Tender Law and residential care facilities for youth at risk

"The presentation is based on a paper published in ""HUKIM"" Law Review written with Roee Metzer, which discusses the implications of Tender Law (1992) on the operation of residential care facilities under the supervision of the Israeli Welfare Office, emphasizing key recommendation to apply Therapeutic Jurisprudence to Tender Law proceedings involving out-of-home residential care for youth at risk. The presentation will emphasize, in particular, the consequences of outsourcing long-term care facilities for at-risk youth removed from their homes (due to abuse and neglect or criminal offences), and the observed conflicts with the underlying rationale of Tender Law, such as equality, competition and reduce expenses. Tender Law was legislated to regulate general tenders of the Government (such as road constructions) and ignores the unique situation of youth at-risk residential care placements. The focus on this topic was obtained from the state’s obligation for at-risk youth: Based on the Youth Law (Care and Supervision)-1960, and the Youth Law (Judgment, Punishment, and Care)- 1971, the state should provide at-risk youth with constructive treatment that will justify their removal from home. Therefore, there are several important implications that will be discuss, including violation of youth rights; reduced quality of care; modification of treatment sequences; loss of professional knowledge; focus on easy-to-quantify indices, rather than on indices for quality of therapeutic service; and loss of experiences personnel. Those implications are examined through the lens of children's rights, the convention on the rights of the child, and the right to participate, while offering several possible solutions for this situation. The main innovation is in applying the principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence on the outsourcing of residential care facilities. Keywords: Tender Law, out-of-home residential care, youth at-risk, therapeutic jurisprudence