Five essential services of Children’s Advocacy Centers

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  1. Advocacy: Meeting families and children where they are at in the emotional and mental process of going through a child abuse investigation. It also lets our staff take on the weight of finding any extra needed resources and the ability to be a communications liaison between the family and the investigators.
  2. Forensic Interviews: This service allows children to be interviewed in a non-invasive, neutral and fact-finding way rather than being forced to answer direct questions by investigators.
  3. Sexual and Physical Assault Medical Exams: More than 100 children each year receive medical exams at Grandma’s House. All exams are head to toe – as long as the child gives our nurses permission – and are performed by RNs trained in pediatric trauma – Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE)
  4. Trauma Focused Therapy: All children seen at Grandma’s House are screened for trauma. Because children are so resilient, counseling sometimes is not needed. However, if a child does share that she or he is struggling and needs the assistance of therapy, we are able to see them at whichever location they were initially seen in.
  5. Prevention: We have a Community Development Coordinator who specializes in sharing child abuse education & awareness to individuals, organizations, academic leadership, and more. Our Prevention and Education Coordinator takes on the task of teaching body safety and basic prevention techniques to children from pre-K to high school seniors. We also have a SANE nurse as our Clinical Coordinator who helps educate the medical community on the importance of our exams and how they are different than what a child would receive at the ER or a pediatrician’s office. Our Program Coordinator helps educate law enforcement and other agencies on the gift a children’s advocacy offers to an investigation.