Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center

Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center received:

* $40,498 in seed money, called a nonmember standard grant. More money likely will be awarded once the center opens.

* $5,000 for training what is called a child protective investigative team. The training builds team unity and helps officials understand how to work with abused and neglected children.

* $50,000 to pay for an executive director and office equipment.

"We're clicking right along," Donna Koester, president of the Safe Harbor board, said in announcing the grants.

The Washington-based National Children's Alliance, formerly the National Network of Children's Advocacy Centers, is a nationwide not-for-profit membership organization to support communities in helping victims of severe child abuse. Its accredited members are child advocacy centers.

Safe Harbor has its tax-exempt status, a board of directors, a cooperative agreement with local and state governments and a set of bylaws, all finalized in the last six months or so. What it doesn't have yet is a place to operate.

"The main thing we need now is a location," Koester said. "Ideally someone or some entity in the community or a government entity can make property available to us, donate it or maybe rent it for 50 years at a dollar a year. We're looking, but we're not as close to finding a place as we'd like to be."

The center would serve children in the four counties of the 4th Judicial District: Sevier, Grainger, Cocke and Jefferson. It would provide a home-like atmosphere for helping children suspected of being abused or neglected. The center would house officials who would be part of the team to help the children and their families.

Although Sevier is the largest of the four counties in the district and the site of an estimated 40 percent of reported child abuse and neglect cases, Koester said that doesn't mean the headquarters must be located in Sevier County.

"It could go in any of the four counties," she said. "Our long-term goal is a hub and satellites in each county."

Marian Oates, vice president of the board, is delighted with the grants, especially considering how young the center is.

"I'm very pleased to have something that started in May and has moved as far as we have now," she said. "For years I've been concerned about the number of reported child abuse cases. I had wanted some type of facility like this in the county."

Oates also likes the fact the center would serve four counties.

"The other three counties have needs too," she said.

Koester has challenged the board to get the center open and operational by June 2006.

"They all looked at me like I'd gone over the edge," she laughed. "But this is an important need in our community. It needs to be done. It's long overdue. We can make it happen."

Koester also said:

* New members of the board are Andy Dossett, chief of police in Bean Station in Grainger County; and Bill Blevins, chairman of the Family Enrichment Institute at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson County.

* The grant money has to be spent within a year or the center will lose it.

* The center applied for $105,000 in grants from the alliance, and got $95,498.