For years now, the number of social workers has not been anywhere near sufficient to deal with the volume of problems they are required to handle. The children's murders ought to set off many warning signals, but they should not be used as an excuse to attack social workers for failing to do their jobs. Social workers are perhaps the most exploited of all public-sector workers at both the national and the local level. Their work load is full; their desks are stacked with dozens of cases in need of attention, each worse than the next; they work around the clock; and they receive very low wages. A social worker begins handling a case only after receiving a complaint, or after someone reports on a child at risk. In a perfect world, their job would be to locate children at risk, but in reality, they simply lack the manpower to do so. The waves of new immigrants have resulted in a burgeoning number of incidents that demand welfare workers' services, but the number of workers has not risen proportionately. There are an estimated 350,000 children at risk in Israel, of whom only a fraction are being cared for by the welfare agencies. Thousands of children have been removed from the custody of their biological families and placed with foster families or in institutions. More government funding could save thousands more by creating community frameworks for these children, including clubs, day-care centers and mentoring. Much of the work today is done by nonprofit organizations like Kesher, which provides support to parents of children with special needs (who are considered to be at greater risk), the Joint Distribution Committee, which is currently building more day-care centers for families, and Ashalim. The current trend in welfare is to leave the child in the family's custody while attempting to help the entire family before physical or psychological damage occurs. In order for this method to succeed, the number of caregivers must reflect the reality in which we live. Social workers recently declared a lengthy strike that unfortunately failed to generate sufficient media buzz. Perhaps if the strike had occurred while the country was preoccupied with the murder of a child, the public would have understood the connection between the shortage of social workers and the fate of these children. It is impossible to encourage the public to file complaints when there is no one to give them the serious, long-term attention they deserve. It is also impossible to blame social workers for not doing enough, since even the little they now do far exceeds both their strength and the means the state puts at their disposal.

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