News Photo by Julie Riddle At Washington Avenue Park in Alpena on Thursday, Ray Reynolds, president of the Exchange Club of Alpena, holds one of 50 flags the group planted to encourage awareness of child abuse.

ALPENA – Investigators confirmed nearly 200 cases of child abuse or neglect in Northeast Michigan in 2020, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Local groups want people to know that number — and to do something about it.

At the start of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, observed annually in April, an Alpena organization hung newly designed flags along city streets and stretched a banner across a bridge. Pinwheels planted in several counties remind passersby to remember young people who need their community’s protection.

Flags and pinwheels may not stop child abuse, but they can make the community take notice of the problem and encourage them to take steps to make it better, said Meg Devers, organizer for a child abuse prevention committee.

“If nothing else, eyes will be opened,” Devers said. “They might be a little sad at first, but they’ll be opened.”

The interactive graphic below shows statistics on child abuse in Northeast Michigan. Reading on mobile? Turn your device horizontally for the best viewing experience. Story continues below graphic.

The Exchange Club of Alpena, of which Devers is a member, has for years made blankets to distribute to abused children via the Children’s Advocacy Center of Northeast Michigan.

Those efforts helped children after they’d been hurt but didn’t do enough to stop the abuse from happening in the first place, said Ray Reynolds, Exchange Club president.

This year, the Exchange Club spearheaded an effort to place 50 blue-and-yellow flags along a sidewalk near Mich-e-ke-wis Park and along Washington Avenue. The group planted the flags on Thursday evening.

Local businesses and individuals eagerly pitched in to sponsor the flags to promote child abuse awareness. Sponsors also wanted to know what would happen beyond awareness, Reynolds said.

Exchange Club members aren’t experts in child abuse, but, club members decided, they could help people who are.

A child abuse prevention committee, headed by Devers and Courtney Holmes, will coordinate the funding and volunteers the club hopes to offer other local organizations who fight child abuse.

Such efforts are needed now more than ever, Holmes said.

Reports of child abuse dropped significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic reached northern Michigan in 2020 – not a good statistic when it means children still got abused but that abuse did not get reported because children were not going to school or the doctor’s office, Holmes said.

Unable to escape to the safe haven of school, children at risk of abuse spent more time alone with parents who were often trapped at home themselves by shelter-in-place orders or job loss.

As schools reopened, child abuse reports increased, often with children showing worse signs of trauma than before because their abuse had gone undetected, Holmes said.

A retired teacher, Devers remembers children coming into her Alpena classroom showing signs of physical or emotional abuse or “literally starving,” she said.

She hopes the flags and other Exchange Club efforts lead to a communitywide group of people who want to help with prevention. The club has already seen interest in such a group, Devers said.

Such prevention can also happen one person at a time, said Tamara Quick, president of Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Alcona County.

That group will plant pinwheels on the county building lawn at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

Children experiencing abuse often live in homes impacted by poverty, unemployment, single-parent living situations, or other stressors, Quick said.

People who feel helpless to help abused children can fight the factors that create the environment in which abuse breeds, she said.

Offer to babysit, she suggested. Take a meal. Encourage. Invite to church. Support programs that feed kids and give families supplies they need.

“We can come together as a community to create connections for these struggling families,” Quick said. “So they know they’re not alone.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.