Liberty House - Changing Hurt into Hope

Today, we are talking about Liberty House, a Children’s Advocacy Center in Salem. Our guest today is Peter Carrillo, Liberty House’s Director of Community Engagement, Prevention, and Development.

https://libertyhousecenter.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Dallas, Oregon Podcast, your quick and informative source for what's happening in and around the city. I'm Charlie Mitchell, the Economic and Community Development Director for the City of Dallas. And each episode, we bring together city staff, local leaders, and community members to discuss the projects, people, and possibilities shaping Dallas. Today we're going to be talking about the Liberty House, a children's advocacy center in Salem. And our guest today is Peter Carrillo, Liberty House's Director of Community Engagement, Prevention and Development. Peter, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Now, Peter, before we get into the details, can you share a little bit of a kind of an overview of the Liberty House and your mission?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, so Liberty House is the children's advocacy center serving Polk and Marion County. So we are located in Salem, but we have kind of a broad reach. We serve kids who are referred to us for concerns of abuse or neglect or other forms of kind of severe childhood trauma.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

And what are the ages of the children that the Liberty House serves?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

We serve children ages zero to 18. It kind of depends a little bit on the program, but we also go a little bit beyond that in cases of any kind of developmental disability or anything like that. Um and then we also have a therapy department, and in that we actually serve children and adults who have experienced some kind of trauma.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Okay, wonderful. Now I know you're located in Salem. So what exactly is the distance that you serve out of Salem?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, we serve all of Marion and Polk counties. That is a uh just about 2,500 square miles of a service area. Um little bit of trivia. It's actually larger than the state of Delaware.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

No kidding. Yeah, that's great trivia. Um, yeah, it's amazing. Um, so what are the specific services that Liberty House provides?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah, we try to provide a complete response to early childhood trauma. So that takes three different forms for us. We have a medical clinic, we have a therapy program, and we have a prevention program as well. So in the medical clinic, what we do is we provide a full medical assessment for children who are preferred for concerns. And one of the things I always like to say is within that, we're not looking for abuse. We're looking for what happened. We're just looking for objective information. So that's a really important factor because sometimes we actually rule that out as a concern. Um, so that's one part of it. The other part that they get at the medical clinic is called a forensic interview, which is really just a fact-finding conversation where kids can disclose often for the very first time um what's happened to them. Um and then beyond that, we have the, you know, that's been our oldest program. That's the one we started with. In 2016, we added on a therapy program because we didn't want to say, oh, here's, you know, your medical assessment. Here's all of the things you you get from this and buy, have a good life. You know, we wanted to provide some follow-on care. So our therapy program allows us to provide ongoing healing services for kids who have been through some of that stuff. Um, and then in 2018, we said, you know, well, we can't just respond to this problem and just hope that it goes away. We actually have to get out ahead of this and do some things to prevent it. So we started that program in 2018 in order to kind of go out into the community and give people some of the skills and the knowledge that they need in order to stop the problem before kids need our other services. So between that good response and that prevention work, we kind of are going all at all at this issue.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, that's wonderful. Um and can you touch on any of the many resources that Liberty House provides as well?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, we also do a lot of family support. So along with just the services for kids, we also kind of connect people to other things they might need, especially if it's something that we don't provide, like maybe there's a a specific service that they need, or like sometimes the state of Oregon has victim compensation as well. So we actually have people that work with uh families in order to help them out and to kind of get them to those those other services that they might need.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Very good. Um, now this is an important question. Now, where can people go to either receive these resources and services or just to get involved? Um, do you I mean, do you have social media, uh, I need a need for volunteers? And what's sort of the call to action that you would like to share today?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah, we do. Uh let's see, the first one was um how to get a hold of us. The the website is a really great way to to to just learn more about us. So just libertyhousecenter.org is a really great um spot to go. An interesting thing about people who who need our services is we actually don't do walk-ins. It's all referral-based in except for the therapy department. That one is a, you know, you can make a phone call and kind of see if we have availability. But yeah, the re we actually have people get referred to our medical services. Um, our prevention services are completely open. Anyone can just contact us through the website. They can call us, um, set up some of the trainings, get some of the material, the resources, that kind of thing. Um, but yeah, we do have social media too. Um, Facebook, Instagram, all of that stuff is on our website. So follow us, learn some things about us. Um, we have a great newsletter as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

So and so is there a call to action that you'd like to put out together.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

At the moment, we are doing a fundraising campaign. So we are a 501c3 as well. So we really rely on community support in order to make sure that our services are consistently available, low cost, and accessible for for the community. So we're running a fundraising campaign right now called Invest in Hope. Um, you can go to libertyhousecenter.org slash hope to find that information. Um, and that's just again, just to kind of like build some community around supporting these services. They're they're really critical for this area. It's a huge help to a lot of the kids who go through those things. So, you know, we just want to kind of build some some support for that.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, great. Do you do any sort of fundraising events or community outreach events where the community can come and interact with your staff?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

We do, yeah. One of the things we're doing as part of this campaign is we used to do kind of a big spring fundraiser and auction kind of a thing. And that, you know, is it was useful. It was good for what it was, but it was a it was very much a you come to us kind of a thing. And instead, what we're doing now is we're going, no, we're gonna go out to you. So we're actually, along with the campaign, going on kind of a tour of our entire service area. So we've had three or sorry, we've had two of our community meetings so far, one in Salem and one in Woodburn. And our next one is gonna be right here in Dallas.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And when is that going to be March 31st?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

March 31st.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Great, good timing. Well, Peter, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all about Liberty House. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

I mean, one of the things that I always like to say is just to be aware, I guess. It's it's a bigger problem than most people acknowledge. Most people are aware of, you know, they kind of think abstractly like, oh yeah, this is this happens. There are nearly 300 confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Polk County alone. Um, there's another another uh you know 1200 or so in Marion County. So it's a much more widespread issue, but that awareness is also like this is the the flip side of that is that we're here to help. We're here to make a difference in that problem, even though it's severe and it's out there and it's you know something to to think about. There are people out there who are also there to there to help.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah, good. Thanks for that. Now, before we go to close out our podcast, there's one thing we like to ask all of our guests this one question. Uh, what's your favorite thing about Dallas? But in your case, um, maybe Polk County as a as a whole is a better question. So, what's your favorite thing about Polk County?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah, that's I I actually have kind of an answer for both. Okay. Um I went to Western Oregon, so I am totally biased towards Monmouth. I I love that that city. Um, so that's the Polk County answer. Here in Dallas, I stop at New Morning Bakery every time I'm there. They have the best cinnamon roll I've ever had.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Very good. Well, thanks again to Peter for joining us, and thank you to everyone for tuning in today. Uh, be sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening to the Dallas Oregon podcast. I'm Charlie Mitchell, and we'll see you next time.