"Partnership," and how this program promotes success, became the recent focus of the Bradley County Health Council.

The guest speaker during the organization's recent gathering was RaShina Viverette, who spoke of how the program works within a four-county region of Southeast Tennessee, including Bradley.

Partnership has over 20 programs that provide individuals and families with the tools and resources to build stability and create independence. These programs impact the entire circle of ages, from young to elderly, but are not meant to help an individual for a day, month or even a year. Instead, the programs aim to help people develop a lifetime of success and the skills needed to do just that.

“We work with five different centers of service, including youth services, family strengthening services, crisis services, deaf services and elder services,” Viverette stated.

Viverette works with Bradley, McMinn, Polk and Meigs counties and helps people get through the organization’s Family First Program to help them become self-sufficient in a short time frame.

For victims of abuse, Partnership offers housing in safe environments as well as court advocates who work with the victims to grant them orders of protection from their abusers. Accompanying this is its rape crisis center, which provides medical treatment, forensic exams, counseling and legal advocacy for victims of sexual assault.

One big identifier of abuse can be if a person in your life is constantly talking down to you. In many abuse situations, the abused will not want to acknowledge they’ve been in these situations because they haven’t been physically hit; however, abusers can control their victims through a number of methods like not letting them have a job, keeping them at home at all times or only allowing their victims to work at a particular location.

“The people who abuse others create a sense of fear in their victims,” Viverette said. “On average, 20 people experience domestic violence every minute. This affects 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men. We often focus only on services for females and forget about the fact that men can be abused too.”

Unfortunately, Viverette said that the statistics may be under-representing the actual abuse taking place overall, as many of those abused — especially men — are unwilling or embarrassed to come forward to authorities about the abuse. Over 19 million women and 5 million men have been stalked as well, and Viverette stated that when they hear a stalking case, they try to get a sense of the severity of the situation and immediately protect the victim with an order of protection. Many times, the stalker is a person who the victim has known in the past, such as a significant other.

Independence for seniors is also paramount, as Partnership’s homemakers assist the elderly with daily tasks such as housekeeping, grocery shopping and accompaniment to the doctor. The company also offers healing to elder and disabled victims of abuse and financial exploitation.

Following Viverette’s presentation, health educator Amy Davenport explained how on Dec. 5, the health department is providing free flu vaccines from 4-7 p.m at the Cleveland Family YMCA. For more information, contact the Bradley County Health Department. After several other individual updates, the meeting was concluded.

The Bradley County Health Council will meet again on Nov. 20, at Peerless Road Church.