What is a Child Advocacy Center?
Child Advocacy Centers (CAC) are community-based, child friendly, multidisciplinary services for children and families affected by child sexual abuse or physical abuse. CAC’s bring together, in one location, Child Protective Services caseworkers, law enforcement, district attorney’s, victim advocates and medical and mental health professionals to provide a coordinated, comprehensive response to victims and their caregivers.
Before our CAC existed, the “system” was doing more harm than good to victims of child abuse. Children repeated their stories over and over again. They were questioned in ER’s, police stations, schools, doctor’s offices and being re-traumatized each time they had to repeat the stories of the trauma they experienced.