What We Do
At the Child Advocacy Center (CFAC) we provide a safe and supportive environment to assist victims and their families in the discovery, intervention, treatment, and prevention of child sexual abuse.
Our staff is a team of trained professionals with a shared vision to minimize the traumatic effects of child abuse. Our first priority is to ensure the safety of the child and their non-offending family members. Our focus is the child.
Child First Advocacy Center offers children and their families:
Investigation
Multi-agency support system
Protection
Education
Hope and Healing
We recognize that talking about abuse is very difficult. We are trained to talk to kids about difficult subjects. We are here to help you determine what has or has not happened to your child and protect them from further abuse.
The Child First Advocacy Center is one of hundreds of child advocacy centers found throughout the United States. At CFAC we use the Child Advocacy Center (CAC) model based approach. This approach is a child-focused, collaborative through which a response to child abuse is coordinated. The CAC model consists of professionals and agencies needed to offer comprehensive services to victims and their families. The services that are available and necessary to handle a report of child abuse often include:
- Trained & experienced interviewers
- Medical professionals
- Child protective services
- Mental health professionals
- Law enforcement
- Victim advocacy, and
- Prosecution, if applicable
We help you communicate with all the professionals involved in the case and provide support and information your family will need. Using this approach limits the number of times and the number of people the victim will have to talk to about the abuse. This comprehensive and multi-agency support approach prevents further victimization and trauma while protecting the victim.
Click here to see what happened when a child reported abuse before the CAC.
What Can We Do For Your Child?
Provide a comfortable, safe place for your child to talk about the abuse.
Limit the number of times, and the number of people your child will have to talk to about the abuse.
Help you communicate with all the professionals involved in the case.
Provide support and information to your family.
Help prepare you and your child for court, should that be necessary.
We provide consistent and fast follow up to abuse reports and a connection to other agencies and services for support and healing. The process involves a team of professionals from several agencies. We are able to provide confidentially between these professionals.
What We Can Not Do For Your Child?
We are not able to guarantee that the case will be prosecuted. The interview is the child’s statement to the police and the child protective investigation. It is only one part of the investigation. Many factors need to be considered before someone is charged with a crime.
We cannot prevent your child from having to testify in court.
