The Summit Institute, established in 1973 by Zvi Stiskin, Dave Schonbrun and Professor Stanley Schneider, émigrés from the United States, promotes care within the community for children, youth and young adults at risk in Israel.
Initially established as a treatment center for adolescents, Summit today operates two programs, (1) a preventive care and rehabilitation program for 170 teenagers and young adults with a history of psychiatric illness, and (2) a rehabilitative foster care program for 730 abused and neglected children and teenagers.
Summit provides innovative 'in-community' care, aimed at both preventing the institutionalization of the 900 children and youth in its care, and assisting them to integrate into mainstream Israeli life.
Summit adopts an all encompassing approach to rehabilitation and change, addressing the child's or teenager's physical, emotional, educational and vocational needs in the rehabilitation process.
Summit believes that all those in its care have the potential to change, and that change will best occur when the child or teenager and their parents are actively involved in setting goals and evaluating the rehabilitation process.
Summit receives referrals to its programs from the Israeli Ministries of Health, Social Welfare, and Defense and Israel National Insurance.
Summit has received widespread communal and professional recognition for its work with children and youth at risk. The organization holds annual conferences on both youth at risk and foster care, and has been adopted by the Paratroop Battalion of the IDF.
Summit makes a concerted effort to direct maximum organizational resources to the rehabilitation of those in its care. As a result, administrative costs constitute only ten percent of Summit's total budget.
Rising levels of poverty in Israel, increased drug and alcohol abuse, the general breakdown of extended family support systems, the growth in the number of single parent families and a recent large influx of immigrants, have led to increasing numbers of children and youth in need of Summit's assistance.
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