Blog

What About Post-Traumatic Growth?

My story didn’t begin with me having a voice. It began in the silence and secrets and shame that so many victims struggle to break free from. And for a… Continue Reading

What It Means to Be Rich

I may live in a city, but I’m a small town girl. My childhood home was on a dirt road in one of the most impoverished counties in the country…. Continue Reading

Sometimes, we shouldn’t call them victims

“Don’t give up on your client.  When I first started therapy, I wouldn’t talk…every time, I wouldn’t talk for like the whole hour… some therapists would have given up…” “The… Continue Reading

What bits do what? An international lens on the complexities of the CAC model

In Australia, Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) have been raised as a way to improve responses to child abuse based on the demonstrated benefits of this approach in the United States…. Continue Reading

Stopping Child Abuse in Real Time

A man in my home state of Illinois will spend the next 40 years behind bars as the consequence of sexually abusing his girlfriend’s daughter. The abuse started when she… Continue Reading

Extending Jenna’s Law to Trafficking Victims

The first time I walked into a Children’s Advocacy Center, I was a teenager dealing with the aftermath of years of sexual abuse. The CAC helped my family and I… Continue Reading

Sustaining an Evidence-Based Practice

Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) have come a long way in the last 30 years.  We have added services and interventions based on solid research—evidence-based practices (EBPs)—all the while maintaining a… Continue Reading

What Others’ Trauma Leaves Behind

The American Counseling Association’s Traumatology Interest Network (2014) defines vicarious trauma as “the emotional residue from hearing other people’s trauma stories and becoming witness to the pain, fear, and terror… Continue Reading

Reaching Children Through Their Parents

It’s no great surprise that much of our work in advocating for the well-being of children focuses on, well, the children—how to interact with them, how to help them manage… Continue Reading

The Lifelong Sting of Abuse

NOTE: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence against children. I was 23 years old, in my first job as an assistant social worker in the Atlanta schools, when I… Continue Reading