14 minute read
Guardian Ad Litem program continues child advocacy
BY CORY VAILLANCOURT S TAFF WRITER W hile the Coronavirus Pandemic has affected the way many people perform their jobs, for the nation’s consummate front-line workers — sworn law enforcement officers — not much has changed at all.
“Not a whole lot,” said Waynesville Police Chief David Adams. “Not a whole lot, other than possibly catching the virus.”
The job of maintaining law and order involves by necessity plenty of contact with the general public, and plenty of risks. The Coronavirus Pandemic is neither the first nor the last communicable illness first responders have had to contend with, but it is among the most dangerous.
Sometimes officers come into close physical contact with suspects and witnesses, and occasionally they have to subdue violent criminals — not exactly in line with social distancing protocols. Adams said his department has fared well, thus far, from a personal health perspective.
As of April 23, no one from the Waynesville Police Department has turned up sick or even been tested for COVID-19. Waynesville’s law enforcement personnel have been monitoring themselves for symptoms, and those feeling under the weather have stayed home as much as possible.
“It hasn’t caused any issues with overtime,” said Adams, who was hired this past January.
Adams doesn’t think there will be any budget issues from his department in the current budget year, which ends June 30, but a general downturn in sales tax, property tax payment rates and general business activity could affect funding during the next budget year.
Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher reported similar circumstances in his department — overall health is good, and budgeting appears in line with what’s been projected. Christopher does, however, have one concern.
“When I first became sheriff back in 2013, coming out of the Great Recession, our civil division was extremely busy with foreclosures and evictions,” he said. “As the economy then improved, we saw that fall off dramatically. But I am concerned about the economy going forward.”
Bolstering Christopher’s assessment of the situation are numbers from the county showing that overall, crime is flat or down in many different categories.
In March 2019, Haywood County’s 911 center received 10,761 calls. In March of this year, that number decreased slightly to 10,296.
The number of dispatched calls was also down from 2,835 in March 2019 to 2,410 in March 2020. Calls for emergency medical services were down slightly, from 988 in March 2019 to 962 in March 2020.
Fire departments have stopped responding to some of the calls they’d normally take — usually, to back up law enforcement — so that number’s dropped from 849 in March 2019 to 652 in March 2020.
Similar trends are apparent in the types of crimes officers are responding to as well.
Christopher said that after analyzing a period consisting of February, March and April through the 24th day of the month, there were 79 calls for breaking and entering this year, compared to 76 last year.
Larceny calls were up slightly to 104 this year, after 100 during the same period last year.
Trespassing calls saw almost no change — 60 this year versus 61 last year.
Civil disturbances were down slightly as well, from 154 during the February, March and April period last year to 145 this year.
The one outlier, according to Christopher, is domestic disturbances; conventional wisdom and social media speculation suggests that domestic disturbances should have gone through the roof during this period of enforced social distancing, with more people being stuck at home with relatives or close acquaintances. But that’s not the case.
In fact, the number this year compared
Greg Christopher
to last year has declined somewhat, from 264 to 241.
One completely new crime — violation of state and local “stay home” orders — has emerged from the pandemic, but Waynesville’s Chief Adams said they’ve probably made less than 20 arrests, and only in conjunction with other crimes.
“We had a rash of breaking and enterings a week or so ago, and the detectives solved pretty much all of those and arrested some suspects,” Adams said, adding that there were also some shoplifting arrests.
Suspects charged with those crimes were also slapped with stay-home violations, a misdemeanor that can result in 60 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
“Stealing is not an essential activity,” Adams said. “Unless you’re really in need of food I don’t think there’s officer here who would arrest someone who was truly in need of food or something, but we seem to have a good handle on the food situation with the food bank and I know that state benefits are still flowing, so it seems to be going pretty smoothly here.”
All in all, Adams said, Western North Carolina’s law enforcement community seems to be faring about as well as it has been in previous years, all things considered.
“We appreciate the public support and the business owners. We’ve had a lot of people call in to convey their best wishes and express that they enjoy working with us. They appreciate the extra work we’re doing,” he said. “Our officers are risking their safety too, and they appreciate that, and we appreciate the public support on that.”
One of the biggest ways the public can support local law enforcement and first responders is to heed the advice of Adams, who said he’s not seen anything quite like this pandemic in his 24 years of law enforcement.
“Basically, if you don’t need to be out, try to stay home as much as possible,” he said. “Try to prevent the virus from spreading. Of course you’ve got to go to the grocery store and do your essential shopping and you can get out and exercise and things like that, but stay at home as much as possible until this is over and keep being a good neighbor — look out for your neighbor’s house, or business.”
Guardian ad Litem
Smoky Mountain News 6
program continues child advocacy BY CORY VAILLANCOURT S TAFF WRITER O ne thing that most front-line workers have in common right now is that they’re serving some of the community’s most vulnerable members, and in most communities, there are few members more vulnerable than mistreated children.
North Carolina’s Guardian ad Litem program is charged with serving them; a Guardian ad Litem is a volunteer who’s appointed by a judge to advocate for abused and neglected children that are in the court system by no fault of their own — usually because they’ve been abused or neglected in some way.
“When they are in the system, the parents have an attorney, DSS is working with Haywood County Health and Human Services on a case plan. They are the voice of the child and the advocate for the child in court,” said Maria Parrish, Guardian ad Litem program supervisor for the 30th Judicial District. “They do an independent investigation and they are there to determine the needs for the child and make sure they thrive through the process.”
On March 13, North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Shari Beasley ordered “all superior court and district court proceedings be scheduled or rescheduled” through June 1 unless the proceedings can be conducted remotely and safely, are necessary to preserve due process, or are an emergency — like civil commitment orders, domestic vio
— Maria Parrish, Guardian ad Litem program supervisor
lence protection orders, temporary restraining orders or juvenile custody orders.
That means volunteers in the GAL program are still working to conduct interviews and investigations, ensuring the children in their care are still performing well in school and have all emotional and physical needs satisfied.
“They make sure that the child through this process is doing as well as they possibly can, and they make sure that their voice is heard in court as well if the child is old enough that they have the chance to be in court,” Parrish said. “Otherwise, they write court reports for every court date. That is something that is presented as an exhibit in court and the judge gets to hear what the child has to say about it and what their wishes are.”
Right now, there are approximately 130 Haywood County children in the GAL system, but more than 18,000 across the state. Parrish counts about 30 volunteers in Haywood, compared to about 5,500 across the state.
“The difference that these volunteers make in the lives of these children is amazing,” Parrish said. “We know that a child with a GAL versus a child in the system without it achieves permanency 25 percent faster, so it’s an amazing job that our volunteers do.”
To volunteer as a Guardian ad Litem, visit www.volunteerforgal.org.
Behind the mask Health care workers hold the front lines against COVID-19
BY HOLLY KAYS S TAFF WRITER L ike nearly everyone else in the country, Dr. Ben Guiney experienced a rush of dread as news of the novel coronavirus’ spread hit the headlines, but Guiney had more reason than most to worry.
In addition to being a husband and father of a young child, he’s an emergency room doctor at Harris Regional Hospital. If the virus were to flare up in Jackson County, he’d stand a good chance of being exposed and of potentially bringing the disease home to his family. In those early days, he and his wife talked about having him live in their camper until it was all over, but they decided against it. Instead, they settled for a new routine that involves stripping down upon entering the house, throwing the clothes in the laundry and immediately going for a shower. CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Guiney described that time as carrying an ominous, “before the storm” type of feeling. But as weeks went by with only a smattering of cases, the sentiment shifted.
“You go to work and volumes are down, and you just don’t know what’s going to happen now,” he said. “So, it doesn’t have that feeling of ‘something’s coming.’ It has that feeling of not being sure what’s going on at this point in time.”
Things have been slow at the Harris emergency room, and at emergency rooms across the country in areas not experiencing coronavirus flare-ups, said Guiney, speaking based on his own experience rather than a representative of the hospital as a whole. It’s hard to say exactly why that’s the case, though the fact that kids aren’t at school passing germs around likely has a lot to do with it. People aren’t out and about as much, getting in accidents or exacerbating chronic conditions, and it’s likely that the people who don’t really need an emergency room but might make a just-tobe-sure visit under normal circumstances are staying home.
“I want people to understand it’s not that it’s not coming here,” said Guiney. “It’s that we are keeping it from coming here by everything we’re doing. The volumes are down in the ER because people are staying home.”
Dr. Ben Guiney prepares for a shift in the emergency room at Harris Regional Hospital.
Donated photo - f e n t s k
The future continues to be a question mark, because everybody can’t continue staying home indefinitely. What will happen as things start opening back up and out-ofstate visitors return to the mountains?
LaCrystal Gordon, chief nursing officer at Harris, has also seen the crisis make its mark on her personal life. She’s used to traveling every two weeks for a visit with her father, but because his age and medical history make him vulnerable to COVID-19, they’ve had to pause the in-person visits.
“My dad and I are very close, and not being able to see him and get one of those dad hugs from him has been difficult,” she said. “That’s not a unique situation. There are so many folks across the country that are dealing with the same sort of situation, but for me personally that’s been a tough one.”
A NEW NORMAL
On the professional side, though, Gordon said she has nothing but pride for the hospital and its staff. While she said she wants to make it “very clear” that Harris’ employees were heroes prior to COVID-19, “today our heroes are very easily identified because they’re literally wearing masks and capes.”
Things are certainly different around the hospital due to COVIDrelated precautions. Harris has limited facility access points and pre-screens visitors for coronavirus symptoms before allowing them to enter. There are additional hygiene stations throughout the facility, limits on visitation, and postponement of elective and outpatient procedures. And, of course, there are the ever-present masks and gowns. The hospital is well-stocked on personal protective equipment and doesn’t anticipate experiencing the shortages reported in other areas of the country, Gordon said.
Over at Blue Ridge Community Health in Sylva, things are starting to settle down to a new normal, said pediatrician Dr. Judy Seago, a far cry from the constant shifting and uncertainty of the early weeks of the pandemic.
“The first week or two of the lockdown or such we had huddles at the end of the day, every day,” she said. “Constant emails from administration, and lots of times things have all changed from the morning to the afternoon as to how we were supposed to handle things, so that was a little crazy, but everyone seemed to roll along with it.”
Like Guiney, Seago said that things have been less busy than usual in the past month or so. That’s partially due to the school closures, where most of Seago’s patients acquire their germs, but also due to widespread cancellation of well visits.
“It is slowly kind of picking up a little more,” she said. “I don’t know if that comes with people getting more comfortable with the whole thing. We have some people coming in for well visits who had cancelled them the first week or two.”
Like Harris, Blue Ridge has made some
LaCrystal Gordon
news adjustments to its operations in the wake of the pandemic. All sick patients are now received outdoors, a change that has Seago glad this is all happening in March and April rather than January and February. Staff are also now required to wear masks at all times, though they have had to reuse them, going with recommendations to let masks rest for three days before reusing them.
Seago, who is 60, said that while she doesn’t plan to stop doing her job, she is aware that she’s now slipping into that atrisk age bracket.
“That part is worrisome, but I don’t know — it’s just like, well, we’ll continue to go to work and do the things we always do and try to take precautions to lessen exposure,” she said.
April 29-May 5, 2020 LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is when will this end, and how can we do it as safely as possible.
The country can’t stay shut down forever, said Gordon, but there won’t be a silver bullet to a safe reopening.
“The last thing I think we want is to have a second wave of this sweeping over our state and the country,” she said. “I think a slow, strategic plan while still adhering to the social distancing and still adhering to those strict hand washing rules and still utilizing masks in public is going to be prudent.”
For Guiney, testing is the key. To reopen safely, he said we need to know who is sick and then isolate those people so they don’t
— Dr. Judy Seago
Smoky Mountain News 7
infect others. In the meantime, wearing masks in public will have to be the new normal until a vaccine can be developed and distributed — and that could take years.
All these shutdowns have hit individual lives and the economy as a whole with dynamite force. As a doctor, Guiney’s convinced that it’s been the right thing to do. But as a member of the Sylva Board of Commissioners, he’s also acutely aware of the toll this is taking on the town he loves.
“I’m in this interesting position, where thank you everybody for doing your thing and closing the town down and keeping the ER not overwhelmed. On the other side, as a town board member I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, the town is freefalling.’ All the businesses and the workers and everybody is suffering so much,” he said. “It’s hard.”
