Source(s):
Barbara Hughes bahughes@ifas.ufl.edu, 407-665-5556
Shelda Wilkens SRW@ifas.ufl.edu, 407-665-5557
Marie Carling mcarling@seminolesheriff.org, 407-665-6508
SANFORD, Fla.—Teenage 4-H’ers in Seminole county are making the lives of abused or neglected children a little easier with the help of a new program called Packaged with Care.
“When children are removed from their homes by sheriff’s officers, the children often have only the clothing they are wearing at the time,” said Marie Carling, a family services specialist with the Child Protective Services Division of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in Sanford, Fla.
“Packaged with Care provides backpacks for these children. The packs contain a teddy bear, a blanket, a coloring book and colored pencils, games, underwear, T-shirts, toiletries and other essential items.”
The games in the backpack help provide the children with something to do while a foster home is being located, Carling said. “Sometimes this process takes several hours. The clean clothing items come in handy at this time.”
There are more than 3,000 reported cases of child abuse in Seminole County each year, she said.
“We investigate all of these reports. Sometimes the problem is not abuse, but extreme poverty,” Carling said. “Most are single parent homes, with multiple children in the home. The investigator can bring the backpack along, and give it to the child. It helps open a dialog between the officer and parent. Or, backpacks are provided to the child once the child has been brought into protective custody.”
The Packaged with Care Program is a cooperative effort by the Seminole County 4-H Club Teens in Action, the Longwood Rotary and the Child Protective Services Division of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
Barbara Hughes, Seminole County extension director with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, said the program began when a Longwood Rotary member offered her small soap bars he’d picked up from hotels.
“A few days later, I was at a neighborhood meeting,” Hughes said. “The speaker was Marie Carling from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office who spoke about child abuse. “When I asked her if she could use the soap bars, she said ‘Sure!'”
As Hughes and Carling talked, it became obvious the children entering the foster care system needed more than soap. “We came up with the idea of backpacks, designed for children from ages 4 to 7,” Hughes said. “Then I began looking for agencies to help.”
The Longwood Rotary agreed to pay for the backpacks and the contents, while the Seminole County 4-H’ers decided to make security blankets for the teddy bears. The teens designed a luggage tag with their photo on the back of the tag, so the children getting backpacks would know there were kids behind the project.
The 4-H’ers also decided to create a coloring book. “The coloring book is about the importance of friends, how everyone has friends and how there are a lot of people in our community who care about children,” said Shelda Wilkens, a Seminole County extension agent. “The illustrations were drawn by one of our 4-H’ers, and we got some small grants to pay for the printing.”
The 4-H’ers and Rotarians two groups with differing ages and viewpoints worked together to assemble the backpacks, Hughes said.
“The first year we assembled and gave away 100 backpacks,” said Hughes. “This year we’ll assemble and deliver 300, and we could use more.”
The backpacks are given to the Seminole County Sheriffs Office, and officers are encouraged to carry the packs in the trunks of their cars when they investigate child abuse cases.
“These are the community’s children, and they are everyone’s responsibility,” said Carling. “The Packaged with Care program helps us meet a child’s needs during difficult times.”
For information on the Packaged with Care project, contact Barbara Hughes at 407-665-5556, bahughes@ifas.ufl.edu
-30-
0
