CHILD ADVOCATE REPRESENTS …
S.C. eleventh circuit solicitor’s candidate Candice Lively paid a visit to the South Carolina State House this week to participate in an annual children’s advocacy event sponsored by one of the organizations she leads.
Lively attended the state’s fifth annual Children’s Advocacy Day – a joint project of the S.C. attorney general’s office, the Children’s Trust of South Carolina, the S.C. Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers and “Silent Tears,” a group she leads with Upstate child advocate Shauna Galloway-Williams.
The goal of the group? To raise awareness of the plight of child abuse victims – and to provide training for social service workers, law enforcement professionals, teacher advocates, school resource officers and medical professionals on best practices for responding to these victims.
The organization is also looking for ways to decrease the backlog of these cases within the state’s court system – seek swifter resolutions for these child victims. Backlogs have emerged as a big issue in the eleventh circuit, where the outgoing prosecutor’s attentions have been focused, um, elsewhere.
In fact just this week, Lexington County, S.C. sheriff Jay Koon indicated his concern with these backlogs.
We’ve previously praised Lively for her efforts on behalf of “the least of these” among us, but we figured some context would be worth providing. In addition to her work with “Silent Tears,” this former deputy solicitor is also the senior resource attorney for the Children’s Law Center at the University of South Carolina.
Good for Lively …
Also, as harshly critical as we’ve been lately of S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson we would be remiss not to credit his office for its work in raising awareness on this issue. If only we could trust him when it came to the follow-through …