Kinnect to Family Program Director Stephanie Beleal says that she believes that the shift to thinking about not just prevention and keeping children safe but creating conditions where children and families can thrive together and are supported is crucial to creating a healthy family environment. T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County Job and Family Services hosted its annual Child Abuse Prevention Luncheon at Undo’s West on Thursday.

The event comes on the heels of the Belmont County Board of Commissioners declaring April as Child Abuse Prevention Month this past week.

Belmont County Department of Job and Family Services Administrator Christine Parker said that the event is held every year to raise awareness about child abuse and neglect.

“All the folks here are the people involved in that mission — schools, law, law enforcement, and mental health professionals all play a role in that,” Parker said.

“We try to keep it a little bit quick, we know that people have to get back to work. And today we’re having a speaker, she’s with a state program called Kinnect to Family that we participate in. And what that is, is when we take custody of a child, the first thing we do is look for a kinship placement for that job, and so we participate in a program that helps us with that,” Parker said.

Kinnect to Family Program Director Stephanie Beleal was Thursday’s featured speaker. She believes one of the great things to acknowledge during Child Abuse Prevention Month is to really think about not only the awareness of prevention, but also how you can have renewed commitment as a community around children, and also around best practices.

“​​As we learn more about what best practices look like, then we have opportunities to progress our work forward in ways here in Belmont County,” Beleal said. “One of those examples is with our Kinnect to Family program. This year’s theme for prevention month is ‘Powered by Hope, Strengthened by Prevention.

“I, for one, love the word hope,” she continued. “We think about the belief and hope that people can change. I think a lot of us are in the fields that we’re in, doing community work, doing social service work, we hope that people can change. That’s why we do this work, and believe that families and people in our community can make the change for the better, and can learn to do new and different things,”

“Belmont County’s implementation story to Kinnect to Family is one of my favorite ones, because that’s what Jeff (Felton) did. He raised his hand and was like, ‘Hey, how about over here?’ Which is great. That’s what we need to do when we see something good, have an opportunity to volunteer, make a noise, to bring things forward. We’ve had a shift in child prevention, working in children’s services when thinking about families and larger families, which is what Kinnect to Family does.”

Beleal added that she believes making the shift from thinking that children need protection from their families, to being protected within those families –n and finding out the pathways to do that by working to create communities that have conditions where families can thrive — has been incredibly successful.

Beleal said the shift is an interesting way to think about not just prevention and keeping children safe, but creating conditions where children and families can thrive together and are supported. “That is where children will be safer when our families have the support from their education system, from their police force, from their community, that is when safety can be achieved,” she said. “So there’s been some shifts in public child welfare, in children’s services, towards this family and kin. There’s a lot of facets to why one is wired to connect. We are wired to be with each other, to thrive in spaces and to heal with one another. Research shows us that we heal through relationships. We get through grief when others can witness it and help us walk through it.

“We want to know who we belong to, where we came from, how do we fit into this society?” Beleal continued. “So we should expect no different from the children that we’re serving, the children that might be facing some really difficult situations, those children are no different than us. They turn into teenagers who then turn into parents themselves, that all have this yearning to know, where do I fit in and how do I connect in this society and in our social networks.”