The Support, Assistance, and Information Center

Many parents to mentally-retarded children speak about the terrible loneliness they feel when having to cope with difficulties. It is a feeling, so these parents say, which no one can really understand unless they have gone through this experience themselves, not even the most accomplished professionals. This is also the feeling of other members of the families of the mentally retarded, especially their brothers and sisters.

That is why the Support, Assistance and Information Center is so important, with its hotline “Parents for Parents” and its internet forum for the families of the mentally-retarded, both of which have proven their value since they were put into operation.

The Center is operated by parents or other family members of mentally-retarded people, who have had special training and do their work as volunteers, out of a recognition of the need to provide answers to the many questions and problems which arise when raising a mentally-retarded child.

In addition to parents, AKIM professionals also provide help whenever such intervention is deemed necessary. But it is the parents themselves who best understand the stresses, difficulties and problems which a family with a mentally-retarded child must face.

To those who apply to the center the volunteer parents give warm emotional support, advice based on personal experience, referrals to organizations that can help, names of professionals, etc.

Parents, brothers, grandparents and other relatives turn to the Center to find out about benefits they are entitled to and, especially, to talk about their difficulties in coping with other members of the family, with their surroundings, with the difficulties of raising the child, with the question of whether to move him or her out of the home, problems of medical care, and many other topics. For the people at the Center there are no wrong or unacceptable questions.

Many a call to the hotline has resulted in long conversations in which all the callers wanted was a sympathetic ear and someone who would understand what they were going through without being patronizing. Often callers who said they wanted information in reality only use that as an excuse for speaking freely to someone who can lend them emotional support.

At the end of every call on the “Parents to Parents” hotline the caller is asked if he or she wants to be called back later in order to see whether the answers they received solved the problem. In most cases the callers agree, and so contact is maintained.

The internet forum for families with a mentally-handicapped member has proven itself as a place where people can communicate, pass on information and receive emotional support. Especially heartwarming is the discourse which develops among siblings of the mentally-retarded. On the forum’s margins there is a list of links to dozens of websites dealing with mental retardation, most in Hebrew and some in English. The list is divided into categories. Every site can be reached directly by clicking on its name in the list.

Also on the forum’s margin is a personals bulletin board for the mentally-handicapped.

These services help AKIM determine what services families need, and so enable its branches to make appropriate plans for developing the services they provide.

In terms of advocacy calls occasionally also raise problems which AKIM as an organization must face, for example the difficulty of diagnosing someone over fifty years of age, problems of transportation, and more.

The “Parents to Parents” hotline is a toll-free number, ????????????.

We need your help to make the existence of the Support, Assistance and Information Center known to all those who could benefit from it.