There are five community day-care centres located in different villages and refugee camps in the Bethlehem Governorate. These centres serve children with different types of disability, providing them with rehabilitation and special educational services in the areas of self help skills, activities of daily living, behavioural modification, motor development, language development as well as cognitive and personality development, in order to prepare them for inclusion in mainstream education.

They also serve preschool children in the annex kindergartens, primary school children in the annex primary classes and school age pupils with achievement deficits through individual, educational intervention plans dealing with the –major- subjects of Arabic and Math.

The centres provide many other services which are generally unavailable for children in these areas, due to the lack of public spaces and public support. These include toy libraries supervised by monitors, where children can come and play for as long as they want, summer camps organised by special educators, drama lessons and performances, and even vocational training for the adult population with disabilities.

The centres constitute a reference for the communities within which they are located, which are often poorer than the average in Palestine. Most children in these areas do not have access to any other affordable institution that will help them achieve their social and educational potential.

In addition to this, there is the Children’s Cultural Centre in Bethlehem which is an educational, cultural and leisure centre, that serves a large number of children and young people in the Bethlehem area (approximately 1500 per year), including those with special needs, with ages ranging from six to eighteen years. Report 2009 Read