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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Monday, October 26, 2009 5:08 PM CDT
Training sessions will help those who work with developmentally disabled residents

By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com

CHARLESTON -- Training sessions scheduled for this week will help social service workers help developmentally disabled people who might be the victims of sex crimes.

Four Coles County organizations will make up a local coalition that’s supposed to aid people with disabilities, Bonnie Buckley of the Sexual Assault Counseling and Information Service said. She said the developmentally disabled can be some of the “most vulnerable” to sex crimes.

“They can’t communicate in a way that a police officer might be able to understand,” Buckley said. “We didn’t want people to slip through the cracks.”

SACIS along with CCAR Industries Inc., the Charleston Transitional Facility and LifeLinks mental health center will make up the local organizations handling the project. Buckley said the Illinois Department of Human Services received a federal grant to fund the project and picked Coles County as one of five sites in the state.

Buckley said the state department likely chose the county to be part of the project because there are several organizations and facilities here that work with the developmentally disabled.

“We’re a lot farther down the road,” she said. “We have the opportunity to serve a lot of people with disabilities.”

Training from the program is available to any social service provider in Coles County and the surrounding area, Buckley said, and will take place Friday at CCAR, 1530 Lincoln Ave. Registration is due Wednesday by contacting Mary Irwin at CCAR at 348-0127 extension 325 or mirwin@ccarindustries.org.

A morning training session will address effective community response to sexual violence against people with disabilities and an afternoon session will be a workshop for advocates.

Irwin agreed that possible communication difficulties make it important to have a way to help investigate sex crimes the against developmentally disabled.

“It gives them a voice,” she said. “All survivors of sexual violence or abuse who have disabilities will have access to high quality integrated supports.”

Buckley said local organizers have been meeting for about a year and have already made contact with police chiefs, judges and the emergency room at Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center. The coalition will probably try to get other groups involved in the future, she said.

Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 238-6858.

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devilishangel61401 wrote on Oct 26, 2009 2:37 PM:

" What a wonderful program good luck with it. "