The Center for Children and Families at Risk: A Facilitating Environment

Abstract

The Centers for Children and Families at Risk are family treatment settings which were established by the Ministry of Welfare in Israel, in cooperation with the Ashalim Division of the Joint Distribution Committee in Jerusalem. Their purpose was to provide an alternative option to the removal of children from their homes and to create a “home away from home” experience. A multidisciplinary staff acts as an extended family who provides the “good-enough mothering” and “holding” that is the basis of D.W. Winnicott’s idea of the “facilitating environment.” In this article, the author discusses how a special model of therapy developed from an ongoing dialogue between the staff and families who were accepted into treatment. As a result, an attempt is made to transform an ongoing cycle of deprivation and violence into a sense of feeling “lovable” and then, hopefully, “love able.”