While Batesville Exchange Club members are serving pancakes Saturday morning, they will also be helping to prevent child abuse.

The “annual” Exchange Club Pancake Breakfast held each October has been expanded to a spring pancake breakfast as well. Proceeds raised are used for the Exchange Club’s primary focus: the prevention of child abuse.

Exchange Club president Jimmy Smith said that child abuse prevention efforts aim at breaking the cycle of abuse, followed by parental remorse, followed by more abuse when the parent finds himself or herself again facing the same pressures that triggered the initial abuse. Efforts of children’s advocates have led chancery judges to require mandatory counseling before families can be reunited after an incident of abuse brings parents to the attention of law enforcement or child service agencies, according to Robert Rawson, a minister who is also long-time member of the local Exchange Club.

Rawson has learned too well the consequences when parents are unable to control anger and direct it toward their children.

Counseling teaches abusive parents to recognize the individual stress factors that trigger their behavior and gives them an alternative to taking it out on the child, Rawson said. With money raised by the local club, counseling resources and other direct intervention tactics are provided through its support of Panola County Families First in Batesville and the Exchange Club Family Center in Oxford.

Support for more counseling and for other work of the child abuse prevention facilities which serve Panola County’s families will be the goal of Saturday’s pancake breakfast,  Saturday, 7 to 10 a.m. at the Batesville Intermediate School cafeteria. Tickets can be purchased at The Panolian office or from any Exchange member.