NCTSN Partners with
National Children’s Alliance

Over the past two year years, Charles Wilson from the Chadwick Center in San Diego, CA, Connie Carnes of the National Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) and Libbie Ralston from the Dee Norton Lowcountry Children’s Center, a partner of the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center in South Carolina, have initiated conversations with leaders of the National Children’s Alliance about forming a partnership with the NCTSN. Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) are community-based organizations that bring together professionals and agencies as multidisciplinary teams to investigate and prosecute child abuse. They offer a comprehensive approach to services for child abuse victims and their families and emphasize coordination of investigations in order to minimize returamatization of children and families. The National Children's Alliance is a national membership organization providing services and accreditation to over 500 CACs nationwide.

The goal of the NCTSN-CAC collaboration would be to improve the CAC's ability to respond to the mental health needs of traumatized children. An NCTSN/CAC interest group has now been formed to help raise the standard of trauma-specific mental health care within CACs and those mental health agencies with whom the centers partner in communities.

In many small or rural communities, CACs are the only mental health resource available to children and families, and are often called on to respond to other types of traumatic events. For example, a number of CACs were involved in disaster recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. With the help of the newly formed interest group, NCTSN was able to provide a number of centers with some training on Psychological First Aid in September 2005.

The group's goals include:

• improving the awareness and understanding among CAC leaders of best practice mental health interventions for traumatized children;
• improving understanding among CAC team members of the value and most effective timing of mental health interventions;
• assisting CAC directors to plan and implement improvements in the mental health response to the needs of children seen at the CAC;
• linking CACs to the resources and products of the NCTSN;
• providing suggestions to the National Children’s Alliance Board on changes in the mental health accreditation standard;
• providing guidance to CAC directors and clinical directors on relevant policy issues, such as confidentiality; and
• providing guidance for key questions CACs face relative to the mental health component of their program.  

The group has decided to produce a guide for CAC directors on improving the quality of mental health services for abused children, and hopes to explore ways to connect the NCTSN’s expertise in childhood trauma with the CACs’ expertise in team investigation of abuse to improve the accuracy of information collected in the investigation process while minimizing the secondary trauma of the process on children and families.

For more information about this group, contact Charles Wilson at the Chadwick Center, cwilson@chsd.org.