Out in front of the Lake County Jobs & Family Services building in Painesville, children’s services staff planted 1,100 pinwheels on April 11.
The pinwheels represent the number of children the county’s children services agency helped in 2017. It also represents childhood, a time that is supposed to be carefree, Children Services Coordinator Lori O’Brien said.
O’Brien said the total number of children helped is remaining steady, but more children are in their custody due to the opioid epidemic. The agency has seen a 38 percent increase in the number of children in their custody since 2010, Jobs and Family Services Director Matt Battiato said at the March 27 “Sound of Ideas” taping a Mentor Schools’ Paradigm Center. He said there are 91 children in their custody now and 17 are under 1 year old. That figure is unprecedented as before the opioid epidemic they’d typically have five or six babies, Battiato said.
The planting of the pinwheels is an annual tradition for the agency as April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Typically the pinwheels are planted on Painesville’s square, but due to work on the gazebo the planting was moved to the strip of greenspace just in front of their building.
Some employees got creative in trying to make the pinwheels stick in the ground that’s still hard from the cold start to spring. They used pencils and screwdrivers to start the holes. O’Brien said they’re hopeful that the pinwheels are gone by the end of the week, encouraging children to pick them up and take them home.
“That’s what they’re there for,” she said.
A few hours after the pinwheels were planted, the staff reconvened in the Jobs and Family Services lobby along with public officials and community members to present the Child Advocate of the Year award.
This year’s recipient is Jessica Wright, an attorney for Downtown Willoughby-based Murray and Black. The lifelong Lake County resident has gone “above and beyond” as a guardian ad litem, O’Brien said.
“She makes a difference and children’s lives,” O’Brien said.
Wright said she’s always been interested in helping children and making sure they had the best chances in life.
“I never really realized how prevalent child abuse was — I was kind of ignorant to that growing up around here — until I started doing it and unfortunately I’ve seen it’s a much bigger problem than I had initially suspect,” she said. “Out of all the things I do, it’s definitely the most fulfilling, knowing I get to help kids.”
Wright said she was surprised to receive the award. In her acceptance speech, she said she thinks it should go to the social workers she works with every day.
“I think they’re the ones that really have tough jobs,” she said. “But it’s really been an honor to do this and I hope to continue to be able to do this for many years to come.”
The Lake County commissioners and Lake County Domestic Relations Court Judge Colleen Falkowski also made brief statements before the Advocate of the Year award was presented.
“I want to ask you to be extremely vigilant,” Falkowski said. “You are children’s eyes and ears, especially children under 8. They do not know how to go for help. They do not know how to protect themselves. Some of them don’t know how to call 911. They don’t have a phone on them.”
If you see something that’s not right, she said to call Children Services at 440-350-4000.
“It’s better to report conduct and trouble shoot than to remain silent,” she said. “We’ve seen that through our neighboring counties and we need to be vigilant about younger ones and our older children too.”
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