Workshop stresses team approach in child abuse cases

By By Steve Gillespie / staff writer
Feb. 20, 2003
Prosecutors, law enforcement officers, social workers and medical staff attended a team training workshop in Meridian on Wednesday. The subject was how to handle child abuse cases.
The workshop, held at Wesley House Community Center, was headed by Bryan Vonder Bruegge of Gulfport. Bruegge is an attorney and program director of the South Mississippi Child Advocacy Center with the Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse.
Twenty-one people attended the session, which covered: handling child abuse and neglect cases, focusing on sexual abuse and exploitation; how to recognize when a child's death might be related to abuse or neglect; and investigating and prosecuting cases of child abuse and neglect.
Ginger Grissom Stevens, associate director of Wesley House Community Center, said the workshop teaches people involved in a child abuse case to work together as a team.
Wesley House, affiliated with the United Methodist Church, is also an agency of United Way of East Mississippi. Wesley House offers an educational center, a Christian relief agency, a clinic, a sexual assault crisis center and a children's advocacy center.
Victims programs are funded in part by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Violence Against Women Act, and the Mississippi State Department of Health.