10th Annual
Champions of Children Conference
The Westin - Itasca, Illinois
March 11-12, 2019
CACI's 10th Annual Champions of Children Conference is a two-day MDT enrichment conference features highly regarded speakers in their fields representing each discipline, with four separate tracks for participants to choose from that will best meet their professional development needs.
CACI Executive Director Kim Mangiaracino, CACI staff, Mercer County CAC Executive Director Marla Reynolds and Chicago CAC Director of Education, Prevention and Policy Julia Strehlow, joined with staff from Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault in hosting a continental breakfast meet and greet on Thursday, February 21st at the State Capitol!
Registration is now open for 
ChildFirst Illinois Spring 2019!
Registration for ChildFirst, Attorney Course & Protocol Update can be found here .

ChildFirst will be held at the Double Tree located at 10 Brickyard Dr., Bloomington, IL 61761

Registration must be received by March 4, 2019

A flyer can be found here for those who need it for their employer to approve their attendance at this training session. Online registration is preferred.  

CEUs are pending approval, historically this event has been awarded 20 MCLEs and 29 contact hours/2.9 CEUs from Northern Illinois University

Please pass onto your teammates, and email Cara if you have any questions.
Registration options include:

New Forensic Interviewers: 
April 1-5, $500

Attorney ChildFirst Observation Course: 
April 1-3, $300

Finding Words Protocol Update/Previous Trained Interviewer Protocol Refresher: 
April 2, $100
MDT Coordinator Roundtables

Topics will be announced in the near future and there will be a $10 fee to cover the cost of lunch.

Click on the region below to register!


Central Region - Friday, May 17th at the Tazewell County CAC in Pekin

Northern Region - Wednesday, May 22nd at the Will County CAC in Joliet

Southern Region - Mon., May 20th at the Spero Family Services Center in Mt. Vernon
The Midwest Regional CAC is a respected provider of affordable, expert training through our Medical Academy.  

myCasereview provides anonymous, online medical expert review via a HIPAA compliant web-based platform to connect child abuse clinicians with advanced medical consultants. Annual enrollment in the program allows medical providers to submit as many cases as they want for expert review. All of the providers on our expert panel are Board Certified Child Abuse Pediatricians with many years of child abuse experience. When a provider submits a case for review they will receive individualized feedback on photo documentation and diagnostic accuracy. Participating in expert review contributes to increased accuracy and quality of exams for kids. 

The National Children’s Alliance has approved this program as meeting the expert review requirements in the 2017 National Standards of Accreditation. The standards require that medical examiners must have at least 50% of their abnormal cases reviewed by an advanced medical consultant, and participation in this program is an easy and cost effective way to do that. 

To learn more about the program, cost (including discounted subscription rates for Chapters), and to register, click here
Family Engagement Surveys

NCA is collecting surveys from CAC Directors and Advocates to learn about CAC staff training and practices around family engagement in evidence-based mental health services.  The deadline to respond is this Friday, March 1, 2019 . These surveys are the first stage of a project funded by NIMH between NCA and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Results will be used to inform an online training curriculum for Advocates to increase family engagement skills.

TWO surveys were sent by email to the point-of-contact at each CAC on February 4, 2019. Reminders have been sent weekly, with the last reminder on February 20, 2019. It is essential that centers complete both survey types to ensure we have a complete picture of the family engagement process at CACs.

1.    Survey for CAC Directors: Directors are asked to complete this survey on behalf of their organization regarding general CAC practices.

2.    Survey for Advocates: The designated point-of-contact is asked to forward this survey to Advocates at the CAC. The survey can be completed by multiple Advocates at each center regarding individual staff experiences. 

Each center has a custom link to each survey type, so please check your inbox (as well as your junk/spam folder), for your custom invitations to the surveys from Qualtrics. If you cannot find your center’s links to the surveys, please contact Kaitlin Lounsbury at klounsbury@nca-online.org
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  • Free web conference calls (up to 45 min call duration)!
  • Unlimited conference calls!
  • Up to 10 participants!
  • Screen sharing!
  • Call recording!