Discussing child abuse and the mistreatment of children is never easy but our partners at GBMC want our community to know that help is a reach away. Sarah Perl of GBMC takes Nestor on the difficult journey of child maltreatment and education awareness to discuss the unspeakable. We’ll also introduce you to beautiful Olivia, who is a making a difference with “Paws For a Cause.”
Nestor Aparicio discusses his upcoming events, including the Maryland crab cake tour and various community engagements. He introduces Sarah Perl, Medical Director of Child Maltreatment at GBMC, to discuss child abuse prevention and awareness. Sarah explains her role in Baltimore County, emphasizing GBMC’s holistic approach to child maltreatment, including sexual abuse and neglect. She highlights the importance of community vigilance and reporting concerns to mandated reporters. Sarah also introduces Olivia, a therapy dog at GBMC, who provides comfort to children. They promote a fundraiser for the Child Protection Program, encouraging people to walk with their dogs in October.
Action Items
- [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Nestor Aparicio to meet Olivia the facility dog and potentially have her join him for an event at the YMCA in Dundalk.
- [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Nestor Aparicio to share the link to the “Paws for a Cause” fundraiser on the GBMC website (gbmc.org/paws) with his audience.
Outline
Maryland Crab Cake Tour and Community Engagement
- Nestor Aparicio discusses the Maryland crab cake tour, mentioning various locations including Timonium, Catonsville, Lauraville, and Essex.
- Nestor highlights upcoming events, including breakfast at State Fair, a gathering at Coco’s, and a visit to Pizza John’s.
- Nestor shares his personal health journey, mentioning his doctor’s appointment and upcoming colonoscopy.
- Nestor introduces Sarah Perl, the Medical Director of Child Maltreatment at GBMC, and sets the stage for discussing sensitive topics related to child maltreatment.
Introduction to Child Maltreatment and GBMC’s Role
- Sarah Perl explains her role as the Medical Director of Child Maltreatment at GBMC, focusing on Baltimore County.
- Sarah describes the dual locations of GBMC’s child abuse program, with medical operations at GBMC and investigative operations at Dumbarton.
- Nestor and Sarah discuss the term “maltreatment” and its broader implications compared to “child abuse.”
- Sarah emphasizes GBMC’s goal of prevention and outreach in the community to address child maltreatment.
Common Types of Child Maltreatment and Prevention Efforts
- Sarah highlights the robust sexual abuse program at GBMC, known as the Safe Program.
- Nestor and Sarah discuss the prevalence of child maltreatment in the community and the importance of addressing it.
- Sarah explains the role of mandated reporters, such as teachers, coaches, and medical providers, in reporting concerns about child maltreatment.
- Nestor shares his personal experiences and the importance of community vigilance in identifying and reporting child maltreatment.
Immediate Actions and Hospital Interventions
- Sarah advises calling 911 as the first response if there are concerns about child maltreatment.
- Sarah describes the process when a child arrives at GBMC, including medical evaluations and the role of Olivia, the facility dog.
- Nestor and Sarah discuss the comfort and support provided by Olivia to children who have potentially been victims of abuse.
- Sarah shares details about Olivia’s background and her role in providing comfort to children and families at GBMC and the Child Advocacy Center.
Holistic Approach to Child Maltreatment
- Sarah explains the holistic approach taken by GBMC’s child maltreatment program, including social work and 24/7 on-call support.
- Nestor and Sarah discuss the various types of abuse, including sexual, physical, and neglect, and the comprehensive care provided by GBMC.
- Sarah emphasizes the importance of addressing both the physical and emotional needs of children who have experienced maltreatment.
- Nestor expresses appreciation for the work of social workers and other professionals who support children and families affected by maltreatment.
Community Involvement and Fundraising
- Sarah mentions a fundraiser for the Child Protection Program at GBMC, encouraging people to walk with or without their dogs in October.
- Nestor and Sarah discuss the importance of community involvement in supporting child protection efforts.
- Sarah provides details about the fundraiser, including the website link for registration and donations.
- Nestor expresses excitement about meeting Olivia and supporting the fundraiser to help children in Baltimore County.
Final Thoughts and Appreciation
- Nestor thanks Sarah for her work and the efforts of GBMC in addressing child maltreatment.
- Nestor shares his personal commitment to health and wellness, including his upcoming colonoscopy appointment.
- Nestor highlights the importance of community awareness and support for child protection programs.
- Nestor concludes the segment by promoting upcoming events and expressing gratitude to GBMC and the Maryland Lottery for their support.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Child maltreatment, GBMC, Sarah Perl, medical director, child abuse, sexual abuse, Safe Program, community outreach, mandated reporters, pediatric ER, Olivia the dog, Hero dogs, fundraiser, Child Protection Program, Baltimore County.
SPEAKERS
Nestor Aparicio, Sarah Perl
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively into the crab cake season. Around here, doing the Maryland crab cake tour some pumpkin and spice is going to go with this. At some point they’re going to give me some scented candy cane tickets. But for now, it’s Raven season. I have Raven scratch offs giveaway. We’re going to be at Costas this week in the Timonium location. We’re going to be talking about the greater Towson area in Baltimore County, with our friends from GBMC, who also put us out on the road on the Maryland crab cake tour next week in Catonsville, we’ll be doing breakfast at state fair on Tuesday morning. Got some great guests lined up for that, including some baseball stuff with Luke and Alan. And then we’re gonna be Coco’s in lauraville on the fifth in the afternoon, getting together with Marcella and their 40th anniversary there. And then on the seventh at Pizza John’s in Essex, eating cheesesteaks and pizzas. And once my sponsors find out about pizza John’s, are like, Hey, what’s that date? I want to do the show that day. So that’s November 7. GBMC has put me up to all sorts of things, and my wife is so proud of me. I’ve made like a real doctor’s appointment. I’m on lists. I’ve even got my chart working on my phone. I am the ultimate 57 year old dude who doesn’t go to the doctors. Hasn’t had a colonoscopy, although I have an appointment for one in three weeks. So on the road to this, I’m trying to get smarter about everything. We’re going to be doing some dermatology stuff, because I have little moles from my time in Ocean City that I’m concerned about. We talk about all sorts of issues with GBMC, and they’re right here in the community. You hear the ads and you see me fly the flag, you see them out on the website. But sometimes we have to do some more uncomfortable things and things that, quite frankly, I have no idea about most of this stuff, because I don’t go to the doctors as often as I should being healthy. But this is nothing to do really with me, but it could have to do with me, because I’m sure out in this community, Sarah Pearl has touched people that I know, people out in the community. She is the medical director of child maltreatment. And I just, I hear maltreatment, and I think that’s a wide variety of things that, quite frankly, we don’t talk about on the radio because, and I think for years, I’m 35 years into this, I can’t say that. I’ve done a lot of segments on the word maltreatment. So Sarah, I’ll bring you in. I know it’s a sensitive topic, and I’m a fun guy, and it’s hasn’t been fun talking football around here, but the things that come to your desk on a daily basis, I can’t imagine. So when, when I heard Olivia, the dog, and I thought we could come out maybe do that. I know we’re doing this on Zoom, but I hope to see you again and talk more about this, because I know it’s an important topic, and certainly at GBMC, important enough to put you in front of it’s a good day to you. Thanks for coming on with
Sarah Perl 02:46
me. Thank you so much for having me. All right,
Nestor Aparicio 02:49
so let’s start at the top here. Medical Director of Mal child maltreatment at GBMC. What does that entail?
Sarah Perl 02:57
So I have the really fortunate ability of running the child abuse program for Baltimore County. So in Baltimore County, about the most of our colleagues are housed over at the Dumbarton location off York Road, and then the medical side of our space is over here at GBMC. So we investigate and take care of any child where there’s been concern for abuse or neglect in our community.
Nestor Aparicio 03:22
Well, the word abuse is the word maybe we used prior to that. It feels to me like maltreatment. If that doesn’t roll off my tongue, that’s not something I hear on the Today Show, or that is a term maltreatment. Talk to me about that term. Was that something when you were in college, that was terminology that was used because we heard child abuse, and we, you know, that word Boy, that word, I’m from Dundalk. I, you know, I lived in the community, and I call it Archie bunkers, Dundalk in the 70s, you know, I saw stuff belts, you know, kind of the way we were raised, that sort of thing. That’s just, thankfully, a lot different in this century. I believe,
Sarah Perl 04:02
yes, our goal here at GBMC is to do as much prevention and outreach as we can in the community. And then if there is a time where we need to see a patient medically, then we can, we have that ability to do that here in our emergency room at GBMC,
Nestor Aparicio 04:16
people come to you in all sorts of ways, and I’m sure you direct things. What is the primary, most common, most prevalent thing that you see in your building and things that you’re trying to not see anymore through education and through really getting involved, right? I mean getting involved and saying, I think we all know hurting children’s wrong that we can all agree with that.
Sarah Perl 04:44
Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. We have a really robust sexual abuse program. I’m sure you’ve heard of our Safe Program here at GBMC.
Nestor Aparicio 04:50
Sure I’ve talked at length about that. And that’s, again, it’s just, it’s such a sensitive thing to bring up on the radio. You know, it’s, it’s it’s not polite, it’s not, it’s. Not. It’s not a tea party conversation, you know, it’s not something we talk about over coffee, but it’s something that’s in your walls every it’s in our community every day. It’s police see it, teachers see it. You know, church, everyone sees it in the community, right?
Sarah Perl 05:13
It doesn’t it’s so important that you’re bringing this to light on the radio. So thank you so much for talking about
Nestor Aparicio 05:17
it. Well, when it, when it comes to you, education, if we’re doing a full seminar on this or an intervention in some way, what do regular people need to know that? And I always say, like, when I’m in airports, I see it all the time. I was out in the southwest about child abuse, kidnapping people, taking people, just all of these kinds of things. But it’s if you see something, say something. That’s an airport. You know, we see that at TSA, wherever we are, but in our community, see something, say something. And, you know, I remember being a kid in the 70s, and like television shows, would take it on with a kid with a bruise and say, if you see something, that’s what an old guy like me would say. But I can’t say that I’ve ever called the cops and said I’ve seen this, or, Hey, that’s wrong, or pulled somebody up even out of the supermarket, seeing somebody do something to their kids. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, you know, right?
Sarah Perl 06:10
Yeah, so that’s, that’s exactly right. That really gets to the to the basics of it is, if you have concerns about a child in the in the community, say something. There’s mandated reporters, thankfully so the teachers, coaches, social workers, medical providers, those are all people that, by law, have to report any concerns for child maltreatment. But you know, we really, as a community, particularly in the Towson community with GBMC, we really all need to keep you know an eye on our children, the children our community, are ours as well. And sometimes you saying something to somebody else about a concern you have will save their life.
Nestor Aparicio 06:46
Just, you know, I guess, on a cautionary tale for anything when what should people do? You know, just in a general sense, what is the first movement if I saw something in a store in a mall, somewhere, anywhere. Yeah.
Sarah Perl 07:01
So you calling 911 is the is the first response. And I do a lot of teaching with our EMS colleagues of Baltimore County and police, and so they all know what the next step is if you call. So I think the basic would just be to call 911 that you have concerns, and they can direct you to the direct the child to the next step.
Nestor Aparicio 07:21
What happens when this comes into GBMC, into the hospital? What, you know, anonymously, I don’t need you to give me a case study, but what? What happens when I call 911, and the police and they say, Oh, well, this child has a bruise and some something awful is happening here, and there’s intervention. Child comes to you, I would think adult is under custody, correct, right? I mean, not, they’re not the one in the hospital. It’s the child, right? Yeah.
Sarah Perl 07:55
So the child comes, sometimes with or without their their caretaker, but really, when they get to the hospital, it’s all hands on deck, with our with our pediatric ER staff, to make sure that that child is as comfortable as possible, is safe, and that we’re doing all the medical things that we need to make sure that they’re they’re healthy. That’s where Olivia, our facility, dog, comes into play. She helps comfort children that have potentially been victims of abuse when they get to GBMC. What kind of pooch is Olivia? So Olivia is a two year old yellow lab. Yellow lab.
Nestor Aparicio 08:28
So tell me about Olivia and tell me about, you know, look, I was with my cat an hour ago. I mean, I’m comforted more about my cat than I am my social media feed for sure, or my listenership, or the Ravens this week, for that matter. But animals really are special. And could I pet Olivia? Or, you know, is Olivia for children,
Sarah Perl 08:52
Olivia’s for everybody. She she’s here, and she’s laying right by my feet as we speak. But Olivia came to us about four months ago from a program called Hero dogs. It’s a nonprofit based out of montgomery county that places service dogs with veterans. Primarily, there’s a subset of their dogs that get placed in facilities like Olivia. So Olivia, it was matched with GBMC and the child advocacy center of Baltimore County about four months ago, and she is doing a really nice job. She cuddles with kids on the structure, she greets them in the waiting room. She spends half of her week over at the child advocacy center where police would interview families, and she provides comfort and support to those families. And has really been a bright light to our program.
Nestor Aparicio 09:39
All right. Well, listen, I do the show in restaurants a lot, and I, I don’t know, but, like, I’m doing the show with the Y and Dundalk soon, and I want to meet Olivia. So we might have to, we might have to, we might have to put this together here. And you know, my wife, we don’t have a dog. We have a catch Calico. She’s beautiful. Nala. We share pictures all the time of her, um. We got her from Baltimore humane too. So there’s a shout out for for my pet people. But like, if we had a dog, it would be a yellow I mean, it just would be, that would be what my wife would do. So if my wife, you could comfort my wife too, as well as dogs comfort everyone i My guest is Sarah pearl. She is with GBMC. She has a fancy title that I had to ask about, medical director of child maltreatment. We talked about the Safe Program. Actually, we did that at Pete Johns about four or five months ago. Within the program, let’s go back to safe. Let’s talk about other things that GBMC does within the sort of the umbrella of all of this, and things that fall under your your title, which is something that I don’t want to hear more of. I want to hear less about maltreatment. But maltreatment could be in all sorts of ways, right? We we have undernourished kids in this community too. We have, I mean, there’s you mentioned sexual abuse, just all sorts of things that can happen to vulnerable children. And all of that sort of falls under a pretty wide net at GBMC, and you’re helping kids in this community every single day.
Sarah Perl 11:02
You’re exactly right. We have all different types of abuse. Unfortunately, sexual abuse being being one of those. We have physical abuse like you alluded to with, you know, people giving leaving bruises or marks on their child. And then a significant amount of our population is children who’ve been neglected in some form or fashion.
Nestor Aparicio 11:19
And that, I mean, I try to talk about nourishment with kids, just if kids don’t have the right parents, they’re not even getting breakfast right, I mean, and that, I’m sure that the abuse goes just beyond the bruises when these kids come in, there’s a whole level of education just in about just having them be physically, well, if not mentally and spiritually, well, right?
Sarah Perl 11:43
Exactly, right. Yeah. So we do the marks you may potentially see on the outside is just kind of a snippet of what is going on underneath. And so here at GBMC, our program can take a really holistic approach to to the child. We have a social worker who works with our team as well as an on call Social Work team that’s available 24 hours a day. We work really closely with our pediatric emergency room colleagues, so I work alongside the physicians and the ER to ensure that we’re thinking holistically about the about the child and their follow up needs.
Nestor Aparicio 12:17
Yeah, I came from a broken home in the 70s, and I had social workers always around me because of the kind of parents that I had. And I think back 40 years later, and I think these are the special people doing this work, the people around you every day dealing with trauma that I think about it, and I well up, and I’m like, you know it’s you don’t want to hear about it, you don’t want to talk about it out loud. So big appreciation for folks out there like you and in your department, doing this really, really tough work, and for Olivia and bringing Olivia around as well, and for promising to at least give me a few pets at some point, if we could bring her out to the Y in a few months, I’d love that. Absolutely. I’d love that too. Sarah, thanks for coming on again. Is there anything that I’m missing here in regard to GBI, hopefully we’ve at least educated people to say, if you see something, say something, but also knowing that there is help, there are people that care, and they’re right down the street there at GBMC, and you don’t have to live in that life, or if you’re seeing that, the people around you don’t have to live in that life for their
Sarah Perl 13:17
children. Yeah, we’re also running a fundraiser right now for the Child Protection Program here at GBMC, if you walk the month of October with or without your dog, you can help raise funds for our program.
Nestor Aparicio 13:29
Let’s go. People are walking dogs on my street every day. Let’s talk about you got dogs? You got to walk them. I know that, right? Yeah.
Sarah Perl 13:36
So our link, the link to register, is gbmc.org/ Paul’s, and all those proceeds go to helping Olivia help the kids of Baltimore
Nestor Aparicio 13:45
County. So how do I do that again? Show me in on all of this. I like all the details.
Sarah Perl 13:50
It’s the website is gbmc.org/ Paul’s, P, A, w, s, and for the month of October, you can donate and raise money as you walk for the Child Protection Program here at
Nestor Aparicio 14:05
GB. Is that Olivia? That’s really Olivia the picture? Yes, wow. What? She’s beautiful. All right, with me and protect kids this October. I’m gonna share the link for all of this stuff. There’s even a video up of Olivia’s story as well. So we like seeing tails wag on little pooches. And so I’m going to get to meet Olivia. This is even more exciting. So Sarah, keep up the great work. I know you got to get back and do the great work you’re doing. Thanks for taking time out of the day over GBMC. I want to give a shout out to GBMC for keeping me square. You got, you got a male in your family that won’t go to the doctors, Sarah, even though you’re in the medical space, you know a guy like me, right?
Sarah Perl 14:44
I do. It’s my husband, and he’s a pediatrician. He
Nestor Aparicio 14:48
doesn’t listen either. No. Do you know any segments I’ve done on PSAs and on colonoscopies? Yeah, many cancer survivors and Hall of Fame football players I’ve sat next to, and they’ve shamed me. And. And they’ve done all of this. And then finally, because my partner’s at GBMC, along with a push from my wife, I my colonoscopy appointment is set for the Friday before Thanksgiving. I’m really going through with it. I’m really going to do everything. Everybody told me, I’m really going to be okay. I’ve talked to the doc Dr. Scary has been on. So I’m I’m good. I’m feeling good about this, but I do want to give thanks to GBMC for awakening me, which I’m hoping for my audience, which is getting larger every day, that the Ravens lose, unfortunately, is getting larger as well, that we got great care right here in Baltimore County. GBMC, and they’re putting me up to talking about all of this stuff and learning about some things I need to learn about, like Men’s Health and some other things that I still need to learn about that nobody wants to talk about, like the Safe program over there, and like kids in our community keeping them safe. So I big appreciation everybody at GBMC. I’m getting back out on the road doing the Maryland crab cake tour this week, which I’m going to enjoy. I’m going to get some crab Imperial. I’m at Costas this Tuesday in Timonium. We’re going to get back to Dundalk for the holidays. I’m not doing Dundalk and Costa still. Gina Schock comes home. I’ve decided, she told me, November 19, she comes home, and I said, right after my colonoscopy, GBMC, we’re gonna do a show over at Costas, and I’m gonna give away Maryland lottery scratch offs in the Ravens. By then, I’ll have the candy canes, which are the scented tickets, which are coming out this week. So I’ll be talking about all that next week, breakfast at State Fair in Catonsville with a whole bunch of great guests, and then we’re going to be at Cocos on the fifth, and then the seventh, back to Pizza John’s in Essex. My thanks to GBMC, my thanks to the Maryland lottery and everybody who’s powering up this mothership during the pumpkin spice season. We are W NSD am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
