HSC Weekly
USC News
May 2, 2003

Everychild Foundation awards $600,000 grant to child abuse center

The Everychild Foundation has awarded a $600,000 grant to the Violence Intervention Program, the center responsible for evaluating and treating child abuse victims throughout Los Angeles County.

Astrid Heppenstall-Heger, VIP’s executive director and associate professor of pediatrics, said the funds would immediately allow the center to increase its patient load of child abuse victims by 350 to about 1,000 a year. The funds will also allow the program to renovate its Boyle Heights facility and continue to expand its services to children who are victims of child abuse or family violence.

"For us, this is a statement of permanence. This finally gives us a home," Heger said. "This is a gift to the community."

Jacqueline Caster, president and founder of the Everychild Foundation, said VIP was selected for the 2003 award after reviewing its pioneering work in detecting and treating child abuse victims and, equally important, providing long-term follow-up care.

"That’s what swayed us," Caster said. "What happens to some of these kids is unspeakable, and VIP is out there trying to make a difference in a world most people could never imagine."

Since establishing the center in 1984, Heger has seen her work at the Violence Intervention Program become a model for child advocacy programs nationwide, as well as a training and research center for practitioners and students.

Victims of physical or sexual abuse receive treatment, long-term counseling, mentoring and tutoring. As it is the only program of its kind, it serves the entire county. The center also maintains contracts with law enforcement to support medical and forensic services.

VIP will rename that part of its program that deals with child abuse the Everychild Foundation Center for the Vulnerable Child.

Caster noted that in a fortuitous twist this year, the other grant finalist Stone Soup, a before- and after-school care program for low-income children in non-Los Angeles Unified School District public schools so impressed new advisory board member Greg Mitchell, that Mitchell, president and CEO of California National Bank, got one of the bank’s branches to underwrite its own $180,000 grant.

The Everychild Foundation is made up of women who pay membership dues of $5,000 a year. There are no fund-raisers; the total of the dues are awarded to one nonprofit group whose work is geared toward at-risk children.

Last year the foundation awarded $385,000 to the Wonder of Reading to build and stock new libraries for dozens of LAUSD elementary schools; the year before they awarded $230,000 to QueensCare for the purchase of a mobile dental clinic to provide free care to students in the district’s lowest-income schools.