Nearly 700,000 children are abused in the United States every year, according to the National Children’s Alliance. And with April being National Child Prevention Month, Good Shepherd Health Care System is bringing awareness to the issue by planting pinwheels in front of the hospital’s main entrance.
“We do this every year for the month of April,” said Caitlin Cozad, Good Shepherd’s marketing and communications director. The pinwheels were planted by youngsters from the hospital’s Children’s Center, which cares for the hospital employees’ children.
“They like to come out and be a part of it,” said Cozad.
Several dozen girls and boys from the Children’s Center, along with their moms, planted around 80 to 90 pinwheels Wednesday morning to focus attention on child abuse.
The event is a partnership between Good Shepherd, Prevent Child Abuse Oregon and Umatilla-Morrow Head Start.
“A pinwheel garden represents a vision of the world where all children grow up happy, healthy and prepared to succeed in supportive families and communities,” said Cozad.
Good Shepherd’s Safe Communities Coalition, a subcommittee of the Healthy Communities Coalition, has several focus areas including child abuse prevention and awareness, said Jessica Reker, MPH, RN, Director of Good Shepherd’s Community Health & Outreach.
Reker said the current targets for child abuse prevention/awareness in Safe Communities’ action plan is to increase the number of community members who are able to define what constitutes as abuse (physical, emotional, and neglect elements), and increase utilization of local parenting classes. This group works in collaboration with community partner organizations to help disseminate information and education on a variety of topics around child abuse.
Below are some national statistics from the Children’s Bureau which partners with federal, state, tribal and local agencies to improve the overall health and well-being of our nation’s children and families:
- 4 out every 1,000 children in the U.S. were victimized in 2020
- Children less than 1 had the highest victimization rate at 25.1 percent
- 6 percent of victims were abused by one or both parents
- 6 percent of victims are abused by a mother acting alone
- 6 percent of victims were abused by a father acting alone
- 7 percent of victims were abused by both parents
- 4 percent of victims were abused by a perpetrator who was not the child’s parent
For more information, visit the Children’s Bureau website.
Call 541-564-6878 for more information on pinwheels. To report any concerns for child abuse or neglect, call 855-503-SAFE.
