Child Safety Working Group
Working Group Members:
Pat Dorsey
Judy Flanagan
Mary Keyes
Penny Kirk
Bea Thompson
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Protecting Our Children page at VOTF.org
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Bernier�s Presentation at the VOTF: Protecting Our Children Supper
Meeting, Tuesday, 9/16/03, 6:30 p.m., Parish Center of Our Lady�s, W.
Concord
The twenty of us who gathered in the gracious new Parish Center at Our
Lady�s Church in West Concord were inspired by Jetta Bernier�s
presentation of the goals and the structure of the Massachusetts Child
Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership (MCSAPP). For years, as Executive
Director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children, Jetta had called for a
statewide comprehensive program for preventing child sexual abuse. As
public attention was drawn to child sexual abuse within the Church, the
time had come for a new approach: forming a Partnership composed of
statewide agencies that address the needs of children. Jetta
participated in our POC workshop during the 2002 VOTF conference. Our
mutual interests prompted her to invite the Protecting Our Children
Working Group of VOTF to join the Partnership.
As its first major action, the MCSAPP applied to the Centers for
Disease Control (which considers child sexual abuse a major health
problem) for funds to support a child sexual abuse prevention program.
The CDC grant intended to sponsor programs that shifted the
responsibility for detection and prevention from educating children to
educating adults. The MCSAPP�s proposal won funding for Massachusetts,
one of three states whose plans were selected. In each of the states
(the other two are Georgia and Minnesota) the focus of the programs is
on training adults to assume responsibility for the detection and
prevention of child sexual abuse. What distinguished the Massachusetts
Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Partnership program was its focus on
grassroots community organizing that would create within the community
a permanent collaborative structure for child sexual abuse prevention.
The funds granted to our state are currently being applied to the
development of three permanent local collaboratives (pilot
communities).
Jetta Bernier announced that of the several communities that presented
proposals, the three selected are Gloucester, Newton, and Orange/Athol.
Each either has formed or will form a local collaborative that commits
to engaging the resources of all agencies that touch upon the lives of
children in the community. The goal is to develop a child abuse
prevention program that focuses on informing and training adults for
detecting predators and knowing what to do about them. The general
public needs to see child sexual abuse as a preventable public health
problem. For example, Newton has just formed the Newton Child Sexual
Abuse Prevention Partnership, its own permanent collaborative of all
the health, education, safety, and other organizations in the community
that touch the lives of children. With the cooperation of the
University of Lowell, Orange/Athol has collected data from courts,
hospitals, DSS, and schools of the area, identified the problems, and
formed an active collaborative to address them. As part of its
permanent role in preventing child sexual abuse, the state-level MCSAP
Partnership will evaluate and support the local collaboratives.
MCSAPP has set for itself five broad goals, three of which focus on the
selection and support of these permanent local collaboratives for child
sexual abuse prevention. These are the goals:
1. To develop and maintain a strong and permanent state-level
collaborative (the MCSAP Partnership) on child sexual abuse (CSA)
prevention.
2. To define and implement a comprehensive perpetration prevention
response to child sexual abuse through the state-level collaborative
(MCSAPP).
3. To support the development of a network of three permanent local
collaboratives (pilot communities) on child sexual abuse prevention.
4. To assist the local collaboratives in applying the public health model
to understand the nature and scope of child sexual abuse, conditions
that allow it to occur, and strategies to prevent it in their
communities.
5. To implement a comprehensive perpetration prevention response to child
sexual abuse through the three local collaboratives.
As the first goal indicates, the Partnership has designed for itself a
permanent function in the state�s effort to prevent child sexual abuse.
In the fall of 2004 it will conduct a conference featuring the programs
developed by the local permanent collaboratives (pilot communities). By
presenting results of the pilot programs, the Partnership hopes both to
create advocates in the pilot communities and to stimulate other
communities to assess their readiness to undertake programs of their
own. As part of Goal #2, the Partnership will conduct public opinion
surveys in each of the pilot communities; develop prevention materials
for parents, caregivers, and other adults (for example, not to be
deceived by the �niceness factor,� what to look for in people who care
for your children, a list of local resources); and convene formal
training programs by key professionals, using nationally recognized
trainers. Mayors in the pilot communities are enthusiastic and fully
supportive. .
The core members of the Protecting Our Children working group were
delighted to be joined by VOTF leadership and VOTF colleagues from
Bridgewater, Wayland, and West Concord (our hostesses). We call to your
attention two programs for child sexual abuse prevention: �Christian
Stewardship of Children in the Catholic Community,� developed by The
Protection of Children Committee of the Concord Area VOTF; and �Safe
Environment Policies and Procedures,� developed by St. Zepherin�s
Parish in Wayland. Both are available on the POC link of the VOTF web
site. We invite other VOTF affiliates to share with us their efforts,
and efforts in their communities, to inform about and to prevent child
sexual abuse, so we can share them with others.
We hope that some will join us for our next meeting on Tuesday, October
21st, at 7:00 p.m., St. John�s Church in Wellesley. Please email us at
[email protected] for directions and details. .
Prepared by Kathy Mullaney and Mary Irene Lanigan
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