New Children’s Safety Center to host grand opening

SPRINGDALE — The Children’s Safety Center of Washington County will host a grand opening of its new home Tuesday — a facility bigger, more visible to the community and designed from the start to be a refuge and help center for traumatized kids.

Ryan Faust of BUF Studio in Bentonville “sat down with every Children’s Safety Center team member and asked, ‘What do you need to do your job better?’” Elizabeth Shackelford, executive director of the center, said in an interview Thursday.

BUF Studio is the architecture, engineering and design firm that drew the plans for the 15,000-square-foot, $15 million center at 3242 S. Gene George Blvd. The ribbon-cutting takes place at 4 p.m. Tuesday, with tours lasting from then to 6 p.m. Faust is managing partner of BUF and an architect, Shackelford said. The center has 14 full-time staff and two contract workers, she said.

The center staff conduct evidence-gathering interviews and medical examinations of abused children.

“I don’t want to minimize the interview portion, but that’s just a small percentage of what they do,” said Matt Durrett, Washington County’s prosecuting attorney, in a separate interview Thursday. “They treat a child’s body and soul.”

The interviews and the examinations are just the start for the center, he said. The victims of abuse and trauma treated at the center are aided throughout their lives, he said.

“They’ll provide whatever the child and family needs, from a pair of shoes to help for the whole family, to counseling years later if they need it if issues crop up again.”

The center cooperates and coordinates with other nonprofits and with state and local authorities to find whatever a child and their family needs, he said.

Shackelford confirmed counseling and services continue.

“We never close a case,” she said.

The center outgrew its starting home at the Center for Nonprofits in Springdale as the population of Northwest Arkansas grew, Shackelford said.