The main project I am currently leading refers to the ways in which the social services, and specifically social workers, construct fathers through the ways in which they interact with families. The main assumption behind this project is that family and child-oriented interventions give fathers a specific, limited place and therefore shape the ways in which men can practice their fatherhood.
this field of study consists of several different projects.
One project, titled The Triangle of Power: Fathers, Mothers, and Social Workers and funded by the Israel Science Fund grant number 253/21, performs a longitudinal study of triads of fathers, mothers, and social workers, across three points along the intervention process, trying to capture changing dynamics and power relations within the triad. This project is currently underway.
Another project focuses on Foster Dads, trying to understand the experiences of fathers in non-kinship foster families. This project is in collaboration with Shimrit Engelsman and is currently underway.
The project Father Engagment in the Israeli Social Services, kindly funded by the Israel Science Fund grant number 1269/17, focuses on the role of organizational aspects of the social services. It employs a two-tier methodology. The first tier focuses on the attitudes of policymakers in the Ministry of Welfare and Social Servies. The second stage includes an organizational ethnography of six Departments of Social Services, trying to understand the day-to-day mechanism that excludes fathers from equal participation in family- and child-oriented interventions. Publications originating from this project:
- The Mother-Based Intervention: Policy, Social Work, and the Absence of Fathers in the Social Services in Israel
- Involving fathers in family social services in Israel: in the shadow of a conflicted policy
The second study, kindly funded by the Israeli Minsitry of Science, focuses on the experience of fathers and the obstacles they percieve when interacting with family social workers in the departments of social services, the study is a mixed-methods project, begining in a qualitative phase that includes semi-structured interviews and focus groups, followed by a quantitative phase.