Hello. I wanted to introduce myself to this group. My name is Rene Howitt and I'm the founder a non-profit child advocacy organization, COPE24....Changing Our Parenting Experience. Our mission is "To significantly reduce incidences of child abuse and neglect." Our methodology is through parenting education. I've been working with Family Consumer Science (FACS) and health teachers since 2008. We believe that parenting education should be a priority in all of our high schools, reaching all of our students. COPE24 has been producing reality-based documentary videos that these teachers use as supplemental material to their text books.
I also sit on Missouri's Children's Justice Task Force and Critical Event Review committee. Much effort, time and money is spent by the government and child welfare in an attempt to reduce child abuse and neglect. However, the problems continue to grow. Our system is overwhelmed. Our system is set up to react once a child has been harmed. Then we offer parenting education. But a child has already been harmed.
Using the ACE results, I have developed a presentation in an effort to create a movement that gets the public to understand the magnitude of this problem. We know that more than 17,500 people participated in the ACE study and 69% of them reported an ACE score of 1 or higher. The general public doesn't understand the connection between the unhealthy/dysfunctional family and most of other serious social issues our nation is dealing with. The only way we can begin to dig out of this problem is by reaching all of our youth, in our high schools, and preparing them for the tremendous responsibility of parenting.
This group can help me to reach more people with this presentation. Soon we will have a speaker page/tab on the homepage of our website. In the interim if you can visit the site (www.cope24.com) to see what we have already accomplished it may be helpful. This message needs to reach our faith-based communities, educators, advocates, legislators, first responders, medical professionals and law enforcement. Please contact me if you would like more information at renehowitt@cope24.com. Thank you all for caring.
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