Our Mission
To Promote the Well-Being of Children Through
Prevention, Education, Treatment, and Advocacy.
Every child has the right to a safe, permanent home; a loving and supportive environment; and the opportunity to be a child. Each year in the United States, millions of children are abused, neglected, or abandoned by their families. Eventually, many of these children end up in court with a judge deciding their future. Sometimes children become victims again, victims of an overburdened child welfare system. Sometimes a child can remain adrift in the system for months, even years. Every child deserves to begin their journey to recovery through a children's advocacy center, a child-friendly place where even the smallest and most vulnerable of child victims can feel safe telling what has happened to them and where their healing can begin.
We are a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the well-being of children through treatment, advocacy, prevention, and education. We offer space for all CAPS’ programs, as well as, a child friendly atmosphere for our multidisciplinary response to child abuse and neglect. We offer the benefit of immediate follow-up on child abuse reports, better coordination of medical and mental health referrals, fewer child victim interviews, increased successful prosecution and a consistent continuum of support services to victims and their non-offending family members. We received national accreditation in June of 2004, becoming the first CAC in the state to attain ranking. Services are comprehensive and community oriented.
If you looked through my eyes
I have moved four times this school year and changed schools three times. I am back at the first school I started at and the other children don’t understand why I left or why I’m back…Could you explain it to me so I might be able to tell them?
It’s been cold in our new home and I miss having something warm to eat….my brother and I sleep in the front bedroom on the floor. The last tenant left a mattress so my mom was able to put a couple of sleeping bags on top of it for us to sleep on…
The lights shining in the window mean more visitors…the noise, smoke, and smell make it hard for me to sleep…one time my mother came in with a bloody nose and told us we had to leave right now… when do we get to go home… where is home?
One day in the life of a child we serve. The feelings and thoughts are real. These are moments we would never want a child to experience but I can tell you they do, everyday, here in our community. When words can't tell you the pain, fear and loneliness they feel. Look into their eyes. So many people just looked away. Please don't be another person who just walks away and does nothing. You can make a difference. Volunteer, advocate, educate yourself, your friends, relatives and community, donate. One person can change the world. Offer hope. Be that person. The one who does what's not easy but what's right and just.
Child abuse doesn’t just affect the child being abused and not all the scars left behind when a child is abused are visible, physical scars. All too often the scars of maltreatment manifest themselves in other disturbing ways. Abused and neglected children are 53% more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime, 38% more likely to be arrested as an adult. More than 50% of the women in the nation's jails and prisons reported abuse as a child; teenagers with alcohol problems are 21 times more likely to have been sexually abused than those without such problems; more than 1/3 of all abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children continuing the horrible cycle of abuse.
Once upon a time is now. Make a difference. Support our services, volunteer for our special projects, tour our facility, know your options to prevent and treat family and community-based violence; if not for your sake, for a friends, or relatives, or someone as valuable as a child in our community.