Children's Center moves to new site

A father and son playing a video game were among the guests at the open house held by the Children's Center in their new offices at 123 S. Main. The center offers a safe, comfortable and secure environment in which trained interviewers can get to the bottom of what's been going on and facilitates cases against abusers at the same time. The center moved to their new location when the space in the Crowder College building they were using was needed as Crowder expanded. --Steve Moyer/Daily Mail

Since it opened in January 2004 the Children's Center has been providing a valuable service to families from Barton, Bates, Cedar, Dade, St. Clair and Vernon counties, from the third floor of Crowder College. Now it has completed the move to its new location, 123 South Main St., Nevada.

The Nevada office is a branch of the Joplin Children's Center, which serves a larger area.

Although everyone at the center is grateful to Crowder College for allowing them to use extra space in their building they are also glad to get into their own space, for several reasons.

"This is more accessible to the community, it's just off the Square," Juvenile officer Jennifer Thomas said. "We're grateful to Crowder for letting us use the space, they were very gracious to us. Since we serve people from out of the county it wasn't the easiest place to find. It's territory not everybody knows about. Many of the long-time residents would know if you said it's the old administration building but newer people wouldn't."

There are other advantages the new facility has as well.

"One thing that I like about it is that it's a place to call our own," Thomas said. "We just have to worry about ourselves. At the college, people were in and out of there pretty often. This is more child-friendly and more private."

The new center is brighter and less intimidating to children.

"This is a lot less institutional looking," Thomas said. "It helps ease the children's fears."

The new facility has many of the same features as the old one.

At the center, there's a comfortable play room, a family room with comfortable furnishings where the family can wait and interact, a report room where law enforcement officers can write reports, communicate with other agencies via the Internet. There's a therapy room for counseling sessions, which are conducted when necessary. There's also a room for "safe exams," the physical examination used in sexual abuse cases.