On April 23, Children’s Trust celebrated 40 years of preventing child abuse and neglect in South Carolina and received special recognition from the floor of the Senate in a resolution sponsored by Sen. Katrina Shealy.
Senator Shealy thanked Children’s Trust for its service to South Carolina’s children and families. Senator Thomas McElveen, Sen. Gerald Malloy and Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine also expressed appreciation.
Children’s Trust Board of Directors and staff attended alongside partners from the S.C. Department of Social Services and the S.C. Department of Child Advocacy.
Former Governor David Beasley also joined the resolution reading. Beasley and fellow House of Representative members Parker Evatt and David Wilkins introduced the Children’s Trust’s originating legislation that passed both chambers with bipartisan support and was signed by then-Governor Dick Riley on April 23, 1984.
Children’s Trust celebrated its 40th anniversary in the South Carolina Senate alongside partners from the S.C. Department of Social Services and the S.C. Department of Child Advocacy.
Beasley served as the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme from 2017 to 2023 and accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization for its efforts to address the world’s hunger crisis in 2020.
Children’s Trust was started by state statute in 1984 to award grants to private nonprofit organizations and qualified state agencies to fund a broad range of innovative child abuse and neglect prevention programs to meet the critical needs of South Carolina’s children. The legislation also created a fund for citizens to support prevention by donating from their state income taxes.
“We are very grateful for the vision and leadership prioritizing child abuse prevention,” said Sue Williams, CEO of Children’s Trust. “As we deliver on that mandate established 40 years ago, we know that prevention is the bedrock of a better future for South Carolina and her children.”
Children’s Trust has grown to administer a wide range of public and private funding to support a vast statewide network of community-based organizations that believe all children should live in secure families and be surrounded by supportive communities.
The organization now funds more than 50 community-based organizations to deliver evidence-based prevention programs, including Healthy Families America, Parents as Teacher, the Strengthening Families Program and the Positive Parenting Program (Triple P). It leads and coordinates home visiting as the federal Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program and the federal Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention grant. The organization also leads the state’s coordinated efforts for family resource centers, KIDS COUNT and Child Abuse Prevention Month, which coincidentally is also in April.
Sen. Katrina Shealy, Children’s Trust CEO Sue WIlliams, David Beasley, Board Chair Beverly Hamilton, Chief Operations Officer Joan Hoffman and Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy Sarah Knox stand together after the Senate resolution reading.
