April is Child Abuse Prevention Month — a time when events take place that raise awareness about the urgent problem.
One such event that drew people from across New York state and the country is being held in Rochester.
It’s a two-day conference that kicked off on Wednesday, called the Northeast Child Abuse Conference, bringing professionals together from the field to collaborate in an effort to help children and families.
“The Child Advocacy Centers across the United States have served over 360,000 children in one year last year alone across the United States. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said the Child Advocacy Center of Greater Rochester’s President and CEO Jeff Pier. “This event, the conference, is so special and is so needed for multiple reasons. It provides education, training and support for the people that are doing the work. But when people do this work, we cannot do it in isolation.”
Some 700 people from across New York and several other states are attending from several disciplines, all related to the field of child abuse awareness, prevention, investigation and healing. That includes the director of the CAC’s Multi-Disciplinary Team, Leslie Alvarado-Fischer.
“This is an opportunity to bring people into our world and for us to learn from them and their world and how we can better collaborate,” Alvarado-Fischer said. “Just because we’re in different parts of New York state doesn’t mean we’re not facing the same problems across the state.”
In fact, the New York State Children’s Alliance reports that:
One in 10 children will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday
Almost 700,000 children are abused in the United States annually
In more than 90% of child abuse situations, the child knows their abuser, often it’s someone they know and love
Pier says the teamwork and collaboration that takes place at the conference focus on reducing those stats.
“We really feel that that multidisciplinary approach, the collaborative approach, works so well,” Pier said. “It provides new opportunities and provides education and training across sectors. So, what’s so special about this conference? It brings all that expertise under one roof.”
“We discuss what’s going well, what’s not going well, and we kind of have an opportunity for other folks like us to kind of air those things out and then get support and resources from them,” said Alvarez-Fischer.
Alvarez-Fischer says he is what you can do.
“We oftentimes want to kind of hush children in many ways and allowing them to speak, allowing them to just speak their truth and just being open to what that could be, even if it makes us uncomfortable,” Alvarez-Fischer said. “I think that’s the biggest part.”
If you suspect or know of child abuse, call the New York State Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-342-3720.
The New York State Children’s Alliance says types of child abuse include physical, sexual, emotional, neglect and maltreatment, child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation and shaken baby syndrome.
If you believe a child is in imminent danger, call 911.