Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F Osborne Foundation.

The Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

On today's show, will learn about two nonprofits who advocate for youth in our community.

One, provide services for abused children in a safe and caring environment.

The other strives to help students make healthy choices.

We're stronger together, Chattanooga, so stay tuned to learn more.

Welcome to Chattanooga.

Stronger Together.

I'm Barbara Marter.

Kristen Pavlik McCallie, Executive Director of the Children's Advocacy Center, is our guest today.

This organization coordinates comprehensive services for abused children.

Kristen, welcome.

I'm so glad you're here with us today.

Thanks for having me.

I'm really excited.

So tell me, what is Children's Advocacy Center?

What is it do who does it serve?

And and why?

Sure.

So we serve all children in Hamilton County and we provide a space for kids who are alleged victims of severe abuse.

And so that can be sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug exposed kids who are trafficked.

And we provide a space for them to tell their story, for their parents to get resources and referrals and information for them to get therapy.

We also provide medical exams and we coordinate a team of folks who provide the investigation.

So the district attorney, children's services, law enforcement, juvenile court, they all come together.

We also provide prevention in the community so kiddos know how to talk to safe adults, and adults know how to report child abuse.

So K through fifth grade.

Okay.

Is it true that one in ten will face sexual abuse before their 18th birthday?

Yes.

And our statistics are really underreported because if you think about the issue of child sexual abuse, it's a really hard topic.

People get super uncomfortable talking about child abuse generally.

And then child sexual abuse is a really hard topic.

We know for every one case that's reported, there's between, you know, 3 to 5 cases that are never reported because often 90% of the time, the person that's hurting the child is somebody they know.

It can be a family member.

It can be somebody that's trusted in that family's community.

It can be someone that they know from church or somebody who is a coach.

But often it's somebody that's known to the family.

So that creates a lot of complexities.

And kids don't want to tell because they think they're going to get in trouble.

They think they're going to break their family apart.

And often they're not believed.

So when we do training for adults, we talk a lot about how it's not folks job to do the investigation.

That's our job.

But the most important thing adults can do for kids is if a child tells you something to believe them and to report it to the appropriate authorities.

And I think at one time, all Tennessee citizens are mandated to be reporters.

That's right.

It doesn't matter if you're a teacher or a doctor.

If you know a child and they say something that you think is suspicious or they say something very directly, everybody can call the Department of Children's Services to report.

You can report anonymously or you can.

Disclose who you.

Are.

But that's really important and something everybody can do to protect children in our community.

Yeah.

So how do you educate the students in the schools or the teachers in the schools to observe it and know what signs to look for with kiddos?

We we really focus on saying who's the safe adult that you can talk to?

Because we know research tells us that when a child has something that happens to them, whether it is abusive behavior or something that just makes them uncomfortable, if they have one safe adult they can talk to that can change the trajectory of their outcomes up into adulthood.

So really focusing on who's a safe adult with adults we focus on.

It depends too.

We we train teachers, we train police officers, we train clergy.

Anybody who wants to learn a little bit more about, you know, protecting children will talk to anyone.

But really with teachers and folks in the school system, we talk about how to report, how to recognize and how to support kids.

So what they're looking for are the signs.

Sure.

And that could range.

It could be a gamut of range of anything.

Right.

What are some some things that you would teach them to look for?

The biggest thing we say to adults that have kids in their life, that they have a consistent relationship with is a change in behavior.

Meaning, if you have a kid who's outgoing all the time and then they suddenly become very introverted or they are a kid that, you know, likes to do a certain activity and they stop and withdraw from that activity, you know, asking them why, what's going on, Or they have a person that they normally feel comfortable with and for whatever reason, they don't feel comfortable with that person anymore because the way kids internalize abusive behavior can look 100 different ways and depending on the child's age.

Right.

They can they're not going to say this person hurt me or they abused me in this way.

They're going to act out.

So really, just as adults looking for behavioral changes, really the biggest thing is.

Just being in the moment and just recognizing things like that.

You have a trauma infused trauma informed care module.

Yeah.

You had mentioned that kind of earlier about how you talk to the police and the DA's office.

How does that really all work together?

So when we talk about what trauma informed means for us, that means everything we do, we try to meet our families where they're at.

So when a family comes to see us, they're not usually really happy to come to see us.

And that means that their child's potentially a victim of something that's really complicated and hard.

And so from the paint color on the walls to the snacks that we give kids after an interview to the diffusers that put lavender in the air.

You're creating this calming environment for them.

And the forms that they sign.

We try to make sure everything's really accessible and that we're not creating any extra barriers for that family to understand what's happening.

And in fact, we're like, if you think about a wheel right, we're in the middle scope of we'll okay, we work for the victim.

We try to provide them with as much information as possible about what's happening, because they're going to have to work with the Department of Children Services.

They're going to have to work with law enforcement.

They're going to have to work with the district attorney.

They might have to work with a hospital.

They have to work with all these big systems.

And you know what?

You know, when you have to work with a system.

And so our job is to make sure that if those systems may not be as trauma informed as we are as a victim service provider, but we can help them navigate through those systems so that it's not an extra thing.

And that's on top of the thing that they're already experiencing.

So basically a child in the family comes in and everything.

You bring those resources to them.

Yeah.

So you are basically your name, you're an advocate.

You don't provide the services.

What you do is advocate on behalf of the child to bring those resources that they need for families or the child needs.

Right.

So when the child is getting what we call a forensic interview, which is where the child sits with a trained professional and has a conversation that's recorded and the child knows they're being recorded and it's observed by law enforcement and the Department of Social Services, and that the purpose of recording it is so that it can be used in a criminal investigation.

And.

Right.

And it doesn't matter the age of the child that it's recorded on a DVD or it can be, you know, put on a cloud and entered into the court proceedings.

That is a way for the child's statement to be heard in a way where the child's age is captured, but also that child is in a safe place to talk about what's happened.

And while that child is getting that forensic interview and they also may get a medical exam, their parent, their guardian, their caregiver meets with one of our advocates and the advocate.

Just meet them where they're at.

They might need to know, who are you?

Are you going to take my kid away?

No, we're not.

We're not.

That's not our role.

They may need help with their light bill, their lease.

They may need help understanding.

Okay, my kid needs to come for therapy.

How do I get a note so that they can be excused from school to come for therapy or, you know, so all the different things.

And as the criminal justice piece may progress, there's a lot of questions that come from that as well.

And so our advocates work with the victim, witness coordinators in the district attorney's office to make sure that folks understand what that process is like, because it's really complicated.

And there might also be a civil legal process happening at the same time and the civil process looks different than the criminal process.

So it's our job as a lot of helping families, the adults in those kids lives help that kid create an environment that they can go back to that is safe, and that the therapeutic process also really helps with that, too, because kids come for therapy.

But our therapy also involves a parental or caregiver component so that those parents have tools in their toolbox to be able to help that kid if something's happening as a result of, you know, the abuse that has.

Occurred and their abuser will eventually be removed from the scene.

So maybe the court system, the DA's office or whatever.

So that's beyond our control, Right?

And the Child Protective Investigation team, the reason it functions so well, it's a statute in the state of Tennessee, but everybody who works on that team has a lane.

And our lane is victim services.

So it wouldn't be our decision.

If there's an arrest made.

That's law enforcements lane.

If there's a removal from the house of the child thats DCSs lane.

If there's prosecution, that's the DA's lane.

So our lane is right here and we stay in it and we help the family and the other pieces.

We can help the family navigate and understand.

But those decisions are decisions that are out of our control.

So do you have stats for like Hamilton County?

I sure do.

So we saw over 1200 children in Hamilton County last year.

Now, it was our highest serving year, and we've been in existence since 1991.

And so there's a lot of ways to feel about statistics, right?

Yeah.

They're the people that we see without the tears, right.

And I think it's not necessarily a bad thing because our Chattanooga's growing.

I think that's one way you could look at the statistics.

That's why they continue to increase.

But the other way to look at that is that means that more people are reporting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

That means more children are getting connected to services.

That's true.

That means more people are not trying to do their own investigations.

That means more perpetrators are hopefully being held accountable.

That means like our prosecution numbers.

So in 2020, our prosecution rate were less than 3%.

We had the lowest prosecution rates of all the urban areas in the state of Tennessee of sex crimes.

Last fiscal year, our prosecution rate was over 36% of our cases that were recommended for prosecution.

It is outstanding how much that has grown and some of that, when we talk about Lean, our district attorney has put an assistant district attorney just to prosecute child sex crimes on site with us.

Having her on board now is really very important.

Transformative for our our victims.

It has been because you can report all day long.

You can train all day long.

But if you do not hold perpetrators accountable, theyre just going to perpetrate again.

It's going to continue the cycle that's that really is not working like that.

So in this last minute that we have, is there anything else that you would like our viewers to to know or to learn more about how they can get education?

Sure.

So we have a wonderful website that folks can go visit.

Yeah, But I would also say, you know, that one in ten statistic about kiddos who are affected, it's more than that.

And that if someone that you know is affected by this or has been affected by it to support and believe them, that's the biggest thing we can do for victims who are currently children or folks who are adults who still might be dealing with the after effects of being victimized as a child and to really just create communities where we believe victims and we provide safe spaces for them to be able to continue to heal.

Wow.

Kristen, thank you so much.

This has been so informative for me and I hope for our viewers, too.

So thank you so much for coming in today.

Thanks for having me.

Up next, will have Amy Pearson, president of On Point.

You don't want to miss this.

So stay tuned.

We want to know how you serve your community.

Send us photos or videos of you or your family volunteering, and we may feature it on a future episode.

Email stronger at WTCITV dot org or use the hashtag stronger WTCI on social media.

welcome back.

Amy Pearson is joining us.

She is the president of On Point.

This organization provides program and services to equip youth with the tools to make healthy decisions that allow them to thrive.

Welcome, Amy.

I'm so glad you're here with us today.

Barbara, thank you for having me here.

So let's talk about our On Point.

What is it?

What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

And let's talk about the youth too, why they need On Point.

Absolutely.

Well, Barbara, we are blessed.

For more than 30 years, since 1991, we've been partnering with schools and community organizing to cultivate youth strengths and guide them on the path to thrive.

When we think about a thriving teen, I think many of us think and believe that, you know, if my child's coming home every day, they're talking to me a little bit.

They're teenagers, right?

So their job description is maybe to kind of pull away into peers.

But if if we're having at least a little conversation, everything's okay, right?

That's what we often think.

But is.

It?

We live in a culture that we believe is more connected than ever before.

But we also are so busy with our lives that if we don't see a disruptor and everything seems normal, we become blindsided to it because we're so involved in what's going on with us that we sometimes ignore them.

Don't pay attention.

That's exactly right, Barbara.

I may think that if I'm sending my child a text, we're connected.

Yeah.

But in reality, what research is showing us is exactly what you just said.

We are more disconnected than ever before, and most teens simply don't have enough healthy relationships to help cultivate thriving.

What are you seeing coming out of COVID?

It increase because teens are social animals.

They really are social.

There's that percentage that says they're not.

But for the majority, if you pull them out of their comfort, their social, they're they're their peer group.

They really don't have the tools to just adjust and everything.

And then they either shut down or they act out.

Absolutely.

Yes.

So you mentioned coming out of the pandemic.

Yeah.

And we were seeing dropping rates of anxiety and depression post 2020.

And then the world shuts down.

Right.

And we go into our hibernating caves and we see teen depression, anxiety rates doubling during that period and now continuing to rapidly increase.

And I think that's the other misnomer, right?

Well, we're the pandemic's over.

Yes.

For years.

Yeah.

My kids have friends.

And during that period, is that heightened activity in the brain is happening.

The prefrontal cortex is developing for teens.

They are, you know, their connection for many of them at 14, 15, 16 was on their phone.

And so now having those social relationships become critical.

What we know, too, Barbara, and it's heartbreak thing.

And Vanderbilt was involved in this study, the National Children's Health Survey.

What we saw in this survey, 2021, was that one in every four teens had contemplated suicide.

One in ten have tried it in the state of Tennessee.

And if they try it once, a lot of times they're tempted to try it again.

To be successful.

You're absolutely right.

Yes.

And so what On Point does is try to give these students tools to cope.

But in in learning those tools to cope, it also helps them to thrive in school, because you're also working with helping them get their grades, get them get on point with it, and get on point to graduate and then thrive and not just survive, but to thrive in community and everything like that.

And you start in the elementary schools.

So for middle school, middle school, then even with our 11 year olds.

And one of the schools was Dalewood, I think absolutely.

That's a good example to go back to.

So what do you what have you done it?

Dalewood?

It's it's so much fun to partner with our schools.

Dalewood is a model school.

It is a perfect example of what can happen when everyone in the building is committed to use thriving from the cafeteria staff to those in maintenance.

Everyone's singing the same song.

We believe in you and we want you to thrive.

So let me paint the picture.

Okay.

Hamilton County invited on point to partner at Dalewood and to become what is called a community school and community forward community school.

In other words, the community involved in the daily activities of the school.

So we began in 2019, and during that period, Principal Rashad Williams joined the team at Dalewood and his visionary exemplary leadership.

Quickly was recognizing some of the strategies I've tried in the past aren't working as well.

Our kids are traumatized, Right?

Again, we're talking about the period of the pandemic.

What are what are some things we could do?

Well, on point had already been developing some mindful, calming resets and resources for students as as Mr. Williams learned more.

He also began to investigate as we were investigating.

What does it look like to become a trauma informed school?

And so we did become a trauma informed school.

What's been the result?

Well, the result is that there has been a 75% decrease in suspensions and expulsions since 2019 when we became a community forward community school.

They want to come to school.

They're in career clusters at school.

They have the opportunity when things become a little more stressful, to say, hey, I need a reset.

Say, so what's a reset?

Well, that's a mindful moment, right?

You probably have them all the time.

I have them all the time.

And don't even think about what I'm doing.

It's that moment of breathing deeply, releasing, focusing on positive, moving my site upward and outward.

And so we're able to lead students in these mindful resets with dedicated reset spaces.

We're really excited that Ben Carson Foundation partnered for the Ben Carson Think Room.

Okay.

And we also have dedicated exercise spaces for students at Dalewood.

So this Carson's room, reset room.

What what would happen in there?

I mean, how does a student get invited to the reset room?

Well, excitedly.

What was previously happening is students would leave class to reset.

Well, as we were working with Dalewood, Dalewood said, You know, my students are coming into the Ben Carson think room.

I'm leading them through mindful pauses, rest.

I'm helping them breathe deeply.

We're playing the calming music and they're going home this summer.

They won't have the room.

What can I send home with them to help them reset?

And so excitedly, we launched the On Point app that provides mindful, resets, resources and students hands 24/7 and all.

The students have and all the things that.

We talked about.

Yes, they have felt they had said, Now you've got this app.

Yes, that is their tool that they can carry with them.

Well, and I also love the fact that you have teens involved with this.

So when they come through, when they're in the seniors and they've been in the program a while, you actually have a teen board.

Yes.

Yes.

So excitedly On Point serves about 35 to 40 schools yearly with mentoring, character and wellness education.

And of those students that we're serving, we're always watching who are emerging leaders.

Right.

And we have many.

We have many, many.

If a child begins with a sit down sit and they stay in our feeder pattern, they can graduate.

Not having been in our mentoring life groups and many of these students, as we are interacting with them, they are they are also telling on point it's a it's a bi directional process.

What do we need to be including in our programing to meet the needs of students and as they emerge, many will go to and say, Would you have interest in joining the On Point teen board?

And our On Point Teen Advisory Board is a board comprised of 12 to 15 student high school leaders who are a voice to us and for us in the community.

And just to give you an example, Barbara.

These are these students.

They they you know, they don't just come to on point to learn.

They are physically invested in the community.

So we are listening to their interest and then looking for partner organizations that they can go and serve in.

And they create a service project.

They go and do that service project, and then they come back and they debrief together as a group to determine what could we do better next time.

But what I love about all of this is the fact that you're now giving these students tools, making them aware, but also letting them know they are in control and in charge.

And that is powerful.

That is very powerful for a young person to realize I can control all my outbursts.

I can recognize when the anger is bubbling up or the insecurities or I'm feeling insignificant.

And I have these tools now.

How did you find the app?

So I'm going developed the app.

We are very blessed at on point to have a team of mental health professionals as well as a yoga practitioner who helped lead us through developing the app.

And to your point, Barbara, we the app itself is is not just available at Dalewood now all of our students have access for free.

All 11,088 I believe we had last year and access free of charge And on the app there are emergency resources.

We were talking about suicide previously.

There's a suicide hotline, there's a human trafficking hotline, and they go to national call centers.

So we know it's staffed 24 seven and it is, you know, filled with experts in the field that can help walk them through child abuse as well.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for coming in today.

But also thank you for you and on point do for our young people.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Barbara, for having me.

Thank you WTCI.

Exactly, exactly.

And thank you for joining us.

We hope Chattanooga Stronger Together provides a new perspective for viewers like you who are looking to make a difference in our community.

So let us know what you think.

Email us at stronger@WTCITV dot org or use the hashtag Stronger WTCI on social media.

I'm Barbara Marter and we'll see you next time.

Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F Osborne Foundation.

The Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.