Community Highlight: Voices For Children- Part 1
Podcast Transcription
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Maddy: Hi everyone, thank you for joining me for another episode of PFCU’s Money Talk podcast. I’m your host Maddy. For this episode, I had the opportunity to visit Voices For Children, a child advocacy center in Genesee County and chat with Sarah Zyburt, who is the Vice President of Advocacy and Advancement. Before I begin with this episode, I want to let you know that throughout this episode, there are general discussions and mention of child abuse and trafficking, so, if this is not a topic that you are comfortable listening to, please do not continue.
It was overwhelming to hear the amount of work that Voices For Children does and the changes they are making when it comes to child advocacy. Sarah is not only so clearly amazing at what she does but you’ll find listening to her throughout this interview, the passion she has for her work. I really did learn so much, especially after getting the chance to tour their building. If you want more information about Voices For Children or you would like to volunteer or donate you can do so on their website at voicesforcac.org or visit their Facebook or Instagram page. Here is Sarah.
Sarah: I am Sarah Zyburt, I am the Vice President of Advocacy and Advancement at Voices for Children which means that I oversee funds development, I work with our prevention staff, I work on policy advocacy and parent work that has to do with advocacy.
Maddy: Very nice! And how long have you been doing this for?
Sarah: This is my third year on staff, previously to that I volunteered with the organization. This has been a passion of mine for some time.
Maddy: Awesome. Could you dive into what Voices for Children does? What services you provide, maybe how, like the history of how it got started and all the things you guys do.
Sarah: Sure, yep. So, Voices for Children is a child advocacy center so that is an organization, usually a non-profit, that works with children and teenagers who are survivors of abuse whether it’s sexual or physical, neglect, human trafficking, even witness to violence. And in addition to that intervention work, we call that, we have therapy services that are free of charge which includes preparing children for court if they have to testify against their abuser. We have support groups for survivors and their family members because when something like that happens it can be disruptive to the whole family. So, we also have prevention education. So, we want to intervene because in our community, 1 in 4 children or 25% will be impacted by child abuse before they turn 18. That’s astronomically high so, the national average is 1 in 10 children so you can see this is really an issue in our community in Genesee County that we need to be addressing and investing in. We also provide prevention education so we work with adults and we work with children and provide free trainings to try to help keep children safe. So, trainings about using the internet safely, trainings about preventing human trafficking, we have trainings for professionals about trauma informed care for LGBTQ youth and teens because that’s a very, you know, high risk group and we see quite a lot of those kids.
Maddy: So really anyone could utilize those trainings services that you provide?
Sarah: Yeah, yep. We provide them to businesses to book clubs to churches.
Maddy: That’s awesome.
Sarah: Yeah, and so, part of our funding comes from grants which supports that work. We also have what’s called a Court Appointed Special Advocate Program which is abbreviated as CASA. This program is a national model actually and we implement it locally and it works directly with children who are in foster care placements. So, here in Genesee County at any given time there are between 400 and 600 kids in foster care. There aren’t enough foster homes for those children and our program connects highly trained volunteers with a child or family of children who are in placement and the CASA advocates for that child or children until they’re either reunified with their birth family, that’s the goal, or until they’re adopted. And so, CASA has a lot of benefits. It’s been found as it’s been in existence that children who have CASA advocates are in foster care less long, they’re less likely to fall through the cracks in things like school, they’re more likely to receive mental and physical healthcare that they need. So that program is something that we really love. And our CASAs, they also get to celebrate milestones and birthdays and holidays with the kids and so, that’s a really special program of ours as well.
Maddy: Wow, you guys, you do it all, that is amazing. And it’s so, I mean, it’s such important work too. I’m sure you feel fulfilled in what you do and I think that’s pretty incredible.
Sarah: Yeah, it certainly, you know, sometimes if you’re at backyard BBQ talking to people about what you do for a living, they say, oh my gosh that must be such a depressing job. But I think that any of us here would tell you, this is actually a really hopeful job. Because when we meet kids, a lot of times it’s on their darkest day but for some kids, especially those who are sustaining long-term abuse if someone in their household has been abusing them. Which unfortunately, 90% of abuse and even trafficking happens with someone who either lives in the household or has trusted access to a child so when we meet them, yep it is hard, they’re having a hard time but it’s upward from there. We get to be a part of their healing and we get to see how resilient and awesome kids are because something that we see again and again here is that our kids, as they heal, as they’re on this journey, when they get ready to kind of graduate out of our therapy program they want to leave something for other kids. They will leave art, they will letters and they say, you know, you’re not alone, I know it feels like you’re the only person this has ever happened to but you can do this, you’re so brave, you’re so strong and so a ton of what we do here is actually informed by, you know, feedback that we get from kids and suggestions that we get from kids. For instance, we had a little girl some years ago now so she’s older, she was very young and she had been being abused from a young age, she was going to have to testify in court against the person who hurt her and she was very scared to do that, understandably. We have here a black lab, her name is Daphne. She’s considered a canine companion so she can actually go up on the stand with kids and that can really provide some comfort for them which is great. This little girl, what worked while they were getting ready for court with her therapist, they created a superhero cape and a mask and shield for her and she was able to wear them when she took that stand. She did a fantastic job, the person who hurt her came to justice and she said, you know, I want other kids to know they’re superheroes too. And that’s something, you know, we can do with kids. It’s really popular with younger kids but more popular than you would think with like preteens too.
Maddy: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: And so, you know, if you’re around our building you’ll see lots of kind of superhero imagery and stuff. One of our main kind of awareness events, fundraisers throughout the year is the superhero 5k and 1k and so those races, they take place in September, this year will actually be our 10th annual. Families can come and participate so our survivors participate but anyone across the community comes and they can dress up as their favorite superhero, they can make up a superhero and it’s just a really great way to show support for these survivors who really are superheroes.
Maddy: So, could you share, I know you just mentioned that that was your tenth annual superhero run is this year.
Sarah: Yeah.
Maddy: So, how long has Voices For Children been around, what’s kind of the history there, do you have other locations, things like that?
Sarah: Yeah, so I mentioned that we are a child advocacy center, what that means is we are accredited so the care we are providing is evidence based and here in Michigan, there are a little over 30 now, child advocacy centers so we are either regional or local and we work with law enforcement and child protective services. So, Voices for Children was, previous to 2018, two different nonprofit organizations. So, one which was Weiss Child Advocacy Center was providing the intervention services that we have and the other which was called Priority Children was providing the advocacy, you know, prevention type services that we provide and so, the two came together to become a stronger organization. There’s a lot of nonprofits in this area, so rather than competing, it made a lot of sense, the boards kind of met and combined. And so, shortly after that happened, we regionalized so we have this location and we also have a location in Owosso serving all of Shiawassee County. And so that merger occurred and then you know, kind of COVID happened but we do have staff over there, we provide exactly the same services in Shiawassee County and that’s been a really great merger as far as we save money on Administrative costs while delivering good services and then having that satellite location is really important because part of having a child advocacy center kind of being a one-stop shop for families, is we don’t want families from, you know, Durand and having to drive all the way to Flint for services so being able to do that close to home is really important. Child advocacy in this community has been taking place since about 2003 but it has improved and improved and it’s really within the last seven years that we have started setting a quality standard for the state. And so, what I mean by that is there is a child abuse response protocol that was designed here in Genesee County in partnership between Voices for Children and Law Enforcement and the schools and child protective services and the courts. And that protocol has been, you know, replicated other places in the state but really even on a national level. Child advocacy centers as a thing are still fairly new, you know, when I was a young person they weren’t around yet. And they really came to be, it was actually a judge out in California, who, by the time this little 12-year-old boy, made it to trial he had told his story of abuse more than 10 times. He had told it to doctors, he had told it to law enforcement then other law enforcement and then lawyers and every time he was doing that, he was, you know, reliving what happened to him- that trauma. And so, the judge said there has to be a better way and forensic interviews became an answer to that because they take place in a CAC so it feels more homey, it’s not, you know, it doesn’t feel like an interrogation. And during a forensic interview, the law enforcement, the CPS, they are watching from an observation room. So, it’s not, they’re not in the room with the child, the child is just with one other person like you and I are here. And that person has specific training to ask open-ended questions, to use the same language that the child is using, both for their body parts but also for any of the people they might be talking about. So, they have a headset in while their asking the child questions and the folks who are observing are able to ask questions through that headset and then that forensic interview is useable in court. Right now, in Michigan, they’re not using the forensic interview instead of having the child testify. This is one of our advocacy pieces, is there’s no reason that kids should still, in 2022, have live testify in a room with their abuser. That is doing more harm than good. We’re not saying don’t have them testify but we all have seen that Zoom works and so, there’s no reason not to have that child somewhere that feels safer for them during that trial. So, that is one of the pieces that we’re advocating about. Another is there are some states in the US where any adult 18 and up is mandated by law to report suspected child abuse. Here is Michigan there are certain professions where that is the case so teachers, childcare providers, medical professionals, religious leaders. They’re mandated to report and we provide free trainings to let them know what that means because you might know, you know, I’m mandated to report but how do you report, what are you looking for? So, those are trainings we provide but what they have seen in states where that’s the case is that reports go up which is a good thing when you have communities like ours where instances of abuse are so high.
Maddy: That’s awesome. You guys are doing a lot of behind the scenes work of just making the whole system work better. I think that’s pretty amazing.
Keep an eye out for part 2 of my conversation with Sarah including volunteer opportunities and the Voices For Children Fundraising events that they have each year. And make sure to follow them on Facebook and Instagram and visit their website, voicesforcac.org, for more information.
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