Local Golfers Take a Whack at Child Abuse

A record number of golfers turned out Monday to support a non-profit organization that has spent the past 35 years serving abused or neglected children throughout eight communities in the Long Beach area.

The Rio Hondo Golf Club in Downey was the site of the 22^nd Annual Golf Classic, the biggest fundraiser of the year for the Community Family Guidance Center. Its foundation provides mental health support for children from low income families and unable to get medical benefits from either MediCal or through the Department of Mental Health.

The golf tournament attracted 97 golfers, who not only had the opportunity to play 18 holes under ideal weather conditions, but were treated to dinner and participated in a silent auction afterwards.

“This is a wonderful event,” said Dr. Bob Hughlett, president-elect of the Community Family Guidance Center. “It’s a great way to raise money for a great cause that most people don’t know much about. There are too many strings with mental health, so we are dealing with family programs because the government is not for kids of the parents.”

Hughlett said the foundation hopes to raise $30,000 from the event, and three weeks ago they were already more than halfway there, according to Marcia Salvary, director of development for the center.

“Fundraising for the foundation allows us to do so much more to help not only the client but the family,” Salvary said. “The dollars we raise today will go to prevent child abuse and (fund) education for children age zero to 16.”

Annually, CFGC has 72 licensed clinicians and therapists who see about 1,000 children a week and more than 5,000 individual clients for the year—an astonishing number for a small mental health center. The center has facilities in Cerritos and Downey covering eight different cities—Cerritos, Artesia, Norwalk, Downey, Lakewood, Paramount and Bellflower and Hawaiian Gardens.

However, most of the time CGFC therapists go into the home and visit with the child and family or come to the school, said Kathleen Lovell, a board member for the past 12 years.

“We get referrals from the family, from the school, from the foster parent programs, a variety of places,” she said. “We provide that mental health support for them, and on occasion we provide help to the family or siblings if we find that it’s needed.”

The center has different types of programs, and although CGFC works closely with mental health facilities, it does restrict what they can do because many clients do not fit into the niche programs covered by mental health. That’s one reason the center decided to develop its own foundation and raise money through events like the golf tournament.

“We want to meet the needs of these people,” Lovell said. “Unfortunately mental health is not something that people are willing to talk about. We just want to produce functioning human beings that can take their place in society.”

On Monday, those challenges became more attainable because of the financial support they received from the community.

“It is really special because the foundation does so much for these handicapped kids,” said Pam Hickok, a foundation board member. “We are so small and the problem is so big. Just think how many more we could serve if we were bigger.”