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Sedgwick County has received a petition from 203 health care professionals requesting funding for a multidisciplinary center that would serve abused children under one roof.
The center is operating now but has not had the money to put all of the child abuse services in one location. That would make child abuse investigations and treatment easier and less painful for children and their families, the center's supporters say.
County Commission Chairman Kelly Parks said he expects the county will provide some funding, but the question is how much.
First, commissioners need more information about the center's plans and need to determine how much the city of Wichita might contribute, considering that many of the children served by the center would live in the city, Parks said Tuesday.
Even without the petition, which the county received Tuesday, commissioners were planning to consider the funding before the end of the year, Parks said.
The nonprofit Child Advocacy Center of Sedgwick County was established in 2008. But it still needs a building large enough so that child abuse victims can receive services in one place from a variety of child care professionals working together, said Rhonda O'Neill, a center volunteer and former pediatric intensive care nurse who led the petition effort.
Such a facility is crucial to serving abused children in the most effective and humane way, she said.
The petition drive began a week ago. Of the 203 people who signed, 44 are physicians who treat children, O'Neill said. The petition represents many of the pediatric medical providers in the county, she said in a letter Tuesday addressed to County Manager William Buchanan and county commissioners.
She wrote in the letter that as a nurse, "I have seen too many children die from abuse at the hands of adults who were to be trusted care givers."
As a center volunteer, O'Neill said, she has "watched with disappointment at the lack of funding offered to the program. I understand that with the economy it is a difficult time but I believe there should be no greater priority in our community than caring for these children."
The center helps about 2,500 children a year who are sexually and physically abused, runaways or victims of Internet crime.
A key advantage to having a single location is that it limits the number of times children have to relate their experiences to health care professionals or investigators, supporters of advocacy centers say.
"This is the most traumatic event in these kids' lives, and having to relive it and retell it to strangers... is a secondary trauma," O'Neill said.
Laura Murphy, a pediatric critical care physician at Wesley Medical Center, said she signed the petition partly because she has seen what another such center has done to help abused children.
In the late 1990s, she spent time as a medical student at a child advocacy center in Tulsa where children were interviewed in a non-threatening atmosphere with teddy bears, soft lights and aquariums. The professionals investigating the allegations and treating the children could watch and listen to the interviews from another room.
With a new location, the Wichita center would have a welcoming atmosphere for children, parents and caregivers, said Mary Starkey, the center's executive assistant.
"That starts the healing process immediately," she said.
The Wichita center now has administrative quarters downtown in the Finney State Office Building, but space is limited. The Wichita-Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Child Unit, which investigates child abuse, works out of cramped offices in the building's basement.
The idea of a child advocacy center is to put all of the disciplines that respond to child abuse — investigators, prosecutors, medical providers, therapists, social service providers, advocates and others — in one spot.
That way, O'Neill said, "They get to share information, they get to do what's best for the child." Now, victims have to go to several locations to get all of the services, O'Neill said.
As a result, some children don't get to all of the agencies they should see, according to some physicians, O'Neill said.
Families have difficulty getting to multiple locations and appointments, sometimes because of transportation problems, Starkey said.
The local center's funding needs include rent and moving expenses. The center has found a facility that would cost about $160,000 a year to rent, and moving expenses would be roughly $100,000, O'Neill said.
The center failed to obtain county funding this summer.
The center also welcomes any private donations, O'Neill said.
Buchanan, the county manager, said he sees two main funding issues involving the center: rent and operating funds.
The county has asked the center for a budget for those expenses and is reviewing the numbers, Buchanan said.
If enough commissioners determine "it was important enough, we would make it happen," he said.
