Norm Dollar to receive award on Thursday
By Davida Siwisa James
APPLE VALLEY REVIEW
Apple Valley resident Norm Dollar is one of several people who will be honored at the Children’s Network Shine-a-Light on Child Abuse Prevention Awards Breakfast on Thursday in San Bernardino.
Dollar, who recently retired from the County of San Bernardino’s Children and Family Services, will receive the Lifetime Advocate Award for 32 years of service.
He and his wife moved to Apple Valley in 1980, right after graduate school.
“I started as a child protection worker for the county of San Bernardino for six or seven years,” Dollar said. “I was also working for the Victor Valley Child Abuse Task Force.”
Dollar said that the collaborative work that the government and community did together, spearheaded by the task force, was a rewarding part of his career.
“I worked five years as the director of that agency,” Dollar said. “Two of our programs were a shelter facility for abused children that we opened in Apple Valley, and then later, Cooper Home.”
The agencies of the Victor Valley Child Abuse Task Force became Happy Trails Foundation, according to Dollar. The Happy Trails website describes Cooper Home as a long-term residential care and treatment center for severely abused boys.
“The task force worked on placement prevention services. We would have licensed clinicians work with at-risk children and their families to try to prevent foster placement where possible,” Dollar said.
Dollar said that those partnerships led to statewide-pilot programs with the goal of keeping families together and children out of foster care.
“That was a very happy time for me professionally because we were able to work across programs, and bring together many agencies and concerned citizens to address the issue of child abuse in a very proactive way.”
Dollar moved from child services to aging and adult programs in 1991, where he became the regional manager for the High Desert.
Dollar said that his commitment to work in public service is partially rooted in his childhood in a religious family that was focused on service.
“And then when I went to college,” Dollar said, “I saw how crushing poverty can be to families and to the leadership of families. And sometimes they just can’t do it alone.”
For more information on the awards and tickets to attend, go to www.sbcounty..gov/childnet/ or call 909-383-9677.