Community and partners

About Lecture:

On October 3rd, 2023, Dr. Ben-Arieh presented on the major shifts and changes in the study of children’s well being. He highlighted the need to incorporate subjective perceptions of children in any effort to understand their lives, and will present findings from the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (ISCWeB), the biggest ever survey of children. In this study, they collected representative data on children’s lives, daily activities, perceptions, and evaluations of their lives in as many countries as possible. During the last decade, they conducted the study in more than 50 countries and asked more than 250,000 children about their lives. Special emphasis will be given to the implication of this new knowledge to child welfare, health, and social services.

About Dr. Asher Ben-Arieh:

Specializing in children's rights and child welfare, Dr. Ben-Arieh is a professor and Haruv Chair for the study of Child Maltreatment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also the Dean of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare and Director of the Haruv Institute in Jerusalem. He served for 20 years as the Associate Director of Israel’s National Council for the Child. Since 1990 and until 2011 he has been the founding Editor-in-Chief of the annual “State of the Child in Israel”.

Dr. Ben-Arieh has published extensively on children’s well-being, child maltreatment and indicators of children well being. Dr. Ben-Arieh is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Child Indicators Research journal (CIR) and the Child Well Being: Indicators and research book series. Dr. Ben-Arieh is one of the leading international experts on social indicators, particularly as they relate to child well-being. He initiated and coordinated the International Project “Measuring and Monitoring Children Well-Being”, was among the founding members of the International Society for Children Indicators (ISCI) and elected to be its first co-chair. Currently, he is one of the PI’s of the multi-national, multi-million International Study of Children’s Well-being (ISCWeB) research project.

About the Workshop
The majority of disabled people are over 65 years of age and the majority of those over the age of 75 are disabled in some way.  Nevertheless, despite this demographic fact, or perhaps because of it, older disabled people are rarely regarded as disabled in the same way as children or working age adults.  Older people’s voices have been absent in the disability movement, and gerontological research has failed to examine the experience of disability in later life, with limited debate between later life and disability studies.  In practice, there are reports of social services being ill equipped to meet the needs of disabled people in later life: disability services do not readily respond to ‘ageing matters’, while services for older people fail to respond to disability related needs or adopt medical models of disability. 

This interactive workshop invites participants to reflect on their experiences of social work practice in the disability and gerontological fields, to examine the commonalities and differences in experience and need amongst those ageing with disability and those ageing into disability, and to explore how a social model of disability might support social work practice in both fields.

About Distinguished Guest Lecturer
Dr. Peter Simcock is Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom.  He has an academic background in law, social work, and gerontology, and has worked in social work education for over ten years. Prior to his academic career, Peter was a social worker, working predominantly in the physical and sensory disability field. Widely published in the field of deafblindness, he is also co-author of the Polity published text ‘Social Work and Disability’  and more recently published a chapter on disability in the text ‘Human Rights and Social Justice. Key Issues and Vulnerable Populations’ edited by Prof. Carole Cox and Prof. Tina Maschi.

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