Several hundred people participated in a Twitter campaign on Oct. 16 to create awareness about child abuse prevention, Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington County reports.
October marks Child Abuse Prevention Month throughout Ontario.
To bring awareness to the region, Family and Children’s Services and Michael House teamed up this year, encouraging community members to wear purple last Friday and tweet “selfies” to @fcsgw with the hashtag #Ibreakthesilence.
“Family and Children’s Services is an agency that has a long history in this community for working with children and families where kids are at risk and we really want to get the message out that if you’re worried about a child it’s really important and it’s your duty to call us and let us know about your concerns,” said Family and Children’s Services executive director Daniel Moore at a launch event on Oct. 15 at Michael House in Guelph.
“Last year I think we received just about 3,300 calls about kids in our community and of those 3,300 about half of them we actually were concerned enough that we went out and met the families and kids to determine whether there is cause for concern.”
However, Moore wants to stress that Family and Children’s Services doesn’t want to take children from their homes.
“While first and foremost in our mind is the safety and well-being of children, we are an agency that wants to support families, absolutely, 100 per cent,” he said
“We think that kids living in their families is the way to go and that’s why an event like this is so special to us, because for kids to live with families we need … partners in this community who believe in that and in many ways are doing front line child protection prevention even though you may not describe it that way.”
Michael House partners
Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Ted Arnott offered his support and acknowledgement for Child Abuse Prevention Month.
“I know the stat is about 97% of the children who are in need of support and assistance continue to live with their families and only 3% go into care, so that says something I think about the emphasis and focus of your agency in terms of building up families and you deserve enormous credit for that,” Arnott said.
Each year Family and Children’s Services teams up with a community agency for the October Child Abuse Prevention Month campaign.
This year its partner is Michael House, which offers support to pregnant or parenting young women throughout Guelph and Wellington County.
“Part of the messaging this year is that some of our most vulnerable citizens in this community are those who don’t walk or talk yet, but are among us and it’s wonderful to see babies here and so what Michael House does is really supports some vulnerable parents to take better care of their kids,” Moore said.
He said that about 80% of the people who use Michael House have some connection to Family and Children’s Services when they arrive, and by the time Michael House has completed its work the number drops to 30%.
Rosemarie Coombs, executive director at Michael House said community partnerships are vital to the organization.
“We’re working with Family and Children’s Services whose mandate it is to make sure that the children are safe. Working with the Community Health Centre we have all kinds of health professionals that are willing to step up and help people that have a really hard time accessing service,” she said.
“When you’re a teenager and you’re alone, walking into a building sometimes is a very, very scary thing and we have the YMCA represented here, they do a teenage parenting program, we have family counselling, we work with Stonehenge (Therapeutic Community), we work with the police, who keep us safe because sometimes the lives of our women are chaotic.”
Michael House just completed a new facility for mothers who need a longer-term residence while they’re raising their children.
Moore said there were two key messages he hoped this year’s Child Abuse Prevention month would foster.
“One is if you’re concerned about a child please let us know and we’ll do our best to respond to that. We have a duty, a legal requirement to do that,” he said.
“And then the other one is if you’re an agency in this community that can support children and families so that we don’t actually have to do much work, please step up and do that because that’s actually what’s best for kids in this community.”
To report concern about a child’s well being visit http://www.fcsgw.org for more information.
