Sheldon Kennedy Advocacy Centre partners with Catholic school board to confront child abuse

By Alanna Smith
Calgary Herald
May 10, 2017

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/advocate-catholic-school-board-partner-to-confront-child-abuse

Sheldon Kennedy

A groundbreaking partnership is uniting schools and social services to curb child abuse. 

The Calgary Catholic School District and the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre are signing a memorandum of understanding Wednesday evening to formalize their collaboration. 

The centre is a non-profit organization focused on ending child abuse and helping those affected. 

“In the majority of cases we see, children are being hurt by their parents or caregivers, so the safest place for them, a lot of times, is in schools,” said centre founder Sheldon Kennedy.

“I think for a long time there has been a disconnect between schools and social services, so what we have tried to do is include schools in the conversation and give them a seat at the table so we can work together to better integrate the kids back into school.”

The collaboration will focus not only on intervention but prevention, with education as a priority.

Information sharing between the two parties will also work to speed up the recovery process for children. The information shared will be in accordance with privacy laws and is one of the items outlined in the memorandum. 

Much of the education will focus on the effect of child abuse on mental health. 

“Child abuse is the incident, but it’s the suicidal ideation, the self-harm, the addiction, the depression. It’s invisible to most people’s eyes,” said Kennedy. “What we try to do and have been able to do with students is try to make the invisible, visible.”

The school district has been involved with the centre since its inception in 2013, and chief superintendent Gary Strother of Calgary Catholic sits on the board of directors.

He said the district was able to see what a truly integrated practice looked like and was passionate about aligning with the centre to better serve the children that both sit in their classrooms and seek help. 

“We just want our children to be safe. We want them to understand what’s going on, that it’s not their fault, and we want them to know that if there is a challenge in their life that there are people they can go to,” said Strother. 

Additionally, he wants the staff to be well informed so they can identify the challenges that abused children may experience. 

Strother believes this integrated approach should be modelled by other educational institutions, especially since Sheldon Centre is looking to open six new locations in the province. 

The partnership is an “exciting and huge step” in ensuring a student’s educational success after suffering child abuse, said Kennedy. 

“What we know is we can’t do this in isolation, or in silos, we have to do this together.”