Angel really is an angel

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Angel Alon has provided foster care for 217 babies and children.

Angel Alon with President Rivlin Photo: Mark Neyman

The 70-yr-old from Netivot was welcomed in Jerusalem at Beit HaNasi, the President’s home, yesterday on World Foster Day.

Among those she has cared for, many have experienced serious abuse, have been abandoned when health issues were discovered and with infant drugs or alcohol addiction syndrome.

Angel is a mother to eight biological children, grandmother to 24 and great-grandmother to three.

Over the last 25 years, she has been an emergency foster carer for the Summit Institute, together with her husband Shlomo and their family.

Angel told President Rivlin about the life she has chosen bringing tears to those at an event to mark World Foster Day.

She said: “I started fostering in 1992. I started with one.  The second came after two months, and then three siblings came together, so five in total. Most of the children went on to be adopted by families and I had little to do with them after they left foster care.

I would send each child an album with what had happened in their life. I got up for them at night – day-old babies, month-old babies, and others. I looked after them all. Often, we needed a doctor with Dr Morris in Netivot volunteering at nights many times.

Every time I received a baby, I would call him and he would come and check the physical effects of the violence on their bodies. The pains. A social worker and welfare worker would tell me what the child had been through, and I would do what was necessary to take care of them.

If a child came with broken legs, I would take them to the orthopedic surgeon. If they came with signs of physical violence, I would take them where they needed to be treated. There were children who had been burned and I would take them to the hospital, sit with them, sleep with them. My husband helped me a great deal with these things. That was how it was until the children began to recover between the age of two to 18 months, and then they went to adopted families and I would get another five, another six. Each time anew.”

Emergency foster care is temporary, immediate short-term care for babies and children at risk, mostly up to the age of three months and until an appropriate and long-term framework is decided for them, such as foster care, adoption or returning to their biological parents.

For 18 years, the Summit Institute has offered a foster service that has helped 1,400 children and young people at risk in the Jerusalem area and the south who have been taken out of parental care, with the agreement of the parents or due to a court order. The foster families give the children a warm and welcoming home and a place that is safe and protected.

President told Angel:  “Angel, just like your name, you are a guardian angel. You have taken so many babies under your wing, and they have found sanctuary and warmth in your home. At their time of greatest fragility and vulnerability, you have taken into your home these tiny souls that need love and warmth more than anything else.

You have saved lives, pure and simple. Bodies and souls. I have no doubt that the love and warmth you gave your foster children is in their hearts,” he said. “Thank you for deepening our people’s values of giving and compassion. May you benefit from a fraction of the good and lovingkindness you have given to others during your life, never expecting anything in return.”