A $2.5 million donation to Arkansas Children's Hospital announced Wednesday will help fund a support center for abused and neglected children -- creating one of the country's few centralized hubs for medical, legal and mental health services for victimized kids.
The donation comes from the family foundation of David Clark, an air cargo businessman who died in October, and it brings the total donations for the center to $11.3 million. The building, which will be named the David M. Clark Center for Safe and Healthy Children, will be dedicated in August.
Centralizing the hospital's existing programs in one building will make it easier for staff members to collaborate on treatment plans and resolve cases more quickly, said Dr. Karen Farst, a child abuse pediatrician who helped plan the center. Hospitals in Kansas City, San Diego and Texas also streamline some of their victimized children's services, she said, but Cincinnati is perhaps the nearest hospital with a comparable level of coordinated care under one roof.
Arkansas has reported some of the highest rates of child maltreatment in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Children's Bureau. Nearly 13 in every 1,000 Arkansas children were reported as victims of abuse or neglect in 2014, compared with a national average of less than 10 per 1,000. Much of that stems from substance abuse and undiagnosed mental illness, Farst said, adding that Arkansas' rate might also reflect more thorough reporting than other states.
As of Wednesday, 4,964 children in Arkansas were living in foster care, according to the state's Department of Human Services. A large majority of those children came from unsafe homes, though that number also includes children who were left with no guardian after their parents died, said Brandi Hinkle, the department's deputy director of communications.
Although the center will be in Little Rock, the hospital does outreach across the state, Farst said. And the hospital helps train Arkansas' children caseworkers, Hinkle said.
The Clark family's donation will establish an endowment to cover the building's ongoing costs, but the programs will rely on donations to the hospital, said Fred Scarborough, president of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Foundation.
"There's very, very little billable components or very little revenue for those programs," he said.
The Clark family has made other large donations to Arkansas Children's Hospital; the hospital's pediatric cardiology center is named after David Clark.
"Our dad always had a soft spot in his heart for children," said Elizabeth Taylor, president of Clark Family Foundation Inc., in a release. "Throughout his life he wanted to ensure a healthy future for children throughout the region."
The Florida-based foundation, led by Clark's family, did not return a message seeking additional comment. IRS forms show the foundation has donated to charities across the South, including the St. Joseph Children's Home in Louisville, Ky., and the PACE Center for Girls in Jacksonville, Fla.
Metro on 07/07/2016