Part of the proclamation says more than 300,000 children live in Clark County and the Clark County JFS, Family Services Division received 3,353 calls in 2024 from citizens.
Of those referrals, JFS conducted 874 specific investigations, staff provided 4,695 in-person required appointments and interviews with families and children, and hosted over 1,400 visitations for families.
“That is quite an amount that we see,“ said Clark County JFS Director Ginny Martycz. “(For visitation) those are families that are unable to meet with the children and trying to get their children back, so we have a center there where the parents can have supervised visitation and that’s one of the joyful things we do.”
Tied in with those numbers, Martycz said nearly 10,000 children received food stamps and over 20,000 received Medicaid in the county, and the child support division provided services to almost 11,400 cases.
“While we focus on child abuse prevention month in April, and that is important, our agency wraps around all of the families in Clark County to provide the services because they can’t do their job without the rest of the staff. We can’t do our job without the rest of the community. We appreciate the commission’s recognition. We appreciate the citizens who will make those referrals,” she said.
Others who attended the proclamation include Shelby Lowe, supervisor of the Child Advocacy Center, which investigates the worst cases of abuse and neglect in the county; Social Service Supervisor II of Clark County Family and Children Services Kristie Heckman, and Clark County Job and Family Services Assistant Director Tom McGrath.
“I know the team works extra hard and I also understand that we’re more than one unit short in our employees to do this sort of work. I know that that’s even an extra burden on the supervisors and all the team members. Thank you for that extra work to make sure that our children here in Clark County are safe,” Commissioner Charlie Patterson said.
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