 7, 2023, 14-year-old Yoni was woken very early when the sirens started wailing. Yoni lives in Neve Landy, a residential home in Even Shmuel, only 20km from the Gaza border and on that day the barrage of rockets from Gaza meant long hours spent in the safe room.
Yoni lives in residential care, since he has suffered physical and emotional violence at home alongside significant psychological trauma. After a short stay in psychiatric hospital, welfare services referred Yoni to Emunah Neve Landy, a warm and caring specialist home for boys. The home, one of Emunah’s five children’s homes, was established 20 years ago with support from British Emunah, and it provides life-transforming therapeutic support to children who are described as “post-traumatic” and require the highest level of care.
On that dark day, Yoni’s counsellor tried to distract him and to keep him calm, even though the counsellor was himself increasingly worried.
As the staff began to understand the scale of the attack, their priority became twofold: guarding their minds and their bodies: making the children feel safe during a time of terror and keeping them physically secure from any potential terrorist incursions.
Secondary trauma is damaging for any child — and much more so for children like Yoni. Once the campus was secured, it was important to allow the children to express their fears.
Early on in the war the children had to cope with learning of the death of one of their counsellors who, together with his father, had been killed when terrorists entered their home in Ofakim. Staff, who were upset themselves, had to share this carefully with the boys, knowing it was important to be truthful, but also aware how frightened and sad they might feel. These children have experienced so much pain already in their young lives, Emunah’s expert staff have to be the ones to comfort them. Staff give them emotional and psychological tools to begin to process the tragic events of the war in a way they can cope with.
Many of the staff members at the home were called up immediately to reserve duty. As this is a home for boys, there are many male staff members who act as role models for them, but their absence left an understandable gap. Yoni and his peer group suffered from staff absences. Many have experienced abandonment by adults in their lives and reacted with violent outbursts or regressions in behaviour. We were concerned this enforced absence would act as a regression.
Fortunately, Emunah was able to recruit young women who had previously worked as National Service volunteers at the home, and as they knew the boys and their routines, they were able to provide a certain familiarity which was desperately needed.
Additionally, when our wonderful counsellors were given leave from the army, sometimes only for 24 hours, they went to extreme efforts to visit the children, giving them comfort and reassurance that they had not been abandoned.
Their priority was twofold: guarding the boys’ minds and bodies
Emunah also had to provide educational support to the boys. Some schools were closed for many weeks and even when they reopened the journey to school was full of danger, as rocket attacks were constant. Some children were too scared to attend and instead, staff had to facilitate their online education and keep social contact with friends. Social isolation impacts at-risk children greatly, because they do not have the secure family relationships to fall back on.
Yoni has now returned to school, and with additional psychological counselling and therapeutic activities such as basketball and selfdefence that Emunah is able to offer him, he and all at Neve Landy are gaining the social and emotional tools they will need to transform their lives, long after this war is finally over.
The war in Gaza poses real challenges for all Israelis, as the country grapples with fear, uncertainty and loss on a national scale. What Emunah does is care for the children who lack a secure family home environment with loving, capable parents to support them. Can you help us do that?
Counsellors went to extreme efforts to visit