Agenda:

PROGRAM & SPEAKERS

Registration (9:00-9:30am)

Light Breakfast provided

Introduction (9:30-9:45am)

What to Expect from a DV Client? (9:45-10:15am)

Pat Kelly, Coordinator, United Family Services Victim Assistance

Criminal DV Cases (10:15-10:45am)

Jamie Adams, ADA, District Attorney’s Office

Ethical Considerations of Representing Children in Domestic Violence Cases (10:45-11:45am)

Valerie Pearce, Attorney, Council For Children’s Rights

Civil DV Court Procedures (11:45-12:00pm)

Jeff White, Clerk, Mecklenburg County District Court

Lunch (12:00-12:30pm)

Lunch provided

View from the Bench (12:30-1:00pm)

The Honorable Rickye McKoy-Mitchell, District Court Judge, Mecklenburg County

The Honorable Ronald L. Chapman, District Court Judge, Mecklenburg County

The Honorable Tyyawdi M. Hands, District Court Judge, Mecklenburg County

Preparing for a Civil DV Case (1:00-2:00pm)

Kelly Durden, Staff Attorney, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Inc.

Break (2:00-2:15pm)

Going to Court for a Civil DV Case (2:15-3:15pm)

Faith Fickling, Staff Attorney, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Inc.

Questions & Answers (3:15-3:30pm)

Three local stories converged for me this week that may lighten your spirit and inspire you as the New Year starts. They did for me.

The first started at my hair stylist’s.

Charlie Clark, my hairdresser, is also president of a group of golfers – 40-plus in number – called the Par Busters. The Par Busters aren’t just a social club, they’re actively engaged in philanthropic and community efforts.

The Par Busters last year became involved in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Reid Park Academy. For Thanksgiving and Christmas, they adopted five families with children attending the school – providing food, clothing and toys in partnership with the Care to Share Outreach Center. The men plan to become lunch buddies with the students, and the group is trying to set up a junior golf program there.

Why are they doing all this for Reid Park? “Our clubhouse is in the area,” Clark said, “and we wanted to help.”
On Tuesday night, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board heard about a lot of other people who want to help Reid Park.

They’re part of an extraordinary public-private venture called the Reid Park Collaborative Initiative. The initiative, a pilot project, will do something that I – and a lot of other people – have advocated for years: It will provide “a cohesive and accessible” range of services and resources that low-income and other at-risk students often desperately need to succeed.

It’s the kind of holistic approach to helping students in challenging circumstances that Geoffrey Canada and his much-touted Harlem Children’s Zone uses. It recognizes, as Reid Park principal Mary Sturge emphasized Tuesday, that an “effective teacher is not enough” to help all children reach their potential. It does indeed take a community.

Sturge noted that effective teachers have brought Reid Park a long way. The high-poverty school that became one of CMS’s pre-kindergarten through eighth grade schools this year has gone from 18 percent of students performing on grade level to 51 percent during Sturge’s tenure. But to make further progress, more is required, she said.

So last February, planning began on a model to do more. What has emerged is a program to provide wraparound services for 150 of the school’s 800 or so students – those most in need – and their families. It involves a range of partner agencies including the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services, the Council for Children’s Rights and Communities in Schools. It also involves support from myriad volunteers and nonprofits. In all, 50 to 60 agencies and groups have committed to provide a “system of care” framework of support to meet the academic, emotional and physical needs of students and their families.

The system aims to maximize the involvement of all the people who know and care for a child, and the volunteers who are already helping. It also emphasizes what successful models of educating children continue to show – the need for coordinated, community-wide strategies.

It also highlights this – that “philanthropic” efforts to address needs don’t have to involve people with large amounts of money. That’s something I heard again on Wednesday at a YWCA breakfast meeting discussing a new local book, “Giving Back: A Tribute to Generations of African American Philanthropists.”

A panel of givers at the Y breakfast highlighted the breadth and depth of such giving. It included people of means such as attorney Rob Harrington and retired educator Jeanne Brayboy, but also a young entrepreneur, Rashad Davis, founding member of the New Generation of African American Philanthropists giving circle, and 18-year-old college student Olivia Stinson, founder of PEN Pals Book Club, a support group for children with incarcerated parents – an idea that grew out of her church’s Christmas giving to children with incarcerated parents. Astoundingly she started that effort at age 14.

Author Valaida Fullwood said she wrote the already nationally praised book (the Light Factory’s Charles W. Thomas took the photos) to honor philanthropy that doesn’t often get recognized and to inspire more people to embrace philanthropy. Communities benefit from it, she said.

They do. Charlotte is “rich” with givers. But more are needed. This year, become a philanthropist too.

Copyright 2012 . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Fannie Flono is an Observer associate editor. E-mail: fflono@charlotteobserver.com.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/13/2922313/try-being-a-philanthropist-this.html#storylink=cpy

Defintions:

IDEA is a federal law ensuring that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education (FAPE) that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.

-20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq.

Special Education is defined as “specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents, to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability.”

-20 U.S.C. § 1401(29)

Child with a disability: age 3-21 with a physical or mental disability that interferes with learning so that specially designed instruction is needed to make educational progress.

Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): the setting in which children with disabilities can be educated with typical children to the maximum extent possible –Removal from regular education environment only when the nature of the disability is such that education in the regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.

Individualized Education Program (IEP): the outline of the services and accommodations the child will receive to ensure FAPE as devised by the child’s IEP team.

IEP Team: parent, regular education teacher, special education teacher, representative from the school district (LEA Rep – local education agency rep),  someone who can interpret assessment results, the child if appropriate, and anyone else with knowledge or special expertise regarding the child.

Entitlements:

•Free appropriate public education (FAPE)

•Appropriate evaluations (multi-disciplinary evaluations)

•Individualized Education Program (IEP)

•Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) •Parent/student participation in making decisions

•Procedural safeguards (notice of legal rights) available under IDEA

What’s the Process:

The Special Education Process is a 90 day process that includes screening, referrals, evaluations, identification and eligibility determination, IEP development, service and placement, and continual review.

Any of the following disabilities can apply (children ages 3 – 21): •Intellectual disability •Developmental delay •Multiple disabilities •Hearing impairments (including deafness) •Speech or language impairment •Visual impairments (including blindness) •Serious Emotional Disability •Orthopedic impairment •Autism •Traumatic brain injury •Specific learning disability •Other health impairment

To register, check out our trainings page.

Location: Children and Family Services Center, 601 E. 5th Street, Suite 510, Charlotte, NC 28202

Time: Registration: 8:00 a.m. CLE Seminar: 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

(lunch will be provided)

We want you to leave knowing that you have the power to unlock children’s potential in our community.

In addition to a handful of indicators, the report also states that between 2000 and 2009, there was an eighteen percent increase in the U.S. child poverty rate.

For more information on KIDS COUNT and Action for Children North Carolina, check out the below links.

Action for Children North Carolina

KIDS COUNT Data Center

The name “Progressive Party” was coined to describe our goal to progressively raise $150,000 over the course of the next 9 months, through engaging donors at small, initimate gatherings.

Barbara Spradling is blazing the trail by hosting the first Progressive Party on Sept. 8th.  If you are interested in hosting or attending a Progressive Party, please contact Laura Maguire at 704-372-7460 or e-mail: LauraM@cfcrights.org.

Thursday, May 19th

6:00 – 9:00 p.m. @ Phillips Place

Ticket Price: $20/individual and $30/couple

Includes drawing in a raffle for great items from stores around Phillips Place and Charlotte!

Wine provided by Executive Wines and food provided by Delectables by Holly.

penny@cfcrights.org or 704-943-9476

You won’t want to miss out on the 2012 Vintage of Charlotte Wine and Food Weekend.  There are multiple opportunities to participate, including wine tastings, Big Bottles and Blues, the gala and much more.  Check out http://www.charlottewineandfood.org/ to keep up to date on the most recent news and happenings with CWFW.

Four local charities were chosen to nourish Chlarotte’s children: Council for Children’s Rights, Charlotte Community Health Clinic, Pat’s Place and Second Harvest Food Bank.