Our Primary Staff

Joshua and Joan Rachel Laurence are the directors and teaching parents at Tzel Koratainu.

Joshua Laurence studied psychology and human behavior both in his native Morocco and in the United States and has led psychological seminars, worked as a private therapist, and worked in a halfway house for delinquent children in California. He is involved with counseling in the general Tzfat area and, together with his wife, received certification from training courses in working with abused children and working as teaching-parents with families.

Joan Rachel Laurence has had undergraduate training in Behavioral Sciences from U.C. Berkeley, received an MA in Community Planning (Social and Physical) from Stanford University, and an MA in Families and Human Behavior from Skidmore College. She previously served as a consultant with the Stanford Research Institute (S.R.I.) and was the founder and president of Enshallah Developments, a land development firm.

Joshua and Joan Rachel Laurence live on site. After having much success with a young girl from a broken home whom they fostered, the Laurences were asked by the Welfare services to administer a home for girls from abusive and dysfunctional situations.
For over eight years, in the Tzel Koratainu home, the Laurences administered and implemented the therapeutic "Loving Children's Home". program which was liscenced by the Israeli Welfare Department. The program successfully allowed girls from extremely abusive homes to return to their mothers in single-parents homes after intensive intervention and therapy with both the children and their mothers.

Both Joshua and Joan have acquired extensive experience in the fields of child and family abuse, violence within families, family therapy, behavioral management, and human development.

Faga Weiss, MSW, BCD is a certified clinical social worker with many years of experience in both individual and family counseling in private and public practice. She was the founder and director of a private non-profit parent training program, Family Villas, Inc. in Phoenix Arizona. Faga is an expert in milieu therapy, play therapy, and family therapy, and worked as a supervisor and consultant at Arizona State University and the Buffalo School of Social Work. She published a parent training handbook, I Hear - Therefore I See. Faga has worked as a consultant to Tzel Koratainu since 1996.