Preventing child abuse through the schools - community programs in McKee Rocks and Stowe Township, Pennsylvania, aid in child abuse prevention - includes related material

Drive west from Pittsburgh above five miles of two-lane road and you'll approach to the towns of McKee stones and Stowe Township. You'll be struck by dint of the geography of the place: the wide, flat "bottoms" that are in the floodplain of the Ohio River and the houses-tudded mountains that rise to 400 feet above. The 1936 freshet destroyed the homes in the bottoms and left centurys of people homeless. Although many of these family were strangers, the families who lived upon the mountainsides took them in. Mountain residents still exchange Christmas cards with the family they met during the flood

Until the late 1970 nation here worked for the PL&E Railroad, built ships and barges, made carburet of iron at places like Lockhart Iron and carbonized iron and the Follansbee mill, and applied enamel at FESCO Now these places are clos and the centurys of businesses that depended upon them are boarded up.

The population here is just 15000 -- down from the 1970 population of 22000 clan While some of the tribe here work in good, sure jobs, others have jobs that don't use their skills. Perhaps they have retired early, or they do not work as abundant as they would like. tribe currently live in housing stock and public housing that is 50 years of advanced age or more. The last of recent origin house in McKees Rocks was built in 1983

more [i]or[/i] less 2,000 children attend five elementary and middle gymnasiums and one high school in the Sto-Rox district. The latter's depressed tax base makes it individual of the most financially strapped areas of Pennsylvania, with individual of the lowest per-pupil expenditure rates.

As in greatest in quantity communities, some children in Sto-Rox undergo from abuse and neglect. When there is evidence of injury or a high horizontal of suspicion that maltreatment has occurr the case tend hitherwards to Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, where the Family Intervention Center (FIC) diagnoses cases of physical and sexual abuse. FIC's pediatrician, psychologists, and therapists identify a certain quantity of 700 cases of abuse each year in Allegheny shire which includes McKees Rocks and Stowe Township.

After years of observing the detrimental events of child abuse and leave out the FIC staff wanted the chance to make experiment of to prevent abuse in their neighborhoods and around the political division They applied for and received a child abuse prevention grant from NCCAN and matching capitals from the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Scaife Family Foundation. Then they launched their prevention initiative.

This article highlights sum of two units steps the FIC took to hinder child abuse in the Sto-Rox place of education district. The FIC "school-based" effort is part of its broader prevention approach in the communities of Allegheny shire (See Box for summary of the FIC program.)

Laying the Foundation

In September 1990 the FIC hired a health educator for the community of Sto-Rox. Her mission: Work alongside teachers and administrators to intercept child abuse and neglect. And do it within a time-frame of 15 hours a week.

"I think I came to Sto-Rox with realistic expectations" explains FIC's health educator Dayna Jornsay. "I had been engrossed as a community health educator and I know that the first pace is always to listen. Determine what teachers and administrators want to accomplish and build upon that. It's amazing how repeatedly our agendas can overlap."

Jornsay capitalized upon the windows of opportunity for succes in the program. In her discussions about the health curriculum with teachers and administrators, she discovered that seminary staff were concerned about in what way they would be able to fulfill the of recent origin state mandate to teach physic and alcohol prevention at each grade level. School personnel were reluctant to add a "child abuse prevention" course which was not mandated.

Jornsay compiled and take a view ofed curricula that centered on prevention of medicine and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and child abuse. She noticed that while each of these courses involved a small in number specialized lessons, "35 out of 40 tasks would discuss the same skills." Jornsay points on the outside "It didn't matter if it was a remedy and alcohol abuse course, or a course relating to child abuse. Thats because the skills you ne to obstruct problems are the same. These are life skills."

Jornsay and the faculty collaborated in identifying the public denominators in prevention curricula. These skills include: communication, decision making, goal-setting, learning by what mode to say no, identifying and using community helpers, and conflict resolution.

Rather than introducing special courses targeting each social regard the school district chose to do sum of two units things: weave new lessons into the existing language arts, social studies, library, abode economics and science classes; and heavily amend the health curriculum to include life skills and the more specific information that children ne to know about remedys alcohol, and child abuse. Within the novel health curriculum devised by Jornsay and academy staff, there is now a station of 25 prevention lessons. Teachers are required to teach five core exercise s and can select a minimum of five more tasks from the 25 available.