Poverty in the “Promised Land”: Therapeutic Intervention with Immigrant Caucasus Families in Israel

Abstract

In this article, the authors describe an attempt to adapt an existing model of therapeutic intervention with poor and disorganized families to ethnic minority immigrant families. Major elements of postmodern thinking along with elements from the narrative approach were utilized as part of the psychosocial intervention with the families. The evaluation of outcome was based on both quantitative and qualitative methods and considered the perspectives of the families as well as those of the social workers. Significant differences before and after the intervention were found within the experimental group, as well as between the experimental and the control groups in the 2nd measurement. In the qualitative analysis, families in the experimental group described greater changes than the control group. The discussion is centered on the attempt to explain the reasons for the model's effectiveness with immigrant populations and on the evaluative method.