Health Ministry Director General Admits: Wait Times for Child Development Services Won't Get Shorter - And in January, the Reform Reaches Children on the Spectrum

Families who have been waiting months for a speech therapist or occupational therapist received some difficult news this week. Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman Tov said at a follow-up meeting on the implementation of the child development reform that he has no realistic expectation that wait times will decrease. In his view, when supply increases, demand increases as well - and therefore the Ministry does not intend to present wait times as a measure of the reform's success, but only the number of professionals recruited. The remarks were revealed by journalist Ron Nutkin in Globes.

The problem is that it's impossible to tell whether the situation is improving. The Knesset Health Committee instructed the Health Ministry to submit monthly data on wait times by health fund and district, starting from March. In practice, the most recent data provided covers February 2026, all four health funds failed to respond to the newspaper's inquiry, and the unified measurement system the Ministry committed to building has still not been completed.

And the data that is available isn't encouraging. At the start of 2026, the wait for a speech therapist at Clalit reached approximately eight months, at Maccabi about four and a half months, at Meuhedet 4.6 months, and at Leumit 2.4 months.

To understand the scale of the change: in 2024, approximately 53,000 children used the reimbursement track for private treatments - about 15% of all children who received child development services. In speech therapy and psychology, the figure is roughly one third of all patients.

Now comes the part that directly affects our community. The reform was built in five phases. The first two, which have already taken effect, apply to children who are neither autistic nor have somatic diagnoses. But in January 2027, newly diagnosed autistic children up to age 6 will join the reform, in January 2028 newly diagnosed autistic children over age 6, and by 2030 it is supposed to apply to everyone - including those already in treatment.

The state allocated 100 million shekels to improve salaries for therapists at the health funds and increased the support assessment budget from 85 to 130 million shekels. But on the ground, the picture looks different. Sheva Shalmon, co-chair of the Israeli Association of Speech-Language Pathologists, told Globes about a child not yet three years old who was urgently referred for a diagnosis due to significant suspicion of autism, and whose parents were told they would have to wait at least another six months. According to her, some families are already giving up on the public system before they even start.

The legal avenue has also been closed for now. Last week, the Supreme Court rejected a petition seeking to halt the reform's implementation, filed by Sharona Shalev, chair of the Shalev Association, and Alex Fridman, chair of the organization "A Person with a Disability is Not Half a Person." Shalev expressed disappointment, saying she felt the court had not given sufficient weight to the impact on children and families.

The Health Ministry explains that the increase in the number of therapists is the central benchmark for moving between reform phases, and that once more public services are available, more people will turn to them. Nevertheless, in December 2025, Bar Siman Tov promised that the Ministry would not advance automatically between phases. The January 2027 phase will be the real test of that promise.

What this means for your family:

Do you have a child with an autism diagnosis? As of now, you are still on the reimbursement track. If your health fund is making things difficult, ask for the refusal in writing.
A newly identified child with suspected autism under age 6? January 2027 is the important date. Do not delay the diagnostic process.
Children already in treatment are protected for a longer period - but only if continuity is maintained. A one-year gap in the same area of treatment could remove the child from the definition of an existing patient.
Haven't received a reasonable appointment? Contact your health fund's complaints commissioner in writing, and if that doesn't help, reach out to the Public Complaints Commissioner for the National Health Insurance Law.
Document everything: the date of referral, the appointment offered, the name of the representative. Real data from the field is exactly what is missing today.