Riki Savaya

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Tel Aviv University

Social enterprises constantly face inherent conflicts and tension between considerations of profit and considerations of their clients’ welfare. The directors of these enterprises have created a new form of management. This article presents the findings of a study that examined a management profile and style in Work Integration Social Enterprises....

This paper reports the findings of a study comparing service providers' and service users' perceptions of providers' burnout. It addresses two issues: the similarities and differences in their perceptions; and the associations between any gaps in their perceptions and the service users' satisfaction and perceptions of change. The study was conducte...

The present study examined the effects of positive and negative religious coping strategies on the mental health of 113 Israeli gay and bisexual Jewish males with high levels of religiosity, and how sexual identity formation (internalized homophobia and coming out) and societal variables (family and friends' acceptance of sexual orientation and soc...

Objectives The study examined social workers’ apprehensions and expectations of the impending adoption of systematically planned, empirically based, outcome-oriented practice (SEOP). Method Employing a mixed methods longitudinal design, the study used concept mapping to identify and map workers’ apprehensions and expectations and a self-reported q...

This is the second article in a phenomenological study of hope among 10 Israeli reserve soldiers with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. The aim of the second analysis was to learn about the veterans' conceptualization of hope. The picture of hope that emerges from the analysis of their interviews is of a binary phenomenon in which hope develop...

In this qualitative study we examined the experience and perception of hope of 10 Israeli soldiers with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with the goal of achieving an understanding of the manners in which hope intertwines with trauma. The results indicate that hope is an integrative, changing, multidimensional phenomenon which plays a...

The current question in social work discourse is no longer whether all social workers should be trained in policy practice, but how to train them. This article describes a three-semester long seminar in policy practice for social workers studying for their MSW at a university in Israel. The seminar sought to train the participants to integrate dire...

Drawing on minority stress theory, this study examined the mental health effects of the added burden of disadvantaged social status in an Israeli sample of 461 self‐identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youths. Bisexuality was associated with lower levels of well‐being, and, at a younger age, with higher levels of mental distress. In bisexual...

This article presents the findings of a large scale study that tested a comprehensive model of predictors of three manifestations of sustainability: continuation, institutionalization, and duration. Based on the literature the predictors were arrayed in four groups: variables pertaining to the project, the auspice organization, the community, and t...

This study examined the effects of social support components and providers on mental health and sexual orientation (SO) milestones of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youths. Data were collected on 461 self-identified LGB adolescents and young adults. Family acceptance and support yielded the strongest positive effect on self-acceptance of SO, wher...

This study on 169 adolescents in Israel who were adopted between birth and nine years old examined whether and how their adjustment was affected by their age of adoption and the pre-adoption stressors they had experienced. The study participants reported moderately close relations and open communication with their parents, along with age appropriat...

The article describes a psychosocial model of intervention with psychiatric patients in long-term hospitalization in a psychiatric ward in Israel and reports the findings of the evaluation conducted of its effectiveness. The model was aimed at maintaining or improving the patients' functioning in four main areas: personal hygiene, environmental mai...

Based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen Arab social workers employed in municipal social services departments in Arab and mixed localities in Israel, this study sought to identify the ‘cultural intervention strategies’ these social workers used with their Arab clients. Cultural intervention strategies were operationalised as strategies tha...

The paper describes a classroom assignment that was used to raise social work students' awareness of the importance of timely, clear, and thorough documentation. The assignment was devised in view of the great importance of quality documentation in social work, coupled with the reluctance of social workers to invest the necessary time and effort to...

An exploratory study was carried out on innovations introduced in schools of social work from 11 countries, based on a content analysis of semi-structured questionnaires. The innovations that emerged from these responses reflect, in part, the emerging requirements of coping with the global changes that affect social work practice today.

The article reports on the findings of a comparative case study of six projects that operated in Israel between 1980 and 2000. The study findings identify characteristics of the programs, the host organizations, and the social and political environment, which differentiated programs that are sustained from those that are not. The findings reaffirm...

The authors examined the thinking processes in the use of a decision support system (DSS) by social workers in a human services agency to determine whether they used the system to improve their case reasoning. Information was obtained from in-depth interviews with eight social workers who used a DSS in their work and from content analysis of “narra...

This article presents and reflects upon the formative evaluation of the development of a clinical information system for a network of juvenile homes. Several key problems were identified: The development of the system initially focused on inputs rather than expected outputs, and end users played only a minor role in the process. The system was over...

This study employs Joshi's “equity implementation theory” to examine acceptance of computerization among 272 human service workers in three large, public social service agencies in Israel. This theory holds that worker acceptance of computer technology is contingent on both the perceived gains and losses the CT brings the worker and the comparative...

This study examined perceptions by divorced Muslim men and women citizens of Israel of their society’s image of divorced persons and the associations between these perceptions and their adjustment to their divorce. The study is based on the reports of a heterogeneous sample of 312 divorced men and women in this community. Findings show that, on the...

This paper explores the reasons for what we term “contract divorce” among a sample of 56 such divorced Muslim Arab women in Israel. “Contract divorce” occurs when the marital union is dismantled during the customary period of delay between the time the couple sign the legally binding marital contract, which makes them man and wife in both Islamic a...

This article presents an assessment of a decision support system (DSS) to assist youth probation officers in selecting their recommendations to the courts. The evaluation employed mixed methods in a sequence of four stages: (1) Qualitative assessment of the impact of the DSS via interviews with senior administrators and analysis of documents; (2) Q...

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the SHATIL early childhood education (ECE) project, a coalition-based advocacy initiative that aimed to achieve three main outcomes in Arab towns throughout Israel: growth in preschool enrollment rates, growth in number of preschool classes administered by local councils, and growth in number of...

The paper describes the application of Rosen's model of systematic planned practice to a participatory community work program in a deprived neighborhood in southern Israel. The model requires practitioners to make explicit the connections between the problems to be tackled, the outcomes pursued, and the interventions chosen, and enables continuous...

The paper describes the combined use of qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a preliminary definition of the construct, the reasons for divorce among Israeli Arab women. The qualitative methods consisted of personal interviews and a focus group, the quantitative method of Trochim's concept mapping. The combined approach was adopted in th...

This study examines the effects of economic need and self-esteem on the attitudes toward and use of professional (instrumental and psychotherapeutic) services by Arab women living in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Jaffa, Israel. Findings show that self-esteem was associated with the women's help-seeking behavior but not their attitudes only when eco...

This article presents the findings of a preliminary, qualitative, exploratory study of divorce in Israeli-Arab society from the perspectives of divorced women living in Jaffa, Israel, and of Arab professionals engaged in therapeutic work. It explores the causes of divorce, the women's coping with the divorce process, and what constitutes post-divor...

This paper describes the efforts of a team of Arab and Jewish marriage and family counsellors in Israel to design effective intervention strategies for the Arab community in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Jaffa, Tel Aviv. In the first stage, which combined traditional outreach and the participation of the community's Arab leadership, we strove to ov...

Recent advances in computer technology have facilitated the development of computerised clinical information systems (CIS) to answer growing demands for accountability and quality assurance in the fields of mental health, social welfare and education. These systems aid and support ongoing monitoring and evaluation of professional practice. Although...