LAKEPORT — A memorial flag for children lost to child abuse flies from the Pearl Harbor Memorial flagpole after it was hoisted at a noon ceremony on Tuesday. The flag raising followed a cameo appearance by Lake County Board of Supervisors Chairman Ed Robey at the courthouse as he read a proclamation designating April as Child Abuse Prevention Month in Lake County.
A September 2007 report by Lake County Social Services found that its Child Welfare Services (CWS) division took 1,674 reports of child abuse in 2006. Of those, 16.4 percent were substantiated.
“We take a positive approach to strengthen families, and support families that are stressed. Often times it”s better if we can prevent this cycle before it comes to the attention of systems,” Lake County Children”s Council director Joan Reynolds said.
Nationwide, 3 million cases of child abuse are reported every year. Reynolds said that number does not necessarily reflect the number of cases where children were actually abused, just the cases that were reported for investigation.
The flag raised Tuesday is the centerpiece of a Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) national public awareness campaign launched in 1998. It is a red flag with white outlines around blue paper-doll-like images of children holding hands. In the center is an empty white outline that symbolizes children who died as a result of violent abuse.
Reynolds said the empty outline also represents children who are “missing because they are emotionally scarred.”
A variety of services are available to families, Reynolds said, including the Nurturing Parent Program for parents, the differential response program for cases that do not rise to the level of a CWS investigation and a newly-formed parents” support group.
“If we”re going to develop programs for parents, we might aw well ask them what would help the most,” Reynolds said. “We”re all shocked when we see a big case of child abuse in the media. What an opportunity we have to get to that case before it gets to that level to solve it.”
A crowd of about 50 people gathered in Library Park for the ceremony listened as child abuse survivor Rebecca Hartley, 18, told her story. She recounted that she was happy to be taken into foster care as a high school freshman after years of physical, verbal and emotional abuse at her mother”s hands.
“If I had not been through that, I wouldn”t be where I am today. I like where I am today,” Hartley said.
Hartley said she was self-mutilating in her freshman year. She added that once she was in foster care, she stopped going to juvenile hall.
“See? I”m a good kid. I just made some wrong decisions to get out of some bad ones,” Hartley said.
She moved from the Redwood Children”s Services Lakeport facility to one in Mendocino County in July 2007, according to executive director Camille Schraeder. The move made Hartley eligible for help getting into college, buying a car, finding an apartment and other transitional services for young adults leaving the foster care system at age 18. Schraeder said Lake County does not currently have transitional services for young adults, but plans are under way to bring in the services next summer.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
