Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Unexplained upheaval at Aleh?

Haya
Knesset member Yuli Edelstein, our current Minister of Health, was the lucky recipient of an email last week. A critical one - from yours truly. 

He was the latest VIP to have trotted over to an Aleh branch to praise the leading chain of large, closed institutions in Israel.

Predictably, in his quoted address there, Edelstein failed to mention Aleh's central endeavor: the removal of babies, children and young adults from their families to be isolated in its four institutions housing a total of nearly 800 residents.

In so doing he joins a long list of celebrities who have done the same, to whom I have written and who have chosen to ignore my questions.

Another of those, the Dutch ambassador to Israel, Hans Docter, will address an Aleh virtual conference on Wednesday, November 11. I wrote to him about that gig a week ago and confirmed by phone that he received my email. To date, I have, predictably, received no response.

Remember: Ambassador Dokter is honoring an enterprise of the kind [link] that has been phased out and maligned in his home country...

There, as in the rest of the Western world, children with disabilities are deemed deserving of the warmth and love of their own or adoptive families. Why are Israeli children with disabilities any less worthy of that basic right?!

Alongside the constant parade of visiting dignitaries - Jerusalem's mayor included, but I haven't written to him - Aleh has apparently experienced significant changes, perhaps (I don't know) an upheaval. 

Only hours ago, a friend of mine who is on their mailing list, received the following email from Doron Almog, founder of Aleh Negev:
"I wanted to share some exciting news with you. After many years of partnership with the ALEH organization, we will be moving forward under the name ‘ADI.’ We are so grateful to ALEH and its Founder and Director General Yehuda Marmorstein for many good years of collaboration on behalf of the weakest members of society. Doron Almog will be leading ADI as Chairman of the organization, Avi Wortzman as CEO of ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran and Shlomit Grayevsky as CEO of ADI Jerusalem."
At the time of this writing only the English language Facebook page of Aleh has been renamed as ADI. The Hebrew language page remains entitled "Aleh". No formal announcement of the changes has been made, as far as I can tell, other than Almog's circular to Aleh donors.

Here's hoping that the changes will somehow benefit the most vulnerable of our citizens and grant them their long overdue freedom and equality. Somehow, though, I fear that these changes only signal deeper entrenchment of institutionalization in this, sadly backward, state.

The photo I posted above is of Haya looking IMHO utterly normal. It's her favorite sleeping position and I enjoy seeing her this way.

Other good news: We have received our Health Fund's authorization for that new anti-epileptic, Fycompa. Our pharmacy will now order some for us. 

Since we must increase the dose very gradually it will be about a month before we can assess its efficacy for Haya. But count me as "unrealistically but extremely optimistic".

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