JANIE GOULD

If you’re old enough to have watched “Leave it to Beaver” on primetime black and white TV, you probably remember an iconic domestic scene from the 1950s and early 60s: two parents sitting down with their children to eat dinner together. Dad had a long day at the office, while Mom did the housework, picked up the kids from school and made supper. Dinnertime was when everyone shared stories about their day. Some families played word games or recited state capitals as they finished off the meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

“Most families don’t eat dinner together any more,” said Chris Robertson, development director of CASTLE, a non-profit organization serving Indian River County,  the rest of the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee County.. “The parents and kids are going in so many different directions. We’re trying to bring that ‘Leave it to Beaver’ mentality back.”

That’s a tough mission for an agency tasked with preventing child abuse through education and awareness. Florida has twice as much child abuse as the national average. Last year, 126 children died in Florida as a result of abuse. California has more than twice as many children as Florida,, 9.5 million compared to 4.5 million, but recorded fewer deaths from abuse last year, a total of 113.

Robertson says Florida’s faltering economy and the transient nature of its population helped bring about the grim statistics. Unemployment often leads to stress and abuse at home. Also many families that move to Florida find themselves without a strong support system here. Grandparents, aunts and long-time neighbors who could drive a child to the doctor when the parents are working aren’t nearby.

Also, the state of Florida allocates just one percent of its funding for child welfare services to prevention programs, he said.

CASTLE — the acronym stands for Child Abuse Services Training and Life Enrichment — offers numerous prevention programs that aim to teach  “positive; parenting” techniques. Licensed parent educators work with clients in their homes and also teach classes at the agency’s offices in all four counties.

“People always associate a nonprofit like CASTLE with people on the other side of the tracks, but that is not the case,” xxx said. “We have clients in John’s Island, in Gifford, everywhere.”

He said the goal is not to remove children from the home, but rather to prevent abuse by giving families “resource tools,” such as information about food banks and places to go when they need help paying the rent.

“There are a lot of different resources and we all work together,” he said.

CASTLE serves about 500 families each year in Indian River County, and the number increases every year. The agency’s local building, on South U.S. 1 in front of the Vista Royale condominium community, can accommodate three or four different programs at a time.

The most common things that trigger physical abuse of children are crying, toilet training and feeding.  National statistics show that nearly 77 percent of children receive no services after an abuse investigation.  Abuse prevention is much less expensive than intervention after a child has been abused, the statistics show.

CASTLE, founded in 1981 to focus on prevention, originally was part of the Exchange Clubs of the Treasure Coast. Now, as a free-standing nonprofit, it sponsors more than a half dozen programs designed to improve parenting skills that can prevent abuse. Most of the services are free.

The Safe Families and Safe Families Volunteer Program provides in-home service to teach parenting and other positive techniques to use with children to manage their behavior.  A weekly meeting called Strengthening Families gives parents and children pointers on better communication and interaction skills.

An in-school support group called High Hopes for Kids offers assistance to youngsters whose parents are going through divorce or separation, or facing other major transitions.

Valued Visits provides a safe place for children to have supervised visits with parents they have been removed from, so they can begin to build a positive relationship with each other.

Positive Parenting offers workshops and classes for parents who want to learn new parenting skills and improve their ability to discipline effectively.

Families First is a 5-hour course for parents who are separating or divorcing. They learn how to minimize the negative impact on their children. A course called Co-Parenting teaches divorced parents how to interact with their ex-spouse to provide a healthy environment for their children.

Robertson has never forgotten a certain home he visited.

“It had dirt floors! In Indian River County. Dirt floors. The children were all a mess, but you could tell the mother really wanted to make things different and do something for her kids.”

She was 19 and had three children younger than 4. Parent educators from CASTLE worked with her for more than a year. They taught her how to deal with her children when they were fighting and screaming. Now, the kids are doing well in school, and the mother talks to classes at CASTLE.

CASTLE’S clients are referred by schools, churches or the courts and some seek help from the agency on their own. CASTLE serves about 10,000 individuals each year in the four-county region.

Many motorists in Vero probably notice a sea of blue flags flying in front of the Press Journal office on U.S. 1 each April. Each flag memorializes a child killed by abuse the previous year. The Memory Field is a CASTLE project, and one of its biggest supporters is a Treasure Coast dad whose young son was fatally beaten by his biological mother and her boyfriend.

“The father showed up at the Memory Field dedication and has come to every Memory Field since the first one,” Robertson said. “It’s a healing process for him.”