The National Children’s Alliance (NCA), which is the accreditation body for Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) has developed 10 Standards for the minimum practice to strengthen the response to children and families seen at Children’s Advocacy Center. These standards are consistent to research and updates in the field and all accredited Children’s Advocacy Centers must follow their guidance. The Standard’s latest update can be found here. 

I wanted to pull some language to remind Multi-Disciplinary Team members and Children’s Advocacy Centers staff why we follow these standards. According to the Putting Standards into Practice-A Guide for Implementing the 2023 National Standards of Accreditation for Children’s Advocacy Centers “Standards for CACs are important guides for planning, organizing, and delivering services in order to most effectively meet the needs of children and families in the aftermath of a report of abuse. They are also useful measures for increasing public awareness, interest, and support of CACs, as well as explaining and justifying funding requests to public and private funders. CACs that have met the Standards for Accredited Members are recognized as having achieved a desired level of multidisciplinary team practice and coordinated service delivery that positively impacts the experience and well-being of children and families served.” Meeting these standards is a great way to not only ensure the best response for our clients, but also to ensure a holistic community response to child abuse. I encourage you to look through these new standards and to start making plans to implement these required changes into your practice. Discuss with your teams, boards, and staff how to best make these changes so that we can best ensure every child in IL is receiving equitable services.

I am always available to discuss how other centers both locally and nationally are meeting these requirements. It is my primary goal to support you through changing processes and requirements. Please do not hesitate to contact me at cara@cacionline.org for brainstorming and assistance.

Crime Scene to Trial team application forms have been published.  CACI is proud to announce the 2nd Annual Crime Scene to Trial training.  The training is for up to 4 teams and will be held in Springfield from September 27th through the 29th. For more information and to submit an application for your team, please go here.

Please take a look and pass along our upcoming training list to your staff and your teams.

Mental Health Supervision

Virtual

Mental Health Supervision 7/18

Quarterly Advocate Roundtable 

July 19 Virtual

Qtr Adv Rt

2023 NCA Accreditation Standard Training 

July 21-22, Virtual

NCA Accreditation Standards 

Stopping Technology: Facilitated Abuse of Rural Kids Prosecutor Symposium:STARK

Aug 23-25, Mt. Vernon, $60

Stopping Technology Facilitated Abuse of Rural Kids

How to Best Support Kids at Trial 

Aug 3-4, VIRTUAL (note change from in-person)

Single registration -$0 Attorney CLEs- $30

How to Best Support Kids at Trial 

ChildFirst Fall Illinois 2022 

October 3-7, Springfield, Il

Full week $250

Attorney course (Oct 3-5) $185

1 day protocol (Oct 4) $50

ChildFirst Fall Illinois 2022

This month, I went on vacation and thought I'd share my easy beach-read (fiction, for a change!). After binge watching the show, I tore threw "The Terminal List" by Jack Carr on the sands of Mexico and can't recommend it enough. Great action, great characters, and great pacing.

Upcoming Due Dates:

CESF July Fiscal Expense PFR due:

Fri, Aug 5, 2022

VOCA FY23 July Fiscal Expense PFR due:

Wed, Aug 10, 2022

FY23 PFR Workbooks and AmpliFund will be ready soon. We will let you know as soon as they are ready.

CESF PFR Workbooks and AmpliFund will be updated soon for the additional extension/additional funds. This extends the CESF grant period to January 31, 2023. We will let you know as soon as they are ready.

We have made it through another VOCA grant year. I appreciate everyone making time to complete reports, modifications, attend site visits, etc throughout the year. I’m busy wrapping up the year-end reports. I’ll have information on the amount of FY22 funds spent out/unspent for the next newsletter, and during a Council meeting sometime in August.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Thank you for getting your quarterly reports and close-out reports to us. 

We still have a few FY22 VOCA site visits to complete and I will be reaching out to those centers in the coming weeks. 

The below graph shows the results of the 1st question in the initial caregiver survey in FY22