03-04-2025
Agencies, advocates kick off Child Abuse Prevention Month
EDGEWOOD — The Indiana Department of Child Services had 843 open cases in Madison County in February, pointing to a need for more collaboration among the community and social service agencies, speakers told the Anderson Noon Exchange Club on Tuesday.
At a kickoff luncheon for National Child Abuse Prevention Month, attendees also heard that the number of abuse and neglect cases in the county — the third highest in the state — obscure progress in helping families and quickly moving children to safer environments.
'We see the prevention efforts that are happening, and then also just seeing this community come together,' said Megan Wills, director of community-based services at Firefly Children and Family Alliance, an Indianapolis-based family resource center with offices in 11 cities across the state, including Anderson.
'We don't work in as many silos. We're starting to come together more and realize that the more of us that surround a family, the more we can help that family.'
According to the Child Maltreatment Report, annually published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an estimated 3 million children nationwide were subjects of child welfare agency responses in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. Although that number represented a five-year low, local advocates reiterated that much work remains to address the problem.
'The importance of Child Abuse Prevention Month is to educate individuals about what's happening in their own backyards and make them aware of what they can do to get involved and how they can help,' said Annette Craycraft, executive director of East Central Indiana CASA, which stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates.
'We also really want people to report child abuse if they see that. We want folks to feel comfortable doing that, and know that it's anonymous and it's one of the things that we're really mandated to do.'
Wills noted that heightening awareness of the needs of those who work in the field is important, in part because burnout among social workers — who frequently act as frontline caregivers for families in crisis — is common.
'I think sometimes if you come into this field and you think that your success story is going to be an open-and-shut case, you're going to get burnt out really quickly,' Wills said.
'I think it's just seeing those little wins — did the parents get a better job? Did they find support in the community? Do they feel safer? — those are the numbers that we don't get to see.'
Following the luncheon, the speakers joined Noon Exchange Club members in planting blue-and-silver pinwheels — which have come to symbolize the carefree childhoods advocates believe all children deserve — in a display outside the Edgewood Golf Course and Event Center.
The pinwheels, along with signs noting April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month, will soon decorate yards in neighborhoods and in front of businesses throughout Madison County.
'We just want people to be aware that we need them,' Craycraft said, 'and that we all need to work together as a community to help fix this problem. It's not going to go away on its own.'
