Madison never thought she would look forward to her future. She saw no reason to create goals or have dreams. She knew that, like her mother before her, she would probably get pregnant, drop out of high school, work a low-paying job and that would be her life.
Forensic interviews are usually the first step at the Children’s Advocacy Project. When there is suspected child abuse or maltreatment, it is the job of the forensic interviewer to have a conversation with the child to elicit detailed information about the possible events.
The Children’s Advocacy Project in Casper, WY was the recipient of a $5,000 Community Investment Grant from local energy transportation company, Enbridge.
Funds donated to the Children’s Advocacy Project will support the effort to continue to improve the community response to the broad and devastating impact that child maltreatment has on individuals and the community through comprehensive services such as, forensic interviews, counseling services, child and family advocacy, and more.
The Children’s Advocacy Project is one of three accredited advocacy centers in the state of Wyoming. Child advocacy centers (CACs) are modeled on the simple, but powerful concept of coordinating all efforts of agencies and professionals and placing them under one roof.
To better understand advocacy centers, you might want to know what life is like for a child who has experienced abuse without an advocacy center.
Each year the Children’s Advocacy Project chooses a theme for our annual summary report, the theme this year will be Bright Futures. To us that means providing child victims of sexual abuse and maltreatment with resources to heal from trauma through forensic interviews, counseling services tailored to their healing, and helping to support non-offending family members and caregivers through the healing process.
Not only is the Children’s Advocacy Project here to create a more effective and efficient response to child abuse and maltreatment, we are working to take steps to prevent child abuse from ever occurring. It is our responsibility as a community to work toward preventing child abuse.