Tagged with: Prevention

Welcome to April. As I normally do in April, I want to focus on the fact that it is National Child Abuse Awareness Month—but this year, under these extraordinary circumstances, the designation takes on an even greater and more urgent significance. We know that, under the best of circumstances, it is challenging to protect the… Continue Reading

Every year, Child Abuse Prevention Month pushes us to focus on the ways in which we can engage our communities to better protect children—in the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) world, we say that the shared goal of our efforts is to work ourselves “out of a job.” We combine forces to unify our messages and… Continue Reading

I was just five years old when I watched the young women of the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team file stoically into a shiny arena in Barcelona. They looked brave, strong, and proud. Most of them started training when they were three or four years old, and this was about to be the culmination of more… Continue Reading

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 was just three. Sadly, this sort of tragic story is unremarkable in America. But what is remarkable is how the abuse stopped at age seven…. Continue Reading

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 stress and trauma, how to recognize symptoms and identify treatments. However, a large body of evidence shows that intervening with parents to strengthen parenting can… Continue Reading

“A guy called Officer Friendly comes to school and teaches us not to answer the door when your parents are not home and don’t talk to strangers. They don’t teach us about people like my cousin Brian. I thought people like Brian jumped out of bushes and attacked you at night.” Those are the words… Continue Reading