By Avigayil Kadesh
On the afternoon of a New York gala celebrating the diamond anniversary of
Reuth, Israel’s leading eldercare, rehabilitation and social-welfare organization, one of the 200 residents at Reuth’s Tel Aviv subsidized housing complex was sharing bits of her sandwich with a cat in the sunny garden. Others were enjoying the manicured greenery and outdoor exercise equipment.
Deputy Executive Director Miriam Frankel remarks that the bucolic scene takes one back to the nonprofit’s origins 75 years ago, as a provider of social and housing assistance to Holocaust survivors in Tel Aviv.
“The women who founded Reuth [Friendship], then called Women’s Social Service, got out of Germany in 1933 with most of their books and their self-esteem,” she explains. “When their peers managed to escape a few years later, they were in a completely different situation and the earlier arrivals felt it was their duty to try and help them. They started giving out food on the beachfront of Tel Aviv, where luxury hotels now stand.”
In the early 1940s, the founders commissioned modest apartment buildings to provide subsidized housing for refugees from Nazi tyranny. Today, this project still thrives, with about 200 needy elderly residents, about 50 percent of them survivors.
“Without Reuth, they would not have a home,” says Frankel. “Our staff raises money for them to have activities and outings. And our office is right here , so we don’t forget for whom we are working and why.”
“The dynamics of the organization are to analyze immediate needs in Israeli society in social welfare and healthcare,” says the Australian-born Frankel, who has worked at Reuth for the past 20-plus years. “We’re moving forward, always.”
Reuth today is a multidisciplinary umbrella organization with a NIS 200 million annual operating budget, providing medical, rehabilitative and community services for all sectors of Israeli society. The active volunteer board is led by Merav Mandelbaum, and the professional team is managed by Alex Jacobi.
The geriatric population remains a primary focus. Reuth manages three senior community centers in Tel Aviv by request of the municipality. It runs two senior residences in Tel Aviv and one in Jerusalem.
Frankel takes a visitor for a short walk on the quiet streets surrounding Reuth’s main office in the Yad Eliahu neighborhood of Tel Aviv. We are heading to the Reuth Medical Center, one of three rehabilitation hospitals in Israel.
Reuth founder Paula Barth opened the center in 1961 as a geriatric nursing facility to care for the organization’s aging residents. “She walked along Dizengoff Boulevard and found a 25-bed sanatorium that she bought and moved to the middle of one of the subsidized housing projects,” Frankel relates.
The unobtrusive 350-bed medical center, directed by Dr. Dov Albukrek, is set for a major renovation (pending a major donation) planned to encompass three underground levels and six above ground, including a hydrotherapy pool and a lecture hall.
Physical therapy at Reuth Reuth Medical & Rehabilitation Center is a favorite beneficiary of Israeli celebrities such as singers Rami Kleinstein and
David Broza. Broza dedicated a music therapy room in honor of his parents, and performed at the New York anniversary dinner. Recording artist Oren Barzilay, who was rehabilitated at Reuth in 2008 following a bout with Guillain-Barré syndrome, was among performers at the 75th anniversary kickoff event at the Israel Opera House in Tel Aviv.
Reuth-Eshel Information Center/Caring Family Website
As she walks through grounds, Frankel is greeted with smiles and hugs by a multiethnic staff of doctors, nurses, therapists, administrators and volunteers from Israel and abroad.
The Reuth Eshel Information Center, founded in 2001 by Reuth as a free public service in partnership with Eshel: The Association for Development Services for the Aged in Israel, advises and supports callers seeking information on geriatric and nursing care, and rehabilitation in Israel. Some 1,000 inquiries are handled by live counselors every month, 24/6 – on Saturdays, callers may leave a message.
The
Caring Family website, offering the same consultation service online, as well as articles and other resources in Hebrew and English, gets some 30,000 unique hits monthly.
Most of the questions deal with situations such as this one: “My mother is 86. Until recently, she was fully independent, living alone in her own apartment. About two weeks ago she had a stroke. She’s still in hospital, but she’s confused and frightened. Soon she’ll be released, and we’re very anxious about taking her home.”
Frankel says all queries are followed up within 24 hours.
Hospital is home for these children
Today, Reuth Medical Center cares for rehab and long-term patients of all ages, as well as outpatients, and is affiliated with Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine. More than 2,000 rehabilitated patients go home every year, but many are there for life, including most of the kids in the Weingarten Children’s Department.
Many of the children at Reuth Medical Center need acute chronic care.
The pediatric ward was opened in response to requests from other hospitals that had young patients needing lifelong acute care, permanently taking up beds needed for short-term patients.
“There was no solution for children who will spend their lives in the hospital,” Frankel says. “We have had babies who have gone home from here, but they are the exception.”
Nurse Liana Achituv explains that some of the patients suffer from genetic diseases resulting from consanguineous marriages in the Arab community. Others were injured at birth or through accident or illness.
“We try to create as home-like an environment as possible for these severely disabled children and their families. We make birthday parties and holiday parties for them, we have music and try to create a happy atmosphere,” she says, adding that many parents cannot visit regularly, either because of distance, responsibilities to work and family, or the emotional difficulty of seeing their incapacitated youngster.
Hodaya Rozilio, a special-education teacher provided by the Education Ministry, shows how she uses methods including a multisensory Snoezelen room to give the children an opportunity to experience, in a virtual environment, the feel of falling rain or warm sand on bare toes. Whenever possible, actual outings are taken to areas such as the accessible
Friendship Park in Ra’anana.
“We want each child, and their families, to know we believe in them,” she says.
Growth from Crisis
A new program called Growth from Crisis will become an integral part of the hospital’s holistic approach to patients and families, says Frankel.
The Growth from Crisis program is dedicated in memory of Matan Badet, an 18-year-old who was severely brain damaged in a diving accident and hospitalized for 14 years at Reuth until his passing in 2012. His family is supporting a three-year pilot program to help families of rehabilitation and chronic-care patients not merely cope with their trauma, but grow through the experience. Spiritual guidance will be part of the process.
“We don’t have a model to copy, because it’s groundbreaking,” says Frankel. “We’ll be learning as we go along, and we’re planning to publish our research.”
Growth from Crisis is one of many innovations that Reuth staff members present at international conferences and demonstrate to visitors, including an annual group of student nurses from Finland.
“We enjoy global professional exchanges and accept patients from around the world,” says Frankel.
Reuth houses the Agam Center for eating disorders, established at the urging of the nursing staff in response to an unmet need. Open Door, a unique program at Reuth, advises young people with disabilities on all matters regarding sexual health. And the Shikumon is an activity center for young stroke victims, offered in partnership with the Ne’eman Foundation.
In 2011, the Israeli company Step of Mind opened a one-of-a-kind clinic at Reuth Medical Center, training its physiotherapists in the use of its high-tech Re-Step shoes that help people who’ve suffered brain damage to relearn how to walk. “This program was developed in Israel, and people come worldwide to see how it works,” says Frankel.
One of the hospital departments has just been remodeled using Israeli-invented
Cupron, antimicrobial surfaces and bed linens embedded with copper. “It’s the first total in-hospital experiment with Cupron in the world,” says Frankel.
Because Reuth gets no governmental support, she stresses, every piece of furniture and equipment in the hospital is the result of a donation.
She brings her visitor to the hospital’s leafy rooftop lounge. “This garden area was renovated with funds from events our Young Associates held in New York,” Frankel explains.
Leaders of Young Associates groups in several countries then suggested using the new rooftop for a “silent disco” event during Passover 2013, when many of them would be traveling to Israel. It was such a success that it has become an annual event.
“We had up here over 200 young people dancing, who came from all over the world, including Israel, and on their own terms learned about what we do here,” says Frankel.
Walking the width of the roof, she points out that one side affords a view of the old original Tel Aviv neighborhoods, while the other looks out on the gleaming skyscrapers of newer Tel Aviv.
“We at Reuth straddle both sides. We take the best of the past and build the best of the future, and really try to bridge between both,” says Frankel.