Dozens of agencies in Cuyahoga County face funding cuts as part of a proposed two-year county budget which looks to trim $40 million.
Among them is the Canopy Child Advocacy Center in Cleveland which works with kids who may have been the victims of abuse.
Ideastream Public Media’s Matt Richmond sat down with Canopy’s Executive Director, Jennifer Johnson, and asked her how they work to help a child brought to the center and avoid exacerbating any trauma they may be dealing with.
JENNIFER JOHNSON: If a child is interviewed by child protective services for something that may be happening, that they're unsafe for, that's their job. But, also, then law enforcement needs that same information.
Then if they need a medical exam - which I completely skipped earlier, we have a medical suite here and we can provide medical exams - but then they would have to go get the medical exam from another hospital, one of the local hospitals, and then they would have to tell that story again.
Then, if someone recommends you should really get some therapy and talk to someone about this, they would have to do an assessment with therapy and tell the story again.
So, before the CAC, they would have to repeat that same story over and over and over again. And, for some people, this is the worst story that, hopefully, they'll ever have in their life. Revisiting that trauma and having to say it over and over again is traumatizing.
MATT RICHMOND: What’s the number of kids who come here to the child advocacy center, where you find that abuse was done by another juvenile, another child?
JOHNSON: It always wanes between 20-30% every year for the last eight years that I've been doing this.
If we see 700 kids a year, then you know, 20% of that is 140. So at least 140 kids a year that we've identified.
RICHMOND: There's been a lot of discussion in the media about juvenile crime in Cuyahoga County and what the response should be, particularly from the juvenile court - how punitive should it be with the juveniles committing some of these crimes? When you see that, and you see the kids who are committing these crimes, do you have a different perspective on it?
JOHNSON: Definitely. Every single time I see it, even though I may not know those kids or those cases or work with them, my clinical experience - I'm a clinical social worker - has taught me something has happened to those kids.
And I think when people hear that, they think: ‘Well, then that that doesn't excuse it.’ And it doesn't. They need to be held accountable. But I think if we really want to tackle this situation, we've really got to look at: How did we get here? How did they get there? How do they get to the point that they engaged in that crime? What happened in their trajectory?
RICHMOND: What’s the best way to bring justice for the abused child, for the victim? Does that mean sending them to an Ohio Department of Youth Services, or ODYS, facility? Is there something missing from that process?
JOHNSON: I think you have to start with what you define justice as. If you define justice as being charged and the perpetrator being charged and going through whatever results from that from the sentencing, whether that's the department of ODYS or probation and services, it's all dependent on the nature of what is the trial, right? And what the charge is. Yes.
I think what I've found in my work is that's a piece of it. But really what people are looking for and need is accountability. And accountability can come in forms of not just charges, but in accepting that this behavior happened and working to not ever engage in the behavior again.
There's a concept called restorative justice that happens where you work through what has happened and the individual takes accountability still for what they've done, but it focuses on a collective whole healing.
RICHMOND: Canopy is facing a $500,000 cut in support in County Executive Chris Ronayne’s proposed budget. What will be the impact if it goes through?
JOHNSON: We only receive funding from the county for one project. It's called the Child Protection Team project. It focuses on severe physical abuse, medical neglect, anything that falls within those categories, and it heavily focuses on making sure that we have a child abuse pediatrician and a sexual assault nurse and a medical team really responding, in step with the rest of the partners because some of those cases are very complex.
It would keep going but with limited resources. We'd have to make reductions in staff or partnerships. It would lessen the amount of medical exams that we could get per se for kids. It would completely eliminate our mental health services for that portion of families.
And it's really awful to have to choose between which kid gets what service and doesn't because of a lack of resources.
Note: According to the county, Canopy underspent its subsidy in the current county budget by $600,000 and it's being right-sized in the proposed budget. Johnson responded that the reason for that underspending was that Canopy has been in the process of launching and staffing up the new Child Protection Team over the last two years.
