Published: November 15, 2008 08:49 pm            

Saville Center still helping kids

The Saville Center has undergone several changes in its 10 years, but it is achieving just what one of its founders hoped it would.

The center, which began in 1998 as the Child Advocacy Center of Payne County, provides a home base for the Child Abuse Response, Evaluation and Support Team as its members investigate cases of reported child abuse. The team meets at the center to review cases, share information and, when necessary, interview children.

A forensic interview specialist conducts an interview with a child in a room with several video cameras and a one-way mirror so other members of the team can see the interview. Before the center opened, a child in a reported abuse case would have to go through several interviews for law enforcement, child welfare and medical professionals, said Vanessa Wedlake, a Department of Human Services worker who helped found the center.

“The Saville Center is my heart. I wanted it to do just what it is. I am so proud of that,” she said.

She no longer works directly with the center since she moved out of the child welfare division into the temporary assistance for needy families program.

Wedlake, along with Barbara Gish and Peggy McCormick, helped organize several Child Watch Tours in the 1990s to bring attention to child abuse. The child advocacy center came out of one of the tours.

Its point, she said, was to bring together all the people involved in investigating child abuse so they could cooperate and collaborate on cases to help the children and their families.

“Before that, law enforcement may have one agenda, and child welfare would have the same agenda, but look at it differently,” she said. “The therapist would look at it differently, and the doctor would. It was disjointed.

“It was harder to protect children, harder to have a single voice for court and any sort of change.”

Kelly Griffith, a child psychologist with the Payne County Health Department, who has been on the CARES team since the beginning, said the Saville Center has helped the team bring together the people who can offer broader perspectives on helping children and families.

“When we first started, the team — before the Saville Center — did not have a regular place to meet,” he said. “It was catch as catch can.”

A task force began planning the center in April 1998 and elected a board and officers in July. In August, Stillwater Medical Center donated a house on South Monroe as a temporary home for the center.

Initially, it was used on a limited basis for meetings and case reviews and occasional interviews, said Executive Director Teresa Tully, who joined the center in 1999.

“I’ve been here as long as anybody could be here,” she said, explaining that the board hired her when it received funding.

Wedlake said, “They are fortunate to have Teresa there, the original person. To have that kind of stability is amazing.”

The center bought a house in 2002 with money donated by Dorothy Saville, for whom it is now named.

In addition to providing a place for the CARES team to work, the Saville Center also offers training to people involved in investigating child abuse, Tully said, and is moving into offering more statewide training, particularly with its new conference room that opened in February.

“I think we are very fortunate,” Griffith said. “I went from working in Stillwater when there was nothing like this, no facility, no multidisciplinary team, and working with kids without a system was very difficult, very fragmented. It’s been a really wonderful, transformational experience watching the whole thing come together and develop.”

        

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