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.
The Children’s Advocacy Project has served nearly 4,000 children since opening in 2002 and today continues to help 300 children a year on average.
These are children who need healing, justice, and a chance to dream again. Not only do we serve these children, we also serve their family members in finding peace and a way to move forward. This work isn’t done in a bubble and cannot be done alone.
Trauma can be any event that, when witnessed or experienced by a child or adolescent, is extremely distressing to them.
These events are often in situations where the children feared for their lives or the lives of others. Some of these events include physical abuse, sexual abuse, exposure to violence, loss of a significant loved one, or natural disaster.