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The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday approved an agreement with eight other cities to develop a multidisciplinary response team for child abuse cases.
The one-year agreement includes the cities of Bessemer, Brighton, Fairfield, Hoover, Hueytown, Lipscomb, Midfield and Pleasant Grove. It also includes the Alabama Department of Mental Health and the Clay House Child Advocacy Center.
According to city officials, the purpose of the team is to investigate child abuse and neglect cases with a “well-coordinated, trauma-informed approach” and implement a multidisciplinary response to cases. The advocacy center will track and document child abuse cases and provide detailed summaries and documentation for the team to review.
The council approved the measure unanimously.
“Thank you for your continued support for different initiatives like this,” Councilor Hunter Williams said to his colleagues after the vote. “Obviously with all the municipalities we have in Jefferson County, when we work together, we actually help the residents, not just of Birmingham but as a whole. This is an important one.”
Historic Fountain Heights Survey
The council also authorized the administration to apply for a federal grant to survey the Fountain Heights community and draft a National Register of Historic Places nomination. The Underrepresented Communities Program Grant is through the U.S. National Park Service.
There would be no local match required if the city were to get the grant.
Fountain Heights is among Birmingham’s oldest and most historic neighborhoods, having first been established in 1882. It was a frontline in the Civil Rights Movement. But in the late 1960s and 1970s, the community’s landscape was significantly transformed by construction of Interstates 65 and 59, which essentially enclosed the neighborhood on three sides.
