DYS kicks off Child Abuse and Neglect awareness month

The Department of Community and Cultural Affairs Division of Youth Services, which kicked off its annual Child Abuse and Neglect Awareness Month activities yesterday, is putting a twist on this year’s festivities.

According to DYS director Vivian Sablan, this year the division wanted to do things differently by focusing on reaching out to families and children.

“One of our highlights of the year is coming up which is our Child Abuse and Neglect Awareness Month campaign activities. That will kick off with a proclamation signing at the Capitol Hill Softball field. It will be followed by our first Strike-out Child Abuse softball tournament which is going to be happening throughout the weekend. We’re doing things a little bit differently this time, we’re trying to reach out to as many of the families and children. It’s always nice to have a proclamation signing in doors but as much as we appreciate our partners, we want to be able to reach out to our target population,” she said.

Sablan also added that this year, DYS representatives will be featured on local radio stations throughout the month to talk about child abuse in hopes of further raising awareness.

“Part of our outreach is to get on radio stations every Tuesday morning from 8am to 9am where we will be talking about physical abuse, neglect, what supportive services we can provide, we’re also going to be breaking down our data and also talking about mandated reporters and some of our presentations we make available to both mandated reporters and the public and private schools,” she said.

Lastly, DYS will also be doing roadside wavings every Friday of this month.

“We will be conducting roadside waving every Friday morning from 7:30am to 8am. The first roadside waving will be across the Marianas High School,” she said.

In a statement from DCCA Secretary Francisco M. Rabauliman, he said it is important to raise awareness about child abuse and neglect as it is a growing problem in the CNMI.

“The whole idea here is to create awareness on child abuse and neglect. It’s an increasing problem for the community and I think the more we educate and the more we disseminate information, the more the community is prepared to respond to these kinds of incidences,” he said.

Previously DYS reported that after comparing the number of child abuse and neglect cases from fiscal year 2020 and 2023, the number of incidences reported have doubled with DYS currently tending to over 1,000 child abuse victims.

Sablan shared that for the past few years, DYS has been maintaining consistent child abuse and neglect reports since FY2020 adding that when comparing the number of cases from FY2020 to FY2023, the numbers are alarming.

Specifically, in FY2020, DYS received 271 child abuse and neglect cases. Meanwhile, in FY2023, DYS had 459 cases. With the 459 cases, DYS is currently trending to 1,214 child abuse victims.

Breaking down the number of cases in FY 2023; DYS received 245 emotional abuse cases, 202 neglect cases, 115 physical abuse cases, 103 sexual abuse cases, and 148 other cases (this includes domestic violence, minor sex trafficking, truancy, teen pregnancy, etc.).