Introduction: The Israeli Stage for Context-Informed Perspective on Child Risk and Protection

This chapter reveals the Israeli platform for our studies informed by the many contexts unique to Israel. We first present some statistical data on children and risk and describe the evolvement of the concepts of risk and protection in Israel from a historical perspective. We then focus on the representation of these concepts in laws, welfare policies, services and training efforts as well as in the establishment of public committees and nonprofit organizations. The second part of this chapter describes the context-informed perspective to the study of children’s risk and protection, which is central to this book. The context-informed perspective challenges universality and acknowledges hybridity, complexity and the dynamics of change and power, while trying to avoid considering cultures as uniform, monolithic and static. We outline the theoretical foundations and potential contributions of the context-informed perspective and highlight the importance of triangulating views of service providers (e.g., social workers) and service users (parents and children). In the third part of the introduction we present the various contexts discussed in the book’s chapters. The contexts of: policy, political conflict, political violence, immigration, religion and spirituality, family structures, poverty, impoverished neighborhoods, exclusion, racism and gender are presented.