Pee Dee child abuse prevention, parenting efforts get funding

FLORENCE — A program dedicated to making Pee Dee residents better parents to their children has received an extra boost this month in the form of a $22,500 grant.

Prevent Child Abuse Pee Dee, a program of the Pee Dee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Assault, received the grant from the Children’s Trust of South Carolina, said Shirley March, director of Prevent Child Abuse Pee Dee.

The grant money is meant to support the program’s Parenting with Excellence Project, March said.

Parenting with Excellence offers parenting classes at child-care centers in Darlington, Florence, Dillon and Williamsburg counties.

“I think all parents can benefit from some kind of classes,” March said. “If I’m a mechanic, I go through training. There is no training for parents.”

The sessions are designed to engage parents in their children’s education and care so families can prosper, she said.

March said sessions and workshops cover a variety of subjects which many parents will find helpful and interesting.

One session will help parents identify their parenting style by defining what it means to be a passive, indulgent or authoritarian parent. Other sessions help parents make connections between a child’s diet and his or her oral heath.

March said Prevent Child Abuse Pee Dee strives to make the subject matter of each session as interesting and appealing as possible.

“Getting parents engaged is very difficult. But the first step are centers for excellence,” she said. “They get excited and then we’re excited.”

The centers are venues for the sessions and are a main component in making the project successful, March said.

“The reason why we do it in the daycares is because it helps when the care provider and the parent are in the same arena. They can work together,” she said.

Six centers serve as venues for the sessions.

Despite the best efforts to keep children from being victims of child abuse and trauma, it still happens, said Samantha Hardee-Baumbach of the Elizabeth Pettigrew Durant Children’s Center.

That’s why the the Pee Dee Coalition and the Durant Children’s Center utilize Project BEST, Hardee-Baumbach said.

Project BEST is a 10-year statewide collaborative effort to use innovative community-based dissemination, training and implementation method to increase the capacity for communities to deliver evidence supported mental health treatments for children suffering from abuse and trauma.

Project BEST is relatively new to the Pee Dee, Hardee Baumbach said. It includes Community Change Teams, which are comprised of officials from the state Department of Juvenile Justice, local law enforcement, the state Department of Social Services and mental health counselors.

Members of the team must be extensively trained in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, also know as TF-CBT, said Meg Temple, clinical director for the Durant Children’s Center.

Among other things, this form of treatment mandates that children talk about their trauma, Temple said

There is a very detailed process called a Trauma Narrative that prepares children for this stage, she said.

“You’ve built them up and now they tell this story,” she said. “The point is, they get so comfortable with the story that the story stops bothering them. Treatment can change the rest of a child’s life which, in essence, will affect us all.”

Project BEST is ideal for the effective treatment of children, Hardee-Baumbach said.

“We needed to take a step back and say, ‘We have plenty of this or plenty of that, but what’s missing?’” she said. “Project BEST was right on time.”