PHOTO BY CLARE JENSEN

Children’s services staff from left to right: Charlotte Harris, Linda Charette, Laura BlueHorse, Lisa Radloff, Dawn Barrett, Mandy Morlin, Rachel Conger, Tanya Coats, Helen Hook, Laura Ducolon, Tara Reynon and Lonnie Spencer (back). Not pictured is Peter Lefeau.

Children's Services:

Working hard to protect Tribal youth

By Clare Jensen

The staff at Puyallup Tribe’s Children’s Services department deals with it all.

They’re prepared at a moment’s notice to handle a heart-wrenching domestic situation, sometimes in the middle of the night. They don’t get enough rest, miss meals and have a caseload a mile long.

But you don’t hear any of them complaining, because each of the 13 staff members truly loves what they do.

“I think I have a group of people who work the hardest,” said director of Children’s Services Tara Reynon. “They’re up at 3 a.m. transporting a child to treatment, so they can better their lives.”

The Children’s Services department handles a variety of needs for children in unfavorable domestic situations: placing abused or neglected children in foster homes, investigating claims, preserving biological families and giving foster children independent life skills.

They are also reaching out to train the rest of the Tribal community how to identify and report abuse.

Through the month of April (National Child Abuse Prevention Month), Children’s services is training all Tribal staff who come in contact with

children and/or vulnerable adults.

This means all Tribal educators, medical professionals and law enforcement will get a proper understanding of how to identify abuse, and how to handle tough situations.

“Responsibilities as a mandated reporter have been kind of ambiguous,” Tara Reynon said, and because Tribal procedure is different than the state’s, it is important for such professionals to know the

right way to report such claims.

Currently, Children’s Services has 150 open cases and 26 open Child Protective Services (CPS) cases. Tara Reynon said that is a number that has tripled over the last five years.

“It’s only [April], and we already have half of the amount of cases from 2007,” she said.

Of the cases seen at Children’s Services, parental neglect and drug and alcohol abuse (which typically go hand-in-hand) are the biggest issues.

Out of the 63 cases in 2007, 43 of them were related to neglect.

With the influx of cases, Children’s Services is in need of even more Tribal foster homes for the children who cannot be reunited with a family member.

The growth in cases doesn’t necessarily mean more people are abusing, but that more people are aware of it and reporting it.

“The community is seeing a need to protect our children and see a violence-free community,” Tara Reynon said. That’s another reason why the abuse reporting training is crucial.

“They’ll learn how to do a good referral; it’s very hard to do. If we can train at least the professionals better, we can protect the children better,” Tara Reynon said.

The department works as hard as they can with the resources they have, but feel they could do an even better job with additional staff and a new building.

The building Children’s Services envisions has a more home-like setting to comfort children who are removed from their home, visitation rooms for families working toward preservation, and a kitchen to teach students in the independent living skills program how to cook, among other things.

Until then, they plan to keep doing what they do, because of their passion for helping children.

“We want to do whatever we can to protect

them,” Tara Reynon said. “We get to speak on behalf of the children; that’s an honor.”

For more information on programs, education or how to become a foster parent, contact Children’s

Services at (253) 680-5532.

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