Blythe Chapman: I was approached in 2016, early 2017, about running the medical program. At the time it seemed like a good match. We had a need in order to ensure that children and adolescents had access to medical exams when they were sexually assaulted. We had a need in the community for a Sex Assault Nurse Examiner program. And so it felt like a good connection/match for us to take that program under our umbrella and run both the adult and children medical programs. So I did, and we did it very well. We built a really, really good program.
At this point, we rarely send patients of both adults and children away from our community. We answer calls within 15 minutes. Always. We haven't had one call go unanswered, which was not true when the program was run by Valley View. And that's despite, you know, not having many nurses that are able to do this type of work. This is hard work and we don't get a lot of calls so our nurses don't get a lot of experience.
BC: What happened was there was a very strong dedication and direction and time spent administratively for our nurses on the adult program, but we have not seen an increase in kids being served medically. With a program run by the [River Bridge] Child Advocacy Center, I would've expected to see more kids getting medical services, but, instead, we were just spending more time on the adults and those are not our patients.
KDNK: Why were you spending more time on adults and not kids?
BC: It's kind of the nature of sexual assault. Kids typically do not tell right away. Kids tell, you know, months if not years later. And so their medical needs are not acute. Adults tend to tell right away.
And so when the adult calls come in, it's all hands on deck. These exams take five plus hours. That doesn't include all of the charts and paperwork and evidence collection, everything else that goes into the exams. So there's just a lot more time spent on those adult exams because of the nature of how they come in. Our kids then weren't getting the time and attention. We weren't getting medicals scheduled.
[It was] no one's fault. It just wasn't a good match. Ultimately, these are adult patients who are clients of other organizations in our community that are better equipped to serve them, you know, so we were really case management for adults; whereas, you know, Response and Advocate Safe House are the community organizations here that should be doing that. And my conversations with those two executive directors have been great. They totally agree. These are their clients and they need to be somehow more involved.
We all agree that none of our organizations as small nonprofits without medical oversight should be running a medical program. So that's the other piece. I have no medical background and I've done a, I think, a really good job trying to hold together a medical program with the support of U.C. Health in Colorado Springs, who runs the same SANE program, as well as Children's Hospital. Valley View Hospital has been extremely supportive.
But overall, a medical program needs medical oversight in order to ensure that everything is done correctly.
KDNK: Yeah. I'm surprised that there has been no local medical oversight.
BC: I want to be careful about that because our advisor is Dr. O'Donnell, who's been involved for a very, very long time, but he's very hands-off. He's always available to them but it's not on a day-to-day administrative advisory level, right? So our nurses are really kind of, you know, looking to me for guidance. And, like I said, we do have a contract agreement with U.C. Health and they do telehealth for every exam; however, my organization is ultimately responsible.
BC: The SANE program in Grand Junction is run very similarly under the umbrella of the Child Advocacy Center. So when we did it, it was within the purview of, you know, a rural area needing a SANE program.
Now I feel like we know a whole heck of a lot more and are, I think, in a really good position to develop a SANE program for our community that's sustainable. But we have to be smart about it and we need to involve the community. We need everyone talking to each other rather than saying, “Oh, that's River Bridge’s [program].”
KDNK: Is there anything in the works for getting all of these organizations and people together to create a new program?BC: Yes. Betty Lucas is the director at Advocate Safe House and Shannon Meyer is the director at Response, and they are taking [the] lead on getting community conversation going on this topic.
BC: So as a child advocacy center, we are required to meet the standard for medical care for children. That's where the mission has been a mismatch, that we are serving adults when we are a child advocacy center. We should be, and will be, serving children up to the age of 18.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
