If you or someone you know has been a victim of child abuse, please call Child Protective Services at 269-966-1331 or your local police department.
Children's Advocacy Center
What is a Children’s Advocacy Center?
Children’s Advocacy Centers (CAC’s) are community based, child-focused, and child-friendly facilities where representatives from many disciplines meet to discuss and make decisions about investigation, treatment, and prosecution of child abuse cases. The primary goal of all CAC’s is to ensure that children are not further victimized by the intervention systems designed to protect them.
Our Child Advocacy Center offers:
- A child-appropriate/child-friendly facility that is both physically and psychologically safe for clients.
- Forensic interviews which are conducted in a neutral, fact-finding nature and coordinated with other professionals to avoid duplicative interviewing.
- A multidisciplinary team that meets to discuss and investigate allegations of child abuse that includes law enforcement, child protective services, prosecution, mental health, medical, victim advocacy and children’s advocacy center professionals.
- Medical evaluation through coordination and referral with other providers who are specifically trained in pediatric child abuse issues.
- Victim support/advocacy to coordinate with other providers throughout investigation and the court process.
- A family advocate program.
- Case review to provide team discussion and information sharing throughout the case progression.
- Case tracking to monitor case progress and case outcomes.
The staff of our CAC includes:
- Maria Markos, Coordinator
- Stacy McDonald, Family Advocate
- Dannielle Kostrab, Forensic Interview Specialist
Other websites:
These websites will provide the reader further information regarding the CAC model or child abuse.