Monday Morning

We had 16 members at Monday’s meeting along with our guest speakers, Nick and Vance from the Fond du Lac Police Department.  Happy Bucks were offered by Dan Leeds for his son Ezekiel’s return from a four month deployment and also for his other son Charlie’s position as goalie on the Maranatha Baptist University soccer team that won the NCAA Division II Championship last weekend, Glen Treml for the birth of their fourth grandchild, Finley John, who was born on Friday morning and Steve Millin in recognition of three NCAA record holders, Melvin Gordon, Ron Dayne and Monte Ball, all from the UW-Madison football program.  Jackie King was the 50/50 Raffle winner and she drew the Eight of Hearts, not a winner.  Next week’s pot will be $20 with 50 cards left in the deck and nine pay cards.

Drug Endangered Children, FdL Police Dept

The City of Fond du Lac Police Department in collaboration with the Fond du Lac County Department of Social Services, Fond du Lac County District Attorney’s Office, Fond du Lac School District, Probation and Parole, and Fond du Lac County Public Health Department, are pleased to announce the creation of a Drug Endangered Children (DEC) program for the City of Fond du Lac.

The purpose of the DEC Team is to collaboratively intervene on the behalf of the children who have been exposed to drug-endangered environments and are unsafe in those environments. DEC team members cooperate with each other so that parents/caretakers are vigorously and effectively prosecuted for child endangerment/abuse/neglect in addition to charges resulting from their illegal drug activities.

The continuing concern of substance abuse has forced DEC to respond more effectively and improve their response in drug-endangered environments.  DEC has pooled their expertise to become a collaborative effort and are determined to utilize all possible options to protect children from future harm of drug-endangered environments.

The foundation of DEC’s focus is to protect children in drug-endangered environments and to recognize that abusing drugs in the presence of children is child abuse/neglect. Exposing children to surroundings where drugs are used or sold is also an abusive and hazardous environment. The lack of attention and supervision where caretakers are under the impairment of drugs is neglect. These are all examples of child endangerment/abuse/neglect. They will investigate and prosecute to their fullest extent possible in cases where neglect/endangerment is evident.

DEC’s primary goals are: to minimize the re-victimization of drug-exposed children; to improve their health and safety by providing treatment and appropriate services to the family; and to develop a multi-disciplinary team maximizing their ability to respond to this devastating problem.

Thanks to Nick and Vance for an inside look into this new program to protect the young children in our community.