The money should follow the child, not the institution
The author calls for an educational reform where special needs funding is attached to the child rather than the institution, turning students into sought-after opportunities for schools.
Parents of a child with special needs, do a thought experiment with me for a moment: imagine that instead of chasing after a framework, your phone rings. The principal of the neighborhood school invites you to a meeting, and the principal from the neighboring town calls as well. They are competing for you, because the more needs your child has, the more he comes with: a personal budget, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, an aide, and training for the staff. Your child has turned from a "problem" that needs a place to be found for, into an opportunity that schools want.
Now let's return to reality: eligibility and characterization committees, a struggle for an aide, unanswered phone calls, and in August it is still unclear where the child will study in September. The more needs a child has, the more doors close in his face and fewer places want him. Why? Because in the Israeli education system, the money is not registered to your child, but to the institutions. Every shekel, every position, and every hour of therapy are attached to an "institution code." The resources are fixed in their place, and the child is the one who wanders between them until an institution that "suits" him is found.
In the current school year, nearly 390,000 students are eligible for special education services, an increase of more than 10% in one year. About 56,000 of them are on the autism spectrum. The special education budget has jumped by 60% within four years. The money exists; the question is what is bought with it: more separate frameworks, more transportation, and more parallel systems, or services that reach the child, in his natural place.
The revolution is simple to formulate: turn the child himself into the institution code. Register the budget and entitlements in his name, so that they move with him to every framework where he will study. Once the child brings the resources with him, the thought experiment becomes reality: it becomes worthwhile for schools to want him, to prepare for him, and to professionalize for his sake. It is time for them to fight over him and prove that they have a response to his needs.
A 2018 reform already promised a personal budget and failed: about 40% of eligible students still study in separate frameworks, a figure that has remained the same since 2010. The reform failed because the money followed the child only on paper, and in practice, the resources remained in the institutions. The lesson is not to give up, but to complete the move. This requires professional and leadership courage: a budget in the child's name, a systematic transfer of expertise from special education to general schools, and a national program to train the missing professionals.
And there is another question that keeps parents awake at night: what will happen after the age of 21. The employment rate of adult autistics is only about 30%, compared to 61% in the general population. A child whose resources are registered in his name is not erased from the system at age 21 — the registration continues with him into employment, housing, and life in the community. Because the person is the same person.
Your children do not need pity, and they do not need someone to decide in advance which institution they belong to. They need a state that understands that they themselves are the most important institution, and competes for the right to educate them.
Arik Mandelbaum is the CEO of Adam LeChaim Shavim from the Amal VeAvar group.
