NIBLEY– Friends of the Cache County Justice Center are concerned about the rise in reported cases of child abuse since families are forced to stay at home due to the Stay Safe, Stay Home directive.
While April is Child Abuse Prevention Month the organization wants to remind the public to be on the lookout for signs of abuse. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the center has been inundated with interviewing an overwhelming number of local children experiencing physical and sexual abuse, endangerment, and neglect.
Much of the abuse has been centralized within families and extended families living among one another.
The board members of the Friends of the Cache County Children’s Justice Center are parents and community members and are concerned about reaching the isolated children in most critical need right now.
The group has created a ‘Safe to Share Site’ flyer that reminds children and adults within abusive situations of the many SAFE sites within our communities, and that staff at these sites will help them.
They requested that flyers be posted on school entry doors, buses transporting food, public buildings, businesses, and more.
In posting this flyer the participants would be pledging:
1) To have all staff working at the site review the ‘Reporting Child Abuse’ flyer attached
2) To provide additional site-specific training if needed or desired. For additional resources, visit http://cachecjc.org/education/resources/ and https://pcautah.org/programs/school-based.php
3) To print the ‘Safe to Share Site’ flyer in color (when possible) to be recognizable from a distance