The Carbon County Children’s Justice Center will be hosting an Open House on April 10 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm at the Emery County CJC and then again from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the Carbon County CJC. This type of affair is taking place throughout the entire State of Utah in conjunction with April being recognized as the National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

“We really want to bring awareness to our community and across the state. We invite people in the community to come out, tour the center, learn a little bit about what we do, what services we offer to our families to our children,” said Director Shelley Wright. CJC officials hope that with the Open Houses the community will get a better idea of the importance of their local CJC. The Carbon County CJC is located at 80 South Fairgrounds Road and the Emery County CJC is a satellite center which is only used as needed.

The most important service offered is child abuse prevention and investigation program. “One of the things that we do is we make sure that the interviewers are forensically trained to do these interviews for children and those interviews are so critical that training on learning out to ask the right kind of questions to children is so important,” stated Wright. The CJC will coordinate medical exams, therapy sessions and guide the family to the appropriate resources that they are in need of.

The Carbon CJC offers a Family Support Center and this is where the focus is on strengthening the family. “We help care for the children when families are in a high-stress situation or if there is just a crisis in that family and they don’t have anybody to care for their children,” said Wright. Types of situations for use of the Crisis Nursery is intended for a court appearance, doctor appointments, medical emergencies, escaping family violence, attending parent classes/divorce classes and attend AA Meetings or Narcotic Anonymous.

CJC is has an event that will be taking place in May for the entire community. “We have a Utah Family month and that runs from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. We will be hosting another Kit Flying Day, it’s free to the community, we want families to come out and spend time with their children,” said Wright. Further details on the event will come at a later time.

For more information about CJC please call (435) 636-3739. If your family is in a crisis you may call (435) 650-1297.