New Isabel's House director urges no-tolerance policy

With five months on the job, Isabel's House Executive Director Dottie Mullikin is doing what she does best, committing fully to children.

Mullikin - herself the mother of seven adopted children and grandmother of 22 - is vocally passionate about her quest to squash child abuse and neglect.

"We've got to get this community unafraid of talking about child abuse and neglect," Mullikin said, speaking to 71 guests this morning at Hilton Garden Inn as part of Springfield Business Journal's monthly 12 People You Need to Know series.

Mullikin said it's up to Springfield-area residents to address the issue, which was marked as a red flag in the Community Focus Report for Springfield-Greene County. According to the 2011 report, Greene County had the second-highest rate of child abuse and neglect in Missouri.

"I don't like it. I'm angry about it," Mullikin said, noting initiatives such as the Mayor's Commission for Children are a good start, but don't go far enough.

"For whatever reason, the initiatives that have been put together haven't been successful in making it work. We need to ask ourselves, 'Why is that?'" Mullikin added. "There have been lots of good ideas, there have been lots of good people involved in it, but we've not made the kind of difference that we need to be able to make."

Mullikin said the estimated cost to care for a single abused and neglected child is a minimum of $210,000, covering needs such as therapy.

"If we don't do something about that, we're going to bankrupt our communities," she said. "And that's just purely from an economic perspective, never mind what the kids go through."

To start, Mullikin encouraged community members to adopt a no-tolerance policy and to support the efforts of Isabel's House.

With an annual operating budget of $900,000 and a staff of 36, Mullikin leads the Junior League of Springfield children’s crisis nursery that serves roughly 550 children a year and counsels about 350 parents. Equipped with 20 beds in the house, 2750 W. Bennett St., and a staff to care for 12 children at all times, Mullikin said there were 14 kids in the house last night.

"We need to band together and decide that we're going to get serious and do something about this. I really am very much hopeful that we've reached the tipping point," she said. "I'm really hopeful that this is a perfect storm and that our community is prepared to work together to do what really is necessary to say, 'We will not tolerate having this happen to our children.'"