What do you do when there’s an emergency late at night that requires welfare services? This is exactly what the on-call workers of the Jerusalem Municipality’s Welfare Department are for. The on-call workers, who are all social workers, respond to a multitude of incidents, including: delivering difficult news, domestic violence cases, treating youth who have run away, and answering emergency telephone calls on various issues. About 150 on-call workers took part in cultural competency workshops via Zoom – some 100 on-call workers (in three workshops at the end of June) who work in West Jerusalem, and another about 50 workers who provide services in East Jerusalem, in a special workshop which took place on July 8 delivered in Arabic for drives of the east of the city (on 8.7.21).
Workshop for on-call workers
During the workshops participants raised inter-cultural challenges they faced when they’re on-call, which is different than their everyday work – lack of familiarity with the callers and their cultural characteristics; the rapid transitioning between the vastly different cultures and backgrounds of callers; the sometimes-opposing approaches between welfare and community services; dealing with callers’ sometimes first encounters with welfare services; the objections that arise on the background of cultural perceptions versus the authority of the social worker to carry out legal orders, and more.
One on-call worker told that she had to inform an ultra-Orthodox family about the mother’s death on Friday afternoon, right before the Sabbath. She was surprised with the family’s preoccupation with burying the mother as quickly as possible, and that they weren’t open to her attempts at grief support. Another on-call worker recounted the time that she tried to move an elderly man living in unfit conditions to a shelter, and how there was significant opposition from the family.
Participants were given tools to enable them to have a culturally competent and effective encounter: to think before the encounter what cultural sensitivities they may encounter and what is the effective response to those sensitivities and tools for deepening intercultural dialogue that helps facilitate effective and sensitive care.
Two questions – helping social workers be culturally competent
This is the first workshop we’ve led for on-call workers. We hope that future workshops will preserve and strengthen this knowledge and skills.
Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their ongoing support of Cultural Competence in Jerusalem!
