Child Abuse Prevention Month

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and Gov. Mark Gordon has declared April as Child Abuse Awareness Month, and recognized the week of April 9 as the Week of the Young Child. The local Department of Family Services (DFS) office is working to provide training and education to the community to recognize signs of abuse and provide intervention if necessary.

Pennie Anderson, a social services casework supervisor with DFS, reported there were 107 cases they responded to of child protective services and adult protective services in 2018. The year also saw 30 different children in foster care for child protection, some of them for a day or two, others for an extended period of time.

Overall, the number of placements has gone down. “Our goal,” Anderson said, “is to be able to work with families and keep the children at home safely possible. If they have to go into foster care, we work with the families so they can be returned safely. If that can’t happen we look at some other form of permanency — guardianship or adoption.

About 63 percent of those children who are in foster care, Anderson said, is due to some major substance abuse in the family. It could be the reason they went into foster care, or the reason that extended their stay in foster care.

While child abuse can be physical, Anderson pointed out there is also sexual and emotional abuse, as well physical and emotional neglect. “The damage and trauma to the child can be from any of those types, and often there’s more than one type that might be present at the same time.”

She explained there is an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study done on children, and it has been shown children with a higher ACE score struggle more through life with things such as drug abuse, suicide, criminal activity and mental health. It also coordinates with a lot of physical diseases. Chronic stress and trauma affects brain development and areas of child development, which can continue through a person’s life.

WellSpring Counseling was recently awarded a grant through the Children’s Trust Fund, and Anderson said one of the things being done with that money is to brings ACE training to Thermopolis, as well as training on protective factors such as things that can be done with children and their families to make them more resilient to that trauma and be more successful. The training is open to the community and will start at 8:30 a.m. on May 10 at Common Ground, and at 1:15 p.m. with the schools.

The grant will also go toward developing a plan to determine what programs can be put in place to help with building protective factors and resilience of the community.

“What the program does is really help to build positive families and build on the strength of families rather than pointing fingers and waiting until something happens to respond.”

Another program is the Drug Endangered Children Program, a national initiative in which people who work with children and families, recognize the signs of drugs use, stress and other factors, and try to get early intervention to those families. The local child protection team, Anderson said, had training on the basic Drug Endangered Children Program in March and she hopes some grant money can be used to bring in the national Drug Endangered Children trainers can be brought in to work with the community to build a working collaboration.

Anderson encourages anyone who sees a struggling family to offer assistance, or contact DFS or law enforcement if necessary.