With the intention of creating a curative family experience, Beit Tuvia deploys the family group home model. These supportive family units enable a full life experience in small, multi-age groups, together with a “parent-educator” couple, both of whom have educational and therapeutic experience, and their biological children.

The family group home, the supportive family unit in which the children live until the age of 15, allows the children to experience belonging to a functional family with normative, close relationships. The group home parents provide feelings of security and stability, and the family dynamics that take place in the common space allows everyone to share everyday events, leisure activities, and confronting difficulties. The long-term, on-going, and full relationship that children experience in the family group home helps them heal from the feelings of deprivation and loneliness, and eventually mature based on the understanding that they belong, have support, and are growing.

This framework does not pretend to replace the biological family, but rather to provide the positive, nurturing, and supportive conditions the original family unit was unable to grant. Contact with the original family is very carefully maintained through home visits, weekends with the family every three weeks, parents’ days, and regular meetings set up by Beit Tuvia. When home visits or even visits to a host family are impossible, the dormitory can offer children a home and care throughout the entire year.

The families that live with the students take upon themselves a very serious mission and a complex, long-term commitment: work and the home become one, family intimacy is transformed, and the lifestyle is intense and demanding. At the same time, the families experience giving and dedication that are extremely rewarding. House parents and their children benefit from the process, growing and developing, and acquiring skills for confronting complex challenges. Together with the house parents, counselors and service-year volunteers take care of all the children in the home.

Together with life in the group homes, which are located in the middle of the kibbutz, Beit Tuvia students are fully integrated into the community life of Kibbutz Harduf. They participate in the activities of the various youth groups, visit the homes of kibbutz families, and take part in social and cultural events.