Good afternoon yeah. I'm in the field of sexual abuse so I think I don't want anybody to be offended but I'm very very pleased that there are some people who survived till the end of the day and thank you for staying for the last session. I'm speaking first of all on behalf of Miss halevi who is the chief a child protection social worker in Israel. She apologizes for not being here and the words that I'm going to say were written together with her. The issue of the media it takes up a lot of a child protection offices time and a lot of havel of his time and it was very important for me to give you a sincere reflection of things that she would like to be said. I'm also here. As a social worker. As a rather ancient child protection social worker and i certainly am speaking on behalf of social workers throughout the country and not just social workers who do statutory world but also such as social workers who are trying their best in medical in social services settings in all sorts of settings all around the country and that was the viewpoint that they call me to ask me to express this afternoon when we talk about the medium and. I think the first point that I would like to get across is that unfortunately I don't think there are any journalists in the in the in the audience but we would really like the media to be taking a leading role in educating the public in bringing child maltreatment is to the forefront of public interest we would like the serious pressed in Israel to be taking a serious stand on debating what is best for our children what is best for our child protection policies. What is the way we would like to see. Our children treated in this country. I don't see any debate today in any field not just anything to do with child protection. There is no real debate in how we want schools to be seen how we want. Our children should be growing up. What sort of green exposure or internet exposure. We really want for our children and and even less debate about how we as a society.

What sort of boundaries. We would like to draw and say this is a situation where none of us in our society prepared for children to carry on having to live mainly at home but we know that abuse is also not just at home. There is no attempt at serious debate today in the media and I think it's a serious lack I think it's also a serious negative reflection on where we stand today as as a society committee it gave you the figures before and occasionally we see an article which says it's an investigative reporting article. I do this because it's usually seven eight nine ten interviews of people who believe in one position it's not an investigative article. Investigative articles need to present different sides to a problem. They need to present academic sites to a problem. They need to bring research findings if we really want serious journalism and we want an academic and a deep understanding of the issues of child maltreatment. We need to do serious reporting and unfortunately that is not happening today to my understanding we have seen not just a abroad but also in Israel how when the media really they get their act together and take a serious interest in child maltreatment issues. They've made a real difference there. Most of the people in the audience remember in 1989. A small three-year-old girl equal melanda. Gnaeus was killed. She was beaten to death by her uncle in. Tiberias and she was the trigger not only for very very sad reporting about her personal case but in that case the media managed to step outside the original private case of Milan and be very very foremost in making sure that the mandatory reporting legislation which was very very swiftly for Israeli standards was legislated there not long afterwards that from the private case the individual case the sensational case the media was quite instrumental in making sure that a new age of child protection is dawned and I think this is the sort of positive role that child protection ship that the media should be playing in a society that cares about its children and certainly about child in maltreatment certainly over the years and both social services and the media have raised serious questions that need to be looked into about the standards of child protection about what we should be doing in child protection about em services about out of home placements about our community services and we certainly I certainly as a ministry of welfare employee think that we need to be investigating ourselves we need to be changing things we need to be improving things but we should be doing some of that debating about how if not all of it they also in the media and that the dialogue should be open it should be serious and it should be in depth and the issue of child maltreatment is difficult and wide issue and and I said before it covers many many fields not just a field of Social Services I think if we really want to know what we want best for our children in health in social services the welfare in safety we need to cover the whole range of the offices and but i think the real the hardest part of child maltreatment is child maltreatment in a child's family and unfortunately and these are the cases which in recent years the ones that the economy mentioned these are the cases which are being presented in a very sensational but extremely episodic way the case itself is presented the issues surrounding the case the larger issues the more complicated issues the issues that social services are dealing with but society as a whole has to deal with and not being delved into almost at all.

We're talking about an age of creating news that the journalist is creating a big new spin regarding a awful and very generally very rare case of child abuse and he's not able to step out of a one case and and start dealing with the problem as a social phenomenon as a wider problem and as a as a month as an issue which has to be on the front pages of the newspaper. It's almost impossible today to talk openly about parental difficulties about the dysfunction of certain families that will always and I agree with you a speaker this morning professor Katz I would love to do a restart for the whole of our child protection services but we understand that we can't I'd also like to do it regarding the media I have to say and but but in terms of they will always be children that will not be able to grow up in their home settings but there's no debate about that there's no discussion about there's no even recognition of that as a society we don't like to say that there will be a group of children that we as a society will want to protect from the intro familiar awful a maltreatment that's going on there and it has to be said.

I think it's something that has to be said as to be said out loud it has to be recognized and I think it also has to be put in context because if the media is reporting the awful sensational rare cases then an ordinary parent who is feeling really frustrated with their children won't be able to ask for help because the whole vision of social services that they're getting is this is all extreme immediate removal from home all children are placed out of home and all social workers are bad and this is the message which is coming across from the media today and the other problem is presenting individual cases and we at the moment are having a real we're very disappointed about some of the reporting and I would like a reset of the media because of this is it because journalists are insisting on reporting the individual cases they're getting very very angry with social services and saying look we want to report this original this individual case. Why aren't you responding well sure it will talk about the legal framework. We know why we're not responding. We know that the law demands all of us including the journalists to protect a child and a family's privacy and the child has siblings and the child has grandparents. We live in a very small country even when children's faces have been turned from.

Tabakin and blood out almost everybody who lives certainly in the child's local neighborhood is able to recognize a child in this country and we are not able to talk about individual cases but when we say to the media we'd like to talk about the phenomenon of children at severe risk we'd like to talk about the phenomenon of children being sexually abused by their family members. That's not interesting. That's not yellow that's involves investigative journalism that involves a bit more work. That might be a little bit. Less sensational and those articles are not being published. The media should be helping to educate the public about the devastating effects of child maltreatment and promoting understanding of the phenomenon that is the role of the media and in our country at the moment that is not happening. I have to say that i've seen. I certainly read examples from from Europe and and from England where over the last few years they've managed to change the trend a little bit from always looking for the social worker to blame and to start looking at the phenomenon and making campaigns in the media about the phenomenon of child maltreatment and these campaigns are life-saving when we read that in the 1970s 80s 90s at the previous century. People started writing publicly about sexual abuse. Many many children and adults hadn't known what it was that was happening to them. Hadn't had a name for what it was that was happening to them. Couldn't tell anybody what it was were having because they could barely tell it to themselves and the publicity regarding these phenomenon is absolutely vital and life-saving and that is the role of the media and campaigns for better services funding. All the rest of it if the media was doing serious a serious job we would love to take part and I think today we also should be debating about let changes in legislation changes in our child protection policies and we should be doing it also some of it should be done.

A the media are just a word about the social media and if the established media are doing presenting very very sensationalized individual reports in the social media. Everything is just absolutely fallen apart we have several internet sites which are just. I mean there are pictures. There of children in concentration camps they're not in concentration camps there in boarding schools or in foster families the social workers who are deemed unsuitable and inefficient and unprofessional and named by name the judges are named my name. This is shaming there is a lot of shaming going on. There is blackmail. There are threats to social workers and the legal advice that we have is that. It's almost impossible to do anything about this. We have demonstrations underneath social workers houses and all this is extremely effective this year for child protection social workers have returned their credentials to the state and stopped doing child protection social work. I know most of them. They are a severe loss to the children in need that they should have been able to help but Israel is a small country. The internet is a dangerous place and these public acts accusations are on our phones as we know and I don't blame any social worker for saying i can't protect children anymore if i'm not protected myself so this is a serious problem and because Israel is such a small country and things are very catching here and we really need to stop and start again and and and do a child maltreatment and the media as it should be done and a word of help' maybe yesterday there was a study day in one of our long-term treatment centers for children who've been sexually abused. The subject of the day was children who have been sexually abused sibling abuse a very serious reporter arrived. He took his work very seriously he interviewed people. He interviewed the lecturers. He didn't ask for one single story. It was also knew very clearly that we don't tell stories we talk about phenomenon.

Every child can fit into a phenomenon somewhere and I hope that there'll be a serious article at least one or two that will be published and looking forward to the debate in the questions after thinking.