The Greensboro Police Department's Officer Ted E. Bear initiative gives officers stuffed animals to share with children they encounter in difficult situations.
A Child Removed From a Hoarders' Home
In a message to the Greensboro Police Department, the woman recalled being removed from her grandparents’ home when she was a child.
The officer gave her a teddy bear as she left, she said. She never learned his name.
The Bear
“Small things matter,” she wrote.
The Program Behind the Bears
The Officer Ted E. Bear initiative gives officers stuffed animals to share with children at crime scenes, accidents, domestic violence calls, and child abuse or neglect cases, according to UNC Greensboro Kinesiology. The university says the bears are intended to comfort child victims and help officers build trust in unfamiliar and frightening settings. Kinesiology student Katelyn Ward helped coordinate community and business donations that enabled the department to buy 1,188 bears for the program.
How Child Advocacy Centers Coordinate Care
The bear initiative describes an officer’s response during an encounter. Separately, Family Service of the Piedmont says its Children’s Advocacy Centers coordinate services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect or witnessed violence, providing a broader coordinated response than the officer’s immediate action at a call, according to Family Service of the Piedmont. North Carolina law requires a Children’s Advocacy Center’s multidisciplinary team to include representatives from law enforcement, child protective services, the district attorney’s office, mental health, health care, victim advocacy and the center’s staff, according to the North Carolina General Assembly.
Separately, the City of Greensboro has noted that its Child Victims Squad worked 551 cases between July 2002 and July 2003, an indication of the volume of child welfare calls officers in the city have handled over the years.
