Bass Report

  Someone mentioned to me that government ministries are resistant to change. I responded:   The ministry of health certainly allowed the change of privatizing school nurses.    They allowed the change of one nurse for two schools to one nurse to 16 schools.   They allowed the change from a nurse who performs much follow up to the nurse who gives one or two chances a year for vaccination and then blames the parents for not keeping up their vaccines. "Let's give responsibility to the parents" the current head nurse said. How are overstressed parents supposed to know what vaccines need completing?   Thus, plenty of change has conspired   They allowed the change from a nurse who has some free time each day to speak with the school children to the school nurse who has a minimum amount of work to do in a day then move on to another school.    They allowed the change from performing heights and weights in first, third, fifth and seventh grades to...

The degradation of community health nursing in Israel reflects the following: 1 - the nurse used to be present daily, then, she was present weekly. Even a once a week presence can be enough to build some rapport and trust with students and their families, and able to : a - educate regarding the importance of vaccines b - track side effects to vaccines. 2 - the signature on the health declaration,  which includes a clause for vaccine allowance, is simply not working with parents. After almost a decade in implementing this policy, parents expect to give final approval for the vaccines at the time of administration, not via a signature on a form in the summer before the school year begins. This policy does not work. Parents have been angered that their child was vaccinated based only on this signature, yet, the management that oversees school nursing insists on this policy, one that surely breaks trust.  3 - heights and weights used to be performed in the first, third, fifth and ...

  My son attends a Chassidic elementary school, in Israel, called "Talmud Torah" or "Cheidar". Today he brought home a half a piece of paper stating, "the standard vaccines for first and eighth grades will be given next Tuesday, send your child's vaccine record to school". No explanation of what the vaccines are, no explanation of possible side effects. During my tenure as school nurse, I built trust with parents over a long time and in many one on one informative conversations. I encouraged some Haredi (ultra-orthodox) families who were opposed to vaccines to complete at least some of them. This meant increased coverage in large families, causing a positive ripple effect. And during my tenure, there were no outbreaks of contagious disease preventable by vaccines. But trust building and the time it takes is not of interest, evidently, to those running vaccine administration in Israel. I have been replaced by a half a page note, implying that you shou...

  This blog contains links to articles regarding the Immanuel Beit Yaakov controversy, 2008-2010, which involved allegations of racism against a school in Israel and an overreach of the Israel Supreme Court's powers. These links are important as many have turned into broken links, that is, you cannot find many of the original articles from these links. Thus I used the WayBack machine to get as many as I could.  Anyone researching this case will have to search for the original articles that claimed an ethnic split. The Israeli public was faced with the fact that this school was not an ethnic split only when the fathers marched to jail. Then, interestingly enough, many of the original articles that claimed racism just disappeared. In September 2007 two new girls' schools opened in Immanuel, Israel: a Chassidic Beit Yaakov and a Sephardic Shas school called Ohel Rachel. The Sephardic girls' school opened in the same building as the Beit Yaakov high school, the Chassidic girls...