Assistance program
Improving the Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse and the Regional and Local Children's Advocacy Centers
$248.6 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Justice Programs, Justice, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 16.758
- What it does
- Improve the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases and support the development of CACs and/or multi-disciplinary child abuse teams in local communities. (1) To train criminal justice system professionals on innovative techniques for investigating, and prosecuting child abuse cases, including victims of child pornography; (2) to promote a multidisciplinary approach to coordinating the investigations and prosecution of child abuse cases and, thereby limiting the number of necessary pre-trial interviews for child victims, as well as to better assure the accuracy of each interview; (3) to increase the number of communities utilizing a Children’s Advocacy Center approach to the investigation, prosecution and treatment of child abuse cases; (4) to assist communities in developing child-focused programs designed to improve the resources available to children and families; (5) to provide support to non-offending family members; (6) to enhance coordination among community agencies, professionals, and provide medical support to health care and mental health care professionals involved in the intervention, prevention, prosecution, and investigation systems that respond to child abuse cases; and (7) to improve the quality of child abuse prosecution by providing specialized training and technical assistance to prosecutors. Child Advocacy Training: A competitive grant program to support child advocacy training in undergraduate programming and continuing education on multiple evidence-based methods for identifying and screening children for exposure to violence. The grants should support the training of future mandated reporters and child protection professionals and support efforts across the country to train child protection professionals in the field, including law enforcement officers, social workers, mental and medical health professionals, and prosecutors. The performance measures associated with these objectives are: PM 1: Percentage of new policies adhered to promising practices PM 2: Percentage of organizations who employed Enhanced Resource Guidelines PM 3: Percentage of new policies adhered to evidence-based practices