child abuse

Hamilton County’s Board of County Commissioners issued a proclamation Wednesday naming April Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Month in Hamilton County and April 12 as Wear Blue to Work Day.

The proclamation was issued after commissioners heard from Director Moira Weir on the large increases in Children’s Services caseloads and the many abused and neglected children being served by the agency.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This year, it comes with an extra sense of urgency in Hamilton County.
Our numbers are skyrocketing. We screened in 732 allegations of child abuse in the month of January, the largest monthly total in at least a decade. We screened in 699 reports during February. This followed a very busy last half of 2016, when we screened in 3,794 reports, 1,101 more than during the first half of the year.

Tanya Hampton had just left her second home visit of the night Saturday and stopped in at the McDonald’s in Bond Hill. When she came out of the restroom, she saw a man lying on the floor.

Tanya Hampton
She went over to check on him, noticed his fingertips were purple and yelled to the manager: “Call 911!

We currently have more than 1,100 children in certified foster care. This might be the highest number in JFS history, certainly within the past 20 years.

On any given day, we have more than 2,100 children in custody. In addition to the 1,100 children in certified foster homes, the remaining 1,000 are children living with relatives or family friends, teenagers living on their own and preparing for life after foster care, or children living in residential centers, group homes or medical facilities.

 We are a week away from a county-wide vote on the Children’s Services Levy (Issue 53). I am asked nearly every day what the levy is and how the money is used. The levy raises funding for services to abused …

  We are asked a lot about the opiate crisis gripping our community. How does it play out in child welfare? Heroin has hit our “business” hard. Abuse of opiate-based painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin is also a problem. …

I had the pleasure of hosting a group of the nation’s top child welfare officials in Cincinnati this past week and it was interesting to see our stories are so similar. We all struggle with worker retention. We all are …

We have received some good news at our agency the past month and I would like to share. I have great pride and joy in the work of my staff, so I always like to point out their success when …

In just a matter of days, more than 40 of our foster children will experience a celebration we hope they will cherish for the rest of their lives. On June 9, the 17th annual Celebration of Dreams event will be …

I have another passion to add to my list of priorities: finding temporary homes for our Heart Gallery. The Heart Gallery is a traveling exhibit of pictures portraying some of the 200 children we have available for adoption. Set up …