Treasury is making the unkindest cuts of all
By Ruth Sinai
Haaretz, December 14, 2003
Shelters for battered wives, rape crisis centers, clubs for children at risk, interviews by social workers with children suffering from violence, treatment of youths who have dropped out of the community, busing of the mentally handicapped to their jobs, rehabilitation of criminals, vocational rehabilitation for the handicapped, rehabilitation guidance for the blind, placement of infants suffering from disabilities in special centers, treatment of drug addicts and alcoholics, and caring for street dwellers - this is a partial list of the activities whose continued existence has been placed in doubt by the intention to make a deep cut in the relevant budgets, which even now are barely adequate.
According to the draft budget for 2004, the Welfare Ministry will slash NIS 70 million from the items known as "services in the community," and this on top of a cut of NIS 60 million this year. The implication is that in 2004 the budget for these services will be a third lower than it was in 2002.
Strangely, the sharp cut applies only to the part of the social welfare budget (NIS 2.8 billion in 2003) that is not designated for the upkeep of various groups of individuals in shelters and similar institutions. The quotas in boarding schools for children at risk who have been removed from their families, homes for the disabled, for the mentally disabled, for the elderly and for others will not be affected, even though these allocations constitute about 85 percent of the social welfare budget, and thus leave very little money for services in the community. In most Western countries, by contrast, efforts are under way to adopt and apply the approach that activity in the community, rather than in institutions, gives the weak and vulnerable population groups the best chance to lead as independent a life as possible and to improve their situation in the future.
There are many historical reasons for this unbalanced allocation of resources, and many responsible officials, but the result is that today the ministry finds itself in a bind. The minister, Zevulun Orlev, is determined to expand the activity in the community and reduce the dependence on the institutions. However, his senior officials warn that, in light of the ongoing shrinkage of resources forced on the social welfare budget by the Finance Ministry, the Welfare Ministry is liable to lose out twice: If it volunteers to forgo part of the quota funds in favor of services in the community, the treasury is liable to take advantage of the first opportunity to cut both the quotas and the services. Today, at least the quota budget is protected.
The result is a situation in which the mentally and physically disabled, the children at risk, the elderly and the battered wives are all scrambling for crumbs. Each group is begging for its tiny allocation, but if the funds for the disabled are not cut, more will have to be taken from some other group. There is no doubt the NIS 150 million that was slashed in the budgets of 2003 and 2004 could have greatly relieved the suffering of all.
However, as sometimes happens, the treasury has a short-term perspective that doesn't even sit with economic logic. Instead of increasing the social welfare budget so that it will be possible to promote and consolidate services in the community - services that are cheaper than institutional residence and may in the future make it possible to reduce the budget now earmarked for the institutions - the treasury is cutting a third of the budget that is designated for the weakest of the weak, for people who have not only been dealt a harsh hand, both physically and mentally, but also lack economic means. The only appropriate word for this attitude is cruelty. The cut of a third in the activities aimed at such population groups is unexampled anywhere in the West. Other countries have also been compelled to cut welfare budgets, but they take care not to hurt the weakest groups. If there is absolutely no choice, they make small cuts and only after exhausting all the other possibilities.
The cut that is being implemented by the treasury is also contrary to the most basic principles of human rights, including those clearly set forth in international conventions to which Israeli is a signatory and which serve as a social compass for the countries of the West. Israel's Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom states that the life, body and dignity of a person must not be harmed for the very reason that he is a person. In a speech he delivered last week in a conference held to mark International Human Rights Day by the legal clinics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Supreme Court President Aharon Barak asserted explicitly that human dignity encompasses also a person's right to a minimum level of existence: food, medical care, housing, education. According to the concept that Barak outlined in his remarks, the state has a positive duty to supply these basic amenities that are essential for human existence, and this is a constitutional principle that overrides any law.
No one disputes that the dignity of a woman is infringed if she is beaten by her husband and has nowhere to hide, or that the dignity of children suffers if they are forced to live with violent parents day and night without the possibility of going to a club or other youth center, or that the dignity of the blind and the deaf is abridged if they do not receive the basic tools that will enable them to get out of bed, make themselves food, wash and dress.
These are basic rights that are not even dependent on a country's self-definition as a welfare state. Even those who advocate the maximum slashing of the social security net and cuts in social welfare allowances and in assistance to the weak in the name of free competition, will not maintain that the state must stop helping those who are incapable of running. The problem is that once deep cuts begin to be made in social rights, as the Israeli state has been doing for the past two years, those in charge don't know where to stop. The government has already gone through all the social red lights without stopping. Now, on the brink of the budget for 2004, it must apply the brakes.
