Assessment and Treatment of Sexually Abused Children – Building a Unified Model of Intervention

Isabel Seri-Levy

The Israeli Ministry of Welfare's policy is to provide emotional treatment to children and youths, together with their parents, in cases of sexual abuse.

To this end, the Ministry runs regional centres throughout the country providing individual and family interventions in cases where children have been sexually abused. The centres also provide clinical supervision, training and maintenance for the therapists, and act as a resource for social workers and other professionals in need of advice and guidance in cases of sexual abuse in children.

The Centers have now been operating for between 3 to 10 years and have treated several thousand children, youths and their careers. In this presentation, I will describe work we did this year in a focused study group in order to create an agreed model of assessment and intervention for all the centers, based on the pooling of knowledge from the Center directors.