National Children's Alliance at the University of Scranton

As some of you know, I am the coordinator of the University of Scranton's Education for Justice office. We are a group that encourages faculty to incorporate justice-related themes into the courses and provide some financial assistance for programming.

Last night we welcomed Denise Richards to campus. Denise is the director of government affairs for the National Children's Alliance (NCA), the national association and accrediting body for Children's Advocacy Centers (CAC). It was a great opportunity for our students, many of them engaged in service opportunities and committed to helping others as part of their post-graduation plans, to hear from someone who was able to turn her passion and faith into a very effective advocacy career. We had a good turnout, especially among counseling and human services majors and the Scranton community. Unfortunately, I can't say that the political science representation was at their level.

Denise spoke about her efforts to keep the federal government committed to funding the nationwide Children's Advocacy Centers. These centers are community-based, public-private partnerships that coordinate child abuse investigations and intervention needs of children who experienced abuse and their families. As as foster parent this past year, I have a much better understanding of how important these centers are and how important Denise work is.

One of the issues that can up during her talk and our conversation during the day was the unaccompanied minors crisis. She is optimistic that Congress is going to move on legislation related to unaccompanied minors in the new year. There is more across the aisle cooperation on children's issues than most others in Congress. When I asked her about the media coverage of Republicans who had wanted to do away with the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, she said that is was a small but vocal group of House members. She did not think that repeal or significant changes to the law would have passed the Senate or President Obama's desk. There was more bite than bark this summer.

Denise's visit was a great opportunity for our student body and wider community to come together to learn more about a very important issue and to continue a conversation as to how we can continue to work together to improve our Scranton community.