Social workers’ challenges in working with deaf bedouin service users

Abstract

Summary

Arab-Bedouins, a minority in Israel, have a higher incidence of deafness than that reported for other populations. They also have a high incidence of familial deafness, which poses lifelong challenges to the family and requires an intensive array of treatment and familial organization, as well as the use of many, varied sociomedical and rehabilitative services. Most of Israel’s Arab-Bedouins live in the Negev desert region, where the social context of deaf people is particularly challenging. The reasons include the very limited access to information and services within the community and a lack of transportation nearby. This study of 18 social workers who provide services to deaf Arab-Bedouins used a qualitative methodology in the phenomenological tradition—underlying which is the attempt to understand the experience of the participants and the challenges they face—and thematic analysis.

Findings

We found challenges in two main areas: the unique characteristics of the recipients and the social and communal ramifications of deafness. Service users of different age groups and genders had unique problems. The social workers’ lack of sign language was the main obstacle to assessing problems, proposing solutions, and maintaining contact, and it made them feel inadequate.

Applications

The article suggests that implementing the person-in-environment (PIE) approach, including interventions of policy practices, may contribute to more effective coping by social workers with the professional challenges in the two selected areas. This principle is applicable to work with deaf members of any minority.

Keywords

Social work deaf social workers Bedouin society person in his/her environment policy practice

Introduction

Members of Israel’s Arab-Bedouin minority, living mainly in the country’s arid southern region, contend with many difficulties, among them high rates of poverty, unemployment, and disabilities, including deafness. Social workers assigned to aid this population face many challenges beyond those that are common in the profession. This article describes two main types of challenges: those arising from the unique characteristics of the service users—deaf Arab-Bedouins—and those deriving from social and communal ramifications. The article suggests an approach that may help such social workers contend with the challenges more effectively.

Arab-Bedouin society in the negev

The Arab-Bedouins are the indigenous people of the Negev desert in the south of Israel. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), at the end of 2019, 268,867 Arab-Bedouins lived in Israel’s Southern District (CBS, 2020), constituting 20% of the district’s population and 14% of the country’s Arab population (Almasi & Weissblei, 2020).

Despite Israel’s attempts to settle the Arab-Bedouins in permanent localities, many continue to live in rural areas and some even live in villages that are not recognized by the central government (Allassad Alhuzail, 2013; Ben-David, 2004; Bystrov & Soffer, 2007). Today, approximately 70% (188,742) of the Arab-Bedouins in the Negev live in 19 recognized localities: the city of Rahat; six local authorities—Lakiya, Tel Sheva, Kseifeh, Arara in the Negev, Segev Shalom, and Hura; and localities in the regional councils Neveh Midbar and Alqassum. The remaining 30% (80,125) of the Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev live in villages unrecognized by the state (Almasi & Weissblei, 2020). These characteristics have many ramifications for accessibility and use of communal services, including social services.

The Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev is a subgroup of the Arab minority in Israel. It has unique cultural, historical, social, and political attributes that distinguish it from other groups (Meir, 1997). In recent years this population has undergone various social and cultural processes that have greatly affected the social fabric. These social processes affect all the Arab-Bedouins, including the deaf population whose characteristics we now describe.

The deaf arab-bedouin population

The Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev has a particularly high incidence of individuals with disabilities, including deaf children and adults (Kisch, 2007). Strasberg et al. (2008) reported that 9.1% of Bedouin children have a disability, but one may assume that this incidence is an underestimate, deriving from problems of diagnosis, awareness, and the tendency to conceal certain disabilities. Bedouin children have a greater incidence of multiple disabilities than do Jewish children in Israel, and the incidence of sensory disabilities among the Arab-Bedouins, as among Israel’s Arab population in general, is much higher than that among the Jewish population (2.2, 2.0, and 0.8, respectively). The percentage of deaf children (2%) is much greater than that of Israel’s Jewish population and that reported worldwide (0.001%) Meadow-Orlans et al., 2003).

The Jewish and Arab-Bedouin populations differ in their use of services with regard to each type of service examined, for example, paramedical services (10% among the Arab-Bedouin population as opposed to 39% among the Jewish population), unique/special education services (25% vs. 57%), and psychosocial services (2% vs. 21%). This situation lays a heavy burden of care on the Arab-Bedouin mothers, in particular, and 75% of them reported feeling a heavy overall load as a result of caring for the deaf child (Allassad Alhuzail & Levinger, 2018).

Deafness, especially congenital deafness or deafness that begins in infancy, which is characteristic of much of the deaf Arab-Bedouin population, impairs the child’s ability to acquire speech naturally (Kawar et al., 2019). Therefore, it is important to develop proficiency in standard sign language with which to communicate with the world (Sandler et al., 2020). Today, of course, it is possible to develop speech by means of auditory treatment (Guo et al., 2020), but this requires an investment of intensive treatment that is unavailable near the Arab-Bedouin population and may be rejected by the parents because of their attitude toward children’s deafness (Morad et al., 2004). A study of hearing parents of Arab-Bedouin children with severe deafness—who are in great need of constant audiological care—found that parents refrain from investing in such care because they see it as a refusal to accept the “divine decree” (Allassad Alhuzail & Levinger, 2018).

The unique characteristics of the Arab-Bedouin population make it difficult for deaf adults and for parents of deaf children to use the various treatment services because of the lack of available services, a lack of sufficient professional staff, the socioeconomic status of the population, the co-pay for services, negative attitudes among service providers toward the population in the region, and a shortage of counselling and support services for the parents (Morad et al., 2004). Consequently, deaf Arab-Bedouins suffer severe neglect, the schools they attend have many deficiencies, they are rarely integrated in the labour market, and there are no leisure frameworks adapted to their needs, causing feelings of loneliness and exclusion (Allassad Alhuzail & Levinger, 2021).

These characteristics also have ramifications for the social services provided to them and present complex challenges to the social workers involved.

Social work with the arab population

Social work with the Arab minority in Israel developed under the shadow of disadvantage, in comparison with the Jewish population, on three levels: the lack of funds and infrastructure, the absence of the Arab narrative in most programmes and policy in various areas of life, and the lack of representation in decision making and policy making (Agbaria, 2017; Ghanem & Mustafa, 2009).

Although 98% of the Arab social workers are graduates of social work schools in Israel, the lecturers in the schools are not familiar with the culture and do not invest in training them for work with the Arab population (Jaffe, 1999). Also, most of them are employed by the local authorities in social services departments (Mahajne, 2018; Mahajne et al., 2020), in which the work conditions are difficult and are often characterized by a lack of professional personnel and a disparity between job slots and workloads. Because of the increase in the incidence of poverty and because of broad social legislation, the number of members of the Arab population who are in need of social services has increased steadily, increasing the need for the intervention of social workers. However, the great workload forces them to deal only with emergencies, provide concrete assistance, and mediate. It appears that the delegation of responsibility from the central government to local government that does not want, or is unable, to take responsibility for welfare services has had a negative effect on the quality of social work in the Arab population. Too little funding has been earmarked for routine activity and staff, and the social workers are caught between the central government and local government, each of which tries to appropriate them for its purposes (Mahajne et al., 2021).

This study aims to examine the challenges faced by social workers in social services departments who work with deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population and the meaning they ascribe to these challenges (Josselson & Lieblich, 2003).

Methodology

The study was conducted using a qualitative methodology in the phenomenological tradition (Creswell, 2003; Starks & Brown Trinidad, 2007), underlying which is the attempt to understand the experience of the participants and the challenges they face in fulfilling their roles.

The study population

The participants were 18 hearing social workers, employed in the social services departments of five local authorities in Israel’s Arab-Bedouin sector. Two of the local authorities are regional authorities that also deal with the population of villages unrecognized by the state. Two of the participants were Arab-Bedouins, two were Jewish, and the remainder were Arabs from the north of the country. The participants included 6 men and 12 women, ages 26–41, all of whom had a first degree in social work and at least four years’ professional experience. Because of the great turnover among social workers in this sector, we chose to interview those with experience and thorough familiarity with the challenges involved.

The national supervisor in the field of disabilities in the Ministry of Social Affairs supplied a list of the 24 social workers who met the criteria. We approached them directly, initially by email. We then phoned those who expressed willingness to participate in the study, explained the research aims, and arranged individual interviews. Six social workers in three local authorities declined to participate. We decided to interview all those who agreed to participate and were rewarded for our efforts with rich and important data.

Data gathering

Data were gathered through a semi-structured in-depth interview aimed at trying to understand the challenges faced by the social workers dealing with deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population. To that end, we created an interview guideline that included questions aimed at trying to understand in depth what the challenges are and what meaning is ascribed to them. The interview began with a question that invited the participants to share their personal and professional challenges as social workers dealing with deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population. They were then asked questions of clarification, with the aim of broadening our understanding of those challenges.

All the interviews were conducted by the first author, who is a social worker and a member of the Arab-Bedouin population and whose first language is Arabic. The interviews were conducted in a place chosen by the participants; 50% of them chose to be interviewed in their place of work. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the other interviews were conducted by means of Zoom technology. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 min. All the interviews were recorded with the knowledge and approval of the participants. The interviews were conducted in the first language of each interviewee—Hebrew for the Jewish social workers and Arabic for the Arab social workers—and were transcribed verbatim by a transcriber who is fluent in both languages.

Data analysis

The data underwent thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Patton, 2002). All the interviews were read by both of us. In the course of the first reading, each of us recorded first impressions of the interviews and of the main topics that appeared in them. The aim was deep familiarity with the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In the second stage, each of the interviews was analyzed separately by each of us (Creswell, 2003).

The data were coded using inductive open coding, the aim of which was to identify meaning units arising in each of the interviews separately and then to identify patterns of meaning that arose from the various interviews taken together. In the third stage, together we built connections between the various categories of meaning units, grouped them together as themes, and named them in a shared file for all the interviews. In this stage the two of us examined in depth the social workers’ challenges by comparing our separate findings and discussion them.

Ethics

Each participant signed a form of informed consent; the rules of privacy and confidentiality were scrupulously observed and included removing every identifying detail. The interviewees received a detailed explanation by the interviewer regarding the aim of the study, its importance, and the confidentiality regarding their identity. They were also told that they could withdraw from the study at any time.

Findings

The findings reveal many challenges faced by the social workers who deal with deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population. They can be divided into two main areas: challenges deriving from the unique characteristics of this population—deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population—and challenges deriving from communal and social ramifications. We present our findings in accordance with this division, with details regarding the variables that include them.

Challenges deriving from the unique characteristics of deaf members of the arab-bedouin population

The challenge of language

The social workers who deal with deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population must contend with a complex obstacle in communication. This derives from their lack of familiarity with sign language (with the exception of one social worker whose command is basic), the language most of the deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population use to communicate. The absence of communication between the deaf service users and the social workers makes it difficult to understand the distress of the deaf individual, to define that person’s problems, and to propose means of dealing with those problems. According to the social workers, this difficulty in communication may be the reason that only a small percentage of potential service users turn to the social services. As R put it, “They don’t seek the services often…Perhaps they had a negative experience and were not understood, so they stopped coming.”

Another social worker said,

The main challenge is to understand them and how they understand me. There is a case I will never forget. There was a deaf father, and his son was placed in a special kindergarten. [The father] turned to the [local] authority’s transportation services but received no help because no one understood him. He would sit [in my office] for hours until he succeeded in finding a relative who could speak through a video chat. Only then did the relative contact us and explain what he wanted. I feel bad about situations like that. (A)

Lack of communication and inability to understand deaf service users and to provide aid to them makes the social workers feel inadequate.

I felt that I was limited, that I didn’t have the ability to understand them. I didn’t know their language. During my course of studies I was exposed to people with disabilities in general [but] didn’t learn about deaf people and was not exposed to this population. It’s very hard for me. I had a barrier. I didn’t feel that I was doing the work properly. (R)

The social workers are aware of the existence of many, varied problems among deaf parents and their children, but they find it difficult to meet those parents’ needs, as is evident in the words of one of the social workers:

A deaf couple gave birth to a [hearing] child and there was a lack of services for him provided by the welfare service because we don’t always have the possibility of funding assistance by a professional support person or help with schoolwork. (F)

The lack of communication also means that individuals in need simply drop out of the system, as another social worker pointed out. “These children fall between the cracks, and it is possible that there are other problems that we are not even aware of…The lack of language leads to our losing deaf service users.” (H)

As is evident, language, including understanding the deaf person and defining that person’s problem, is the main obstacle for the social workers in fulfilling their roles. In addition, the language barrier generates emotional distress among the social workers, feelings of helplessness and their own inability.

The generation gap

The generation gap of the deaf people is manifested in three subgroups: the elderly (65 + ), the mature adults (40–65), and the young adults (18–30). The gaps are expressed in the level of self-awareness, awareness of rights, and command of standard sign language.

The elderly deaf people did not attend schools and do not have a command of standard sign language. Members of this generation are unaware of their rights and their children’s rights and are less aware of opportunities available to them. Therefore, they appear helpless to their deaf children, as one social worker observed:

There is a gap between the older parents’ generation, those who had no schooling and did not work [and their children]…They see deafness as a disability and helplessness. Unfortunately, they pass this on to their children. They have no ambition for themselves or their deaf children. (D)

The social workers also distinguish between the educated mature adults and those of the same generation who acquired no education and whose situation is like that of the elderly deaf members of the population. According to the social workers, the uneducated mature adults have less self-awareness in most areas of life, they are not aware of their children’s rights, and they sometimes harm their children unwittingly by not allowing their deaf children to go to school or to attend programmes within the community. This is clearly evident in the words of one social worker: “The father refused to allow his children to attend a [therapeutic] club because he thought that…would endanger his disability allowance. It’s very difficult to work with uneducated parents; they are old in their approach.” (V)

In contrast, the social workers see the parents who are aware and educated as partners in the treatment of the deaf child. These parents turn to the social services for assistance, they seek help by themselves, they are willing to make sacrifices on behalf of the child, and they foster their children’s dreams and ambitions, as is evident from the following comment:

I know a deaf parent who has three deaf children. He is an educated person, attended…school, and works. He has ambitions for his children and when he saw that the education system in the Bedouin population would not [help to] realize his and his children’s ambitions, he left the south and today he lives in the center and his children study in…a school for the deaf. (S)

The situation of the young adult members of the deaf Arab-Bedouin population is complex. This generation studied in schools for the Arab-Bedouin population and graduated from high school without a command of Hebrew, with a poor command of Arabic, and with no command of standard sign language. This is the result of the very limited adaptation of the education system to the needs of deaf children. The social workers are aware of the problem, as is evident from the criticism: “It’s not an education system; it’s a bakery. How does a teacher who does not know how to teach sign language enter the system? The deaf children pay the price” (Z).

Another social worker recounts,

A [deaf] mother turned to me with her daughter, a young woman of 24, and the mother interpreted for the daughter. She would write in Hebrew and explain why she was seeking aid. I found it odd that the mother was writing and not the daughter. [That was how I learned about] the distress of the young generation of deaf Bedouins. They finish twelfth grade without learning anything because they are not taught anything. The teachers are not trained to teach deaf people. (Y)

The gender gap

The challenge of the gender gap is manifested in the differences in the social workers’ view of deaf men and deaf women. The deaf women appear to be more disempowered and limited than the men in mobility and independence, because the family members feel they must protect them. According to the social workers, the social constraints make it impossible for deaf women or deaf girls to study in the centre of the country in schools for the deaf or to be integrated in the labour market, unlike the situation for men, as one social worker said:

Bedouin society guards the girls more—from a desire a protect them and not, heaven forbid, to harm them. I know four boys who take the train every day to the center [of the country] to study sign language…This can’t happen for girls. The society does not allow it. (A)

The gender gap is manifested also in marriages in Arab-Bedouin society. According to the social workers, a hearing woman may marry a deaf man, but a hearing man will not marry a deaf woman. A deaf woman has three options: to marry a deaf man, marry a hearing man as his second or third wife, or remain unmarried:

Being a deaf woman is complicated. On the one hand, it is difficult for her to be independent, and her chance of marrying a hearing man is zero. She has the option of marrying only a deaf man, or [a hearing man] as the second or third wife. There are many unmarried deaf women and their situation is poor and their status is low because they have grown up and are unmarried. (R)

Or, as another social worker put it, “A deaf man generally marries a hearing woman so she can manage the family and manage its affairs vis-à-vis [the outside] and will look after the children. (T)

Challenges arising from social and communal ramifications

Social complexity

Another challenge the social workers face in treating deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population is the social complexity which they see as manifested in the dependence of deaf individuals on family members and others in the community.

The social workers view the deaf individuals as dependent on family members, especially regarding their need for interpreting of sign language and assistance in dealings with state institutions such as the National Insurance Institute (NII), health services, and welfare services. One social worker put it thus: “The dependence…is very great among deaf Bedouins, more than among deaf Jews.” (A)

In many cases, the NII disability benefit is the sole source of income and financial security for deaf individuals. According to the social workers, this dependence keeps them from joining the labour market and exposes them to exploitation in workplaces where they are employed illegally, as T. described it:

They receive a disability benefit, about NIS 3,000 [approximately USD 900], and that is their sole income. They are not willing to work for fear that it will harm their benefit and reduce it. I see some of them working [illegally]. The contractors take advantage of them and pay them a pittance and less than the minimum wage, and they agree to this exploitation because of their dependence on the benefit. (T)

The data analysis reveals that the social workers view the deaf individuals’ dependence on their family and community as causing them to feel helpless, and that this is transmitted from generation to generation, decreasing the chance that deaf people will act to overcome their disability or even dream of doing so, as Y. put it:

This is acquired helplessness…The more aid is delayed; people get left out. That is what I am afraid of…Individuals with deafness…lack an opportunity. They have few opportunities. They don’t even have ambitions and dreams. They have no model, someone about whom they can say, I want to be like that one. (Y)

Social workers are also aware of the difference between educated deaf individuals and those who are uneducated. The educated individuals, both men and women, seek help from the social workers in joining the work force. The social workers refer them to the NII Rehabilitation Department, even though they are aware that the NII does not offer them work suited to their abilities. This is clear from the words of F.:

Many educated deaf people have abilities and they turn to us to seek work. We are not familiar with the employment facilities that can hire them, and those in charge tell us to refer them to the Rehabilitation Department of the NII. (F)

Another social worker, M., points out that “the positions offered by the NII to deaf Bedouins are not suitable. They are suited to people with severe disabilities. The deaf people have abilities.” The types of jobs offered include opening plastic bags in a supermarket rather than being a cashier, or filling bags with candy in a factory instead of working on the production line—and for only six hours a week, whereas a normal work week consists of 42 h.

Poverty

The challenge of poverty raises many moral dilemmas for the social workers. Most of the members of the population who seek aid from the social services live in poverty, and most of their requests are for material aid. The social workers describe greater poverty among the deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population than among the hearing members. They see that these individuals, especially those living in the unrecognized villages, are hurt more because they are poor. In their view, being deaf and living in an unrecognized village is a mission impossible. “The deaf members of Bedouin society live in the backyard of Bedouin society, which is the backyard of the state. The situation is very complicated and the poverty is very great.” (Y)

Social worker W explains the difficulty in detail:

Deaf individuals living in an unrecognized village do not have the ability to buy a car [or] even to pay for driving lessons. There is no public transportation and no infrastructure. Getting to the social services is a very great task for them. They pay a lot for transportation from the little they receive from the NII. (W)

The social workers also describe exploitation of deaf children by poor hearing parents, which presents a difficult moral and ethical dilemma. The child’s disability allowance is often considered part of the family’s income, and this may be the reason for the development of demands for “protection” from those who provide services to their deaf children, as is evident from the following quote:

What can I tell you. Poverty drives the people to do terrible things. I know parents who collect “hawa” [protection] from the company that transports the child to a rehabilitative kindergarten…When the owner of the transport refuses to pay, the father stops sending the child to the kindergarten. We had to intervene and we did not succeed. It’s a dilemma. Should we file a complaint against the father who is abusing his child? (A)

The situation with regard to education is also complex, as C explains:

The decision regarding which teacher will teach is not in the hands of the principal and is not connected to her abilities but rather depends on the decision of the extended family on whose land the school is situated. Everyone submits, everyone exploits the distress of the deaf people, [and] the deaf children pay the price. (C)

The position of the hearing population

For the hearing members of the Arab-Bedouin population, the deaf members are invisible. This creates a great challenge for the social workers in their attempts to integrate deaf people in the society. The social workers describe negative attitudes toward the deaf members:

As far as they’re concerned, a deaf person is born deaf and remains that way. If he is healthy, at age 21 they marry him to a deaf woman, and they have deaf children. I don’t think they see them as people with status. They are behind the scenes and are not seen. So how can you integrate them? (B)

The social workers also see that the deaf individuals are not organized, there are no frameworks suited to their needs, and therefore they are also not seen in public. Consequently, Bedouin society does not think about them and they are not part of the social and public awareness, as F pointed out:

Every Friday there is a prayer service and a Friday sermon. Show me one mosque that has a sign language interpreter. I am certain there is none, because they don’t see the deaf people and therefore don’t think about them at all. (F)

Discussion and Recommendations

Given the complexity of the lives of deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population, as described above, social workers employed in local social welfare bureaus are often required to try to provide suitable aid. However, the data analysis shows that this is no easy task and poses many complex challenges deriving from personal, social, and environmental characteristics. In light of this, intervention based on the PIE approach, including policy practices (Weiss-Gal, 2008; Weiss-Gal & Gal, 2011), may contribute to developing services suited to this unique population. The PIE approach sees the person and the environment as a whole and as mutually influencing each other. It is one of the dominant approaches in social work, and it aims to create change in individuals, their environment, the society, and the relations between them (Hare, 2004). Such change is possible by means of varied intervention strategies in various levels of life, from intervention at the individual level to employing policy practices, in order to influence the life structures of the person and his or her environment (Dominelli, 2004).

The challenges deriving from the unique characteristics of deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population are many and are linked to the ramifications of deafness for their functioning and the ramifications of being part of the Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev. Also, it is evident that this situation is also affected directly by the environment in which they live.

The difficulty in communicating between the deaf individuals and the service providers, in this case the social workers, has greatly harmed their ability to avail themselves of various services, including welfare services, which are the focus of this article. This is manifested clearly in the findings of the study, and therefore it appears that systemic intervention in several areas can contribute to an improvement in the channels of communication.

The proposed intervention can be divided into two main parts: the education system and the welfare system. In the education system, we propose investing heavily in the acquisition of standard sign language from infancy, over and above the audiological investment to improve hearing and speech. Good command of speech, lip reading, and sign language may help in terms of functioning as well as emotional and social well-being (Hall, 2017). At the same time, it is important to train social workers employed in local social services to communicate in sign language so that they can conduct an effective therapeutic discourse with service users for whom this is their main channel of communication. Basic and advanced courses for acquisition and better command of sign language and familiarity with the world of deaf individuals throughout their lives will contribute greatly both to the social workers’ sense of professional agency and to the service users’ feeling of being helped.

However, it seems that the cultural and social characteristics of deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population—the generation gap and the gender gap—affect the ability of the local social services to provide suitable assistance. The analysis of the comparison between the views of the older generation, which did not have access to education and to great investment in order to integrate them in society, and the younger generation that succeeded much more in these areas, shows that with suitable investment deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin community can function more effectively within both the deaf community and the hearing community. Such an investment is needed even more for deaf Arab-Bedouin women who, as this study and a previous study (Kisch, 2007) have shown, suffer from double exclusion, deriving from their national affiliation and their affiliation with the deaf community. Therefore, communal intervention by the local social services within the hearing Arab-Bedouin community is necessary to effect change in the view of deaf women as disabled and unable to care for themselves and in need of constant male supervision. This change may also increase the sense of agency among local social workers in the process of providing services to this population.

However, the findings of this study show that intervention in the ramifications of the unique characteristics of the deaf Arab-Bedouin population described above is not sufficient. The environmental and social characteristics of Bedouin society affect the quality of service provided to the local deaf population. These findings support the view underlying the PIE approach, which holds that one cannot separate the individual level from the mezzo and macro levels surrounding the individual (Akesson et al., 2017).

The analysis of the status of deaf members of the Bedouin population is affected, of course, by the attitude of the (mainly hearing) family toward them. As this study too has found, often the family views the deaf member as being in need of support and unable to function independently in society (DeCaro et al., 2001). However, the findings of the current study, as well as others, show that with an investment in developing the deaf person’s abilities, they can function in society like hearing individuals (Palmer et al., 2020). If that is the case, broad communal activity is required to change the perception of deaf individuals and to change the preconceptions related to their abilities in various aspects of life (Hughes et al., 2014).

The state’s attitude toward the entire Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev is complex, but it is possible that because of the double exclusion of its deaf population (Chapple et al., 2021; Kisch, 2007), their situation is even worse. Although the Arab-Bedouins in Israel are citizens, they have suffered for many years from a policy of neglect that is manifested in the lack of adequate development of roads, education, employment opportunities, health services, and other areas, in most of the Bedouin towns and especially in the unrecognized villages (Nsasra, 2009). However, the population itself is often blamed for its dire situation, and not the public policy (Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2016). The lack of investment over the years in the Arab-Bedouin population in the Negev has contributed to the large percentage of people living in poverty in comparison with the other citizens of the state (Abu-Bader & Gottlieb, 2009). The lack of investment in developing places of employment, training programmes in general, and particularly those for deaf individuals have created many challenges for the social workers who deal with this population (Kisch, 2008). The situation is even worse because of the high percentage of deaf individuals in comparison with that in Israel’s Jewish population and in other countries (Strasberg et al., 2008). Nevertheless, deaf Arab-Bedouins remain in the backyard of the country (Allassad Alhuzail & Levinger, 2018), as can be seen in the testimony of the social workers who participated in this study. This situation has many negative social ramifications, including living in poverty, and therefore the systemic public investment at the macro level to improve the living conditions of deaf members of the Arab-Bedouin population may contribute to a better quality of life for all members of the family, including parents and children. A practice of policy change (Weiss-Gal et al., 2020) may be more efficient and effective, even though this study’s participants did not use it at all, perhaps because of concern that policy change might lead to friction with the establishment that employs them and that does not back up such interventions. In addition, most of the social workers employed in the social services in the Negev are originally from the north of the country and are afraid to lose their jobs, and that may be why they focus mainly on individual treatment (Allassad Alhuzail & Mahajne, 2020). Undoubtedly, the lack of sufficient training and the social workers’ hesitation in using a practice of policy change reduces their work to the micro level (Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2013).

Limitations of the Study

This study has two main limitations. First, we did not examine separately the specific challenges to the social workers posed by subgroups of the Arab-Bedouin deaf population, such as adolescents or the elderly, but focused instead on the challenges common to all. Second, we did not include social workers with less than four years’ experience of working with Arab-Bedouin deaf people, so the findings may not be generalizable to those social workers.

Conclusions

Providing social services to the population of deaf Arab-Bedouins confronts social workers with the many and varied challenges described in this study. Some of the challenges derive from the unique characteristics of this deaf population, but most of them derive from and are related to characteristics of the Arab-Bedouin population in general. The analysis of the data supports the view that change is possible only if it takes places on all levels—micro, mezzo, and macro—but for that to happen there must be an investment in training social workers to use their skills and to act to change the perception of the profession’s role, on the basis of the perception of the person in the environment, especially in social environments on the margins of society. These findings are applicable to deaf members of any minority population.

Footnotes

Research Ethics

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of School of Social Work, Sapir Academic College.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of the social workers who participated in the study. We also would like to thank the Ministry of Welfare and Social Security and for allowing us access to the research population.

ORCID iD

Nuzha Allassad Alhuzail

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