Community leaders recognized April as Child Abuse Prevention Month during a recent event at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.Sixty pairs of children’s shoes lined steps on the MCLA campus to signify the number of cases of child abuse or neglect confirmed each month in Berkshire County. North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright was among a number of community leaders in attendance.
“I want to challenge each and every one of us today, including myself, to reach out to our families, friends and neighbors in need,” Alcombright said. “Offer to babysit for a parent. Give a parent of toddler who’s throwing a tantrum a reassuring smile. Give that kid a pat on the head.”
Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless says his office receives reports of potential wrongdoing from family members, neighbors and people in the school systems.
“If you think something is wrong, speak up and talk to somebody,” Capeless said. “It doesn’t mean that somebody is in trouble. It doesn’t mean somebody is going to be arrested. It just means it’s going to be looked into.”
Compared to other districts, Capeless says Berkshire County has high numbers of child abuse and neglect, which he attributes to higher reporting rates. For instance a DCF report using 2010 data shows North Adams had the highest reporting rate of any municipality in the commonwealth with 195 resident children reported as maltreated for every 1,000 people younger than 18. Pittsfield was third at 156, while Holyoke and Springfield ranked fifth and sixth. The state average was 56.
The Berkshire County Sexual Assault Intervention Network Team includes personnel from Capeless’ office, local and state police, health professionals and the Department of Children and Families. They work together on cases involving suspected child abuse. Capeless says together they determine whether to proceed with prosecution.
“Very many cases don’t reach that stage for a lot of different reasons,” Capeless said. “The least major reason is the fact that we don’t have belief that something happened. It’s more likely that we haven’t got other evidence to support it. A lot of times there are psychological, emotional or other personal reasons in which we just don’t think it’s in the child’s best interest to go forward and put them through that process where they potentially have to testify. There are a lot of factors, but in those cases in which we do we will persevere and go ahead.”
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families has been under a microscope for the past year and a half after the deaths of children under the agency’s supervision. State Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier serves on the legislature’s Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.
“We think that that crisis happened a year and a half ago and things have been getting better and I’m going to tell you that actually things are getting worse,” Farley-Bouvier said. “Things are getting worse in the Department of Children and Families. The caseloads continue to skyrocket. The number of children placed in foster care continues to skyrocket at an astounding rate. It’s very difficult to find qualified foster parents. It’s difficult because quite frankly we do not support them enough and we need to do much, much more to support our foster families.”
Farley-Bouvier says many times foster families are asked to take in more children. As is the case in his overall budget proposal, Governor Charlie Baker has proposed a three percent hike in DCF funding. The proposal includes an additional $2.1 million to family resource centers, according to the governor’s office.
The Children’s Trust reaches some 50,000 families across Massachusetts while funding parenting and family programming such as Child Care of the Berkshires. The Trust’s executive director Suzin Bartley says her organization aims to connect parents to other parents and resources in the community.
“We are upstream and we are not waiting until damage is done,” Bartley said. “When you need that intervention at that point it is much more expensive and not as effective as getting in there early and getting off to a good start. Families do better, parents do better and in the end we’ve made a wise investment because those kids grow up and are ready to grow and learn. They’ve also experienced what good parenting is.”
