Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers “The Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers has been the driving force of extraordinary growth in the past few years. The result of this strong, intentional leadership is that all child victims in the state of Maine will soon have access to the quality, evidenced based care of a Children’s Advocacy Center.” — National Children’s Alliance FY2017 was been a busy and exciting year for the Network, a program of MECASA. We supported the opening of two new Children’s Advocacy Centers (CAC) programs to serve three additional counties. These efforts included traveling to all corners of the state to meet with CAC staff and their local multidisciplinary teams (MDTs); helping facilitate community conversations about the development of the CAC; providing logo, brochure, and website development in partnership with CAC staff; and working with CAC staff and MDTs to develop local policies and protocols. We are available to CAC staff across the state to help provide immediate, targeted, and expert technical assistance in the full range of efforts required to build sustainable, effective programs that meet the needs of sexually abused children and their families. CAC services are currently available to sexually abused children and their families in nine of Maine’s 16 counties. The Network also supported three MDTs in the development of their programs. We anticipate that by the end of 2018, CAC services will be available statewide. Now that there are MDTs in all areas of the state, we have been focusing on providing training opportunities to CAC staff and MDT members. Over the last year we collaborated with the Northeast Regional Children’s Advocacy Center to provide a training on the national accreditation standards for CAC management and staff; a full day training for over 120 participants on strengthening child sexual abuse investigations using the MDT approach; and a two-day MDT Academy where eight teams came together to learn about MDT development, communication, and sustainability. 1 2 Accredited Operational & working toward accreditation Developing 4
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