A team of Emporians was in Wichita last week to make a presentation at the 10th annual Crime Victims Rights Conference. Approximately 600 people attended the conference from Kansas and Nebraska.
At the conference, Kathleen Inwood, director of the SOS Child Advocacy Center and facilitator for the team, received the Kansas Attorney General’s Crime Victims Service Award.
The Emporia Area Multi-Disciplinary Child Protection Team gave conference participants instructions and guidelines on how to start a multi-discipline team in their own areas.
“We’ve been on the cutting edge of that,” said Pam Kvas, head of Newman Regional Health’s emergency department and a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner who also is a member of the local multi-disciplinary team.
The team is made up of Kvas, Angela Proehl of SOS, Det. Roger Proehl of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department, Det. Sgt. Mark Schondelmeier of the Emporia Police Department, Serena Wecker of SRS, Allison Anderson, school psychologist at Emporia High School, Jackie Murray, nurse at EHS, Assistant Lyon County Attorney Rebecca Gerhardt, Jennifer Williams and Amanda Cunningham of the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas, and Community Corrections Officer Brenda Fisher.
Roger Proehl had double duty at the conference when he was called upon to substitute for his wife, Angela.
“He had to give her side of the talk because she was busy taking care of a child,” Kvas said. “So, it is always the child comes first.”
The local panel told the audience of the commitment that is needed from team members and their employers because the team meets about six hours per month during work hours. A second local team, with primarily the same members, meets another three hours as the Child Advocacy Center team.
“That’s a big commitment for an employer, to embrace the philosophy of a multi-discipline team,” Kvas said.
The multi-discipline team has joined all of the agencies and entities together to deal with children’s issues in a more-efficient and cooperative manner. It was begun with a grant through SOS, and a meeting of several agency representatives who talked about policies, practices, and protocols. Those meetings brought about creation of the team.
“Each agency has always worked to protect kids, but we didn’t talk well to each other,” Kvas said. “... So it didn’t benefit us very well, or the families, especially the children.”
The result was that a family might get several different answers to the same question, depending upon which agency was being asked.
“Now we’re all getting the same information to the families and we’re all working together to protect the children,” she said.
The team’s goal is to stop problems before they escalate.
“We’re trying to keep them from getting to the bottom, where it’s an abused child,” she said.
Kvas says she sees about 60 cases of abuse in the emergency department each year, with last month’s total of 11 being a high number.
“I can do it here, but I can’t tell you I could do it in Dallas or Los Angeles,” Kvas said. “People who do my job in Dallas do about 1,000 a year.”
Law enforcement, SOS, and sometimes SRS representatives are present for examinations Kvas conducts in the emergency room.
“It’s a good feeling when you know you’re helping a child,” she said. “The work we do, especially as a team, is a good thing.”
Members of the team are available to make presentations to education classes, social and civic organizations and other groups, Kvas said.