CONCORD, N.C. – The Gaston County Department of Health and Human Services saw two of its teams honored recently at the North Carolina Public Health Association’s fall conference in Concord. The Community Child Protection Team and Child Fatality Prevention Teams won a Local Health Department Recognition Award from the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation.
These two teams work closely to prevent child neglect and death. Examples of how the work of these teams have played out in the community is through the Safe Sleep campaign, which has helped raise awareness in the community of safe sleeping habits for parents and their newborns, and the Remove the Tape campaign, which encourages members of the community in a variety of roles to report what they believe to be signs of child abuse.
In addition to staff from Gaston County DHHS, these two teams also consist of Gaston County residents, law enforcement, EMS, the court system, the District Attorney’s Office, and the medical community.
“I am incredibly proud of the work done by the Child Fatality Prevention Team, the Community Child Protection Team and all of the folks in Gaston County’s Department of Health and Human Services working to prevent deaths from unsafe sleeping choices,” said Gaston County Chief District Court Judge John Greenlee, who chairs the CFPT. “The work being done is saving lives and having a definitive impact on the safety of children in our community.”
The award brings with it $10,000 that will be used by the teams to help implement initiatives they recommend to continue to reduce child fatalities in Gaston County.
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