Safer Shores

Another good day , I was invited to go to Safer Shores, this is an organisation that provides intervention(hope ) and healing to children victims and families affected by abuse.
Yes it s a bit off track for my project but was incredibly informative as far a police work is concerned.http://www.safeshores.org/

 This is their office ,bought a few years ago it was previously a school that ran down.
This photo (like many I take ) does not do justice to the interior.
The organisation Safer shores has transformed the inside to something that a victim of abuse would feel comfortable within, and they have done it very well , the on site facilities include
social services
Medical facilities
Police detectives who specialities is child interview's
AND

Family support units

All under one roof.

I met several individuals there all of who showed commitment to the depts they worked in, is this something that would work in the UK , their dependency on private funding for something that alot would see as the police and special services job indicates to me that no it wouldn't , this said it doesn't mean that we should not consider the options.

One of the other things that occurs here is training for police detectives involved in child abuse cases. i sat in on one of theses lectures , given by forensic medical officers(Drs) all of who are specialist in paediatric medicine and abuse. I listened to this and found that the depth that was gone into exceded anything that I had heard before in the UK. I asked if this was the norm, and apparently it is .

   
I also met Cpt Lewis Douglas who is in the process of re writing the missing person procedural document, for thre DC police, 800 pages ,good luck with that one