The Personal and Community Aid Clinic in Cooperation with "Kesem" Association

Clinic's students will accompany individuals who are applying for legal aid. The students will benefit from working with the program managers, with professionals from the legal and psychology field and with volunteers from the field of economics. The clinic is open to a maximum of 15 students who will accompany individuals, from Herzliya, for a full academic year.

During the year, meetings will be held in the following format:

• Community meetings to be held once a week for two academic hours.
• Academic sessions in law and psychology (intermittently) will be held once a week for one academic hour each (two academic hours per week in total).
• Personal guidance sessions with advisors from the Psychology and Law departments will be held once a week for one academic hour each (two academic hours per week in total).
• Weekly meetings of two hours with the individual participants, who require the legal aid, over the full academic year. The meetings with the participants are personal, at a fixed time convenient to the students, and will be held in Herzliya.

"Social Kesem" is a non-political organization, which aims to lead a real change in the social and economic situation in Israel by establishing community assistance that will generate change across the country (in Hebrew the abbreviation creates the word Kesem, which means magic). In these communities, a social cohesion is created and the relationship between the various classes in society is strengthened.

The clinic provides professional assistance to people who find it difficult to cope with the social, economic and legal reality. As we know, acute distress, which the individual cannot extricate himself from, often leads to a tangle of related problems linked to various disciplines and usually requires legal, bureaucratic and psychological support. Clinical experience exposes the students to the participants' social-emotional distress, its impact on individual lives and offers different interdisciplinary approaches for assistance. At the heart of the training, students will experience the difficulties of the participants, will have the satisfaction of helping people suffering from personal problems due to social reasons and will also learn different therapeutic tools.

The clinic aims to operate in a variety of different fields, from providing individual assistance and providing community aid, to discussing overall policy; all in cooperation with various organizations, in order to promote awareness and accessibility of legal-emotional-economic assistance and support.

Furthermore, the clinic aims to promote a public and academic discussion and debate around the issues within the clinic's activities. The clinic enables long-term support and aid, with the understanding that each process is complex and therefore requires, inter alia, the willingness and time of the participants; the clinic provides the students with practical experience in both social community law and psychology - all these constitute a unique opportunity to provide enriching experience both professionally and personally.

Tasks

Students are required to submit a parliamentary research study in cooperation with the Kneset; A presentation in the psychological field relevant to the specific experience of each student and an end of year written paper –linking a theme or concept to the personal experience while implementing complex self-reflection.

• Admission is subject to a personal interview.
• The clinic awards students with eight semester hours (6 for law and 2 for psychology), 52 academic teaching hours.
• Intensive training will be held approximately 2 weeks before the beginning of the clinical work.

The clinic model is based on a model developed by the "social safety net" association. You can read more about their vision and activities at: www.thenet.org.il

For further information and inquiries regarding registration, please contact program director Adv. Neta Nadiv at: neta.nadiv@idc.ac.il