Weekend activities bring attention to child abuse

Inflatable rides and hot dog sales were the order of the day at Peachtree Center on Saturday. Cherokee County Department of Social Services and the Open Arms Foster Parents Association held a "Family Fun Day" to help educate residents about child abuse and child abuse prevention. The Cherokee County Department of Social Services and the Open Arms Foster Parent Association had a lot of information to spread. On Saturday, they decided to hold a family fun day to bring it to people's attention.

April is Child Abuse Awareness month, and the local groups wanted to bring to light what they see as a problem in the county.

"South Carolina is ranked 49th in the country in reporting cases of child abuse," said Diane Peterson, president of the Open Arms Foster Parents Association. "Ignoring this problem will not make it go away. Only by finding solutions can we solve the problem. Children are too precious for it to be so prevalent in our county. We need to work to make the community aware that this happens in Cherokee County."

Hot dogs were sold and children and parents played on inflatable rides. The money from the hot dog sales will help Open Arms to prepare new foster parents when children arrive in their homes.

"Most people have about 9 months to prepare for a baby," Peterson said. "But when we take a child into foster care, we have almost no time to get ready. New foster parents need help to get clothes and other necessities, so this money from the sale will be used to buy gift cards, usually $50, for places like Wal-Mart and then help the moms and dads go shopping. It's rather difficult to predict what we'll need, because we don't know if the child will be a boy or a girl. We don't know what age or, of course, what size they'll be. Gift cards are usually the best thing that people can donate to help us, but we can always use baby supplies."

Kirby Memorial Baptist Church provided live music and tables with information

from DSS, Open Arms, the Disabilities and Special Needs Board, and the Crisis Pregnancy Center were there for patrons to gather information.

Getting the word out was the main focus of the event.

"Things went really well on Saturday," Peterson said. "We had a light turnout at the beginning of the day, but things went okay. Friday night at Limestone College we had about 50 to 100 people show up for the balloon launch and Tony Leibert gave a wonderful speech."