What are Children’s Advocacy Centers?
January 21, 2010
Children’s Advocacy Centers have received high praise and many accolades for our work in child abuse evaluation and the appropriate clinical and legal actions. However, we as an organization may be one of the best kept secrets in the state of Georgia. Many of us regularly come into contact with persons who are educators, daycare workers, medical professionals who work with children on a daily basis and still ask the question, “What are Children’s Advocacy Centers?”
First, we need to make you aware that child abuse and specifically child sexual abuse does exist. The problem affects not only the child, but their families, their neighborhoods and the community as a whole.
Children’s Advocacy Centers of Georgia’s (CACGA) goal is to ensure that when abuse is reported every child in Georgia will have access to the services provided by a Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC). Unfortunately, we have not been able to establish centers in many of our communities. Perhaps the gap in services exists because communities do not have a firm grasp on the number of actual incidences of child abuse in their communities. Individuals and communities may also not be aware of all the support systems that are available to victims of child abuse, including Children’s Advocacy Centers. In light of our vision, CACGA is developing a growth plan to ensure comprehensive and quality CAC services in all judicial circuits throughout Georgia.
What else can we say? When child abuse victims and their families arrive at a Children’s Advocacy Center, they find caring professionals and volunteers who are committed to helping children through the nightmare of abuse.
A Children’s Advocacy Center in your community means that a child victim does not have to be interviewed in a police station or other intimidating institutional environment. CACs provide safe and child-friendly environments where specialized interviewers understand how to talk to a child and determine whether abuse actually occurred. In 2008, over 5,700 forensic interviews of alleged victims of child abuse were conducted by a Georgia CAC.
No one agency, individual, or discipline has all of the knowledge, skills and/or resources to provide the assistance needed to the child victim and the child’s family. Children’s Advocacy Centers combine the wisdom and professional knowledge of law enforcement, DFCS, prosecution, medical and mental health to ensure an effective response system is in place that is sensitive to the needs of child.
CACs in Georgia not only facilitate multidisciplinary team investigations of abuse allegations to enhance prosecution where abuse was disclosed (64% of cases in 2008), but they also prevent unwarranted prosecution where abuse was not disclosed (36% of cases in 2008).
The primary charge of all Children’s Advocacy Centers is to reduce trauma to child victims of abuse and neglect by using a multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach to investigation and services.
Culturally competent and developmentally appropriate services are routinely made available to all of our clients and coordinated with a multidisciplinary team response. To effectively meet our clients’ needs, the CAC and our MDT members are willing and able to understand the child’s world view, adapt practices as needed, and offer assistance as appropriate.
What else can we say? Two recent studies show that Children’s Advocacy Centers are beneficial and even offer cost savings to the communities in which they exist.
Research from the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center has shown that Children’s Advocacy Centers are successful in doing just what they were designed to do - coordinating investigations of child abuse by bringing police, child protection, medical and mental health professionals together to help families in a child-friendly environment.
The UNH study, The Multi-Site Evaluation of CACs, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) found children at CACs were more likely to get medical examinations (48% versus 21% in non-CAC communities) and referrals to mental health services (60% versus 22% in non-CAC communities).
Parents and caregivers were more satisfied with CAC-lead investigations compared with non-CAC investigations. (UNH study, The Multi-Site Evaluation of CACs)
A separate study conducted by the National Children’s Advocacy Center in partnership with National Children’s Alliance, showed that on a case by case basis, traditional investigations were 36% more expensive than investigations conducted in a community with a Children’s Advocacy Center. The average cost of a CAC investigation was $2,902 compared to $3,949 for a non-CAC investigation, generating a cost savings of more than $1,000 per case. In 2008, total cost savings for investigations conducted with a Children’s Advocacy Center was over $4.4 million dollars.
Finally, we can tell you that CACGA currently consists of 40 Children’s Advocacy Centers throughout the state of Georgia that serve more than 6,000 children a year.
The services that we, as a network, offer include:
Forensic interviews
Criminal justice support
Crisis counseling
On-site medical exams
Medical referrals
On-site therapy
Child advocacy
Professional training
Information and general referrals
Multidisciplinary team (MDT) case staffing
Abuse prevention services
Community education