A Child's Voice Child Advocacy Center, Inc

We are adding therapy for our clients!

To meet the needs of our clients, A Child's Voice is starting an in-house trauma-focused therapy program for children and teens served by our center. Offering this service at the center ensures youth have access to effective treatment at no cost to the family. Donations on Giving Tuesday will support this program as we plan to start offering therapy in early 2023!

We bought another building!

A Child's Voice has seen over a 30% increase in clients over the last two years. To account for current and future growth, A Child’s Voice purchased a second office building in the same office complex as its original building, allowing for expansion of services in the same centralized location. Please consider donating to help us pay off the mortgage of this building.

Our Purpose and Mission

A Child’s Voice Child Advocacy Center in Social Circle, Georgia, exists to strengthen the coordinated community response to situations of child maltreatment, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witness to abuse and homicide, by integrating the existing resources of law enforcement, child protection, prosecution, medical and therapeutic agencies, so that perpetrators are held accountable for their actions and children are protected.

How Child Advocacy Centers Help Kids

The Children's Advocacy Center model utilizes teamwork and coordination between all agencies involved in the case, while keeping the child first. 

Our Main Focus is the Child

Our child advocacy center is designed to meet the needs of children for whom allegations of sexual and/or physical abuse have been reported. We work to protect the children by gathering valuable information in a child friendly setting. A Child's Voice is a facility supplied with state-of-the-art equipment that enables specially trained professionals to conduct effective, consistent, non-threatening forensic interviews and medical examinations of children who have made these allegations. These services are offered at no cost to the child victim and their family.

We operate under the supervision of our Board of Directors and Executive Director, Nancy S. Burgess, MSW.

WHAT WE DO

Forensic Interviews

 At the request of law enforcement or child protective services, we offer forensic interviews by specially trained forensic interview specialists. These take place at our child-friendly center and are audio/video recorded to avoid multiple interviews and retraumatization of the children.

Forensic Medical Exams

When necessary, we provide forensic medical examinations through a partnership with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We utilize telemedicine, where we have a specialized nurse at our center and consult the specialists at Children's with a live audio/video link.

Family Advocacy & Support

We offer support for caregivers of the children we serve while they are at the center and follow-up to address any new needs. Additionally, we work closely with counseling and other mental health agencies to ensure anyone who needs counseling is able to receive it.

Multi-Disciplinary Team

We work with our multi-disciplinary team, comprised of: law enforcement, child protective services, the District Attorney's office, medical providers, mental health providers and victim advocates. This team approach allows us to efficiently and effectively communicate the status of cases to ensure all agencies are working together to best support children and families.

Community Outreach

Through various avenues, we work to provide public awareness and education of child abuse to help with prevention and appropriate response to cases of child abuse. Outside of the below listed trainings, we are available to provide presentations and informational sessions about child abuse when requested.

Community Training

Darkness to Light’s Stewards of Children training:
Stewards is a sexual abuse prevention training for adults, focusing on reducing opportunity and creating safe environments for children. The training also educates participants on recognizing abuse, responding to disclosures of abuse, and reporting abuse. 

Connections Matter:
Connections Matter is designed to engage community members in building caring connections to improve resiliency. The Connections Matter initiative is a collaboration with Prevent Child Abuse Iowa. This interactive training informs community members about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how to better understand trauma, brain development, resilience, and health as well as how to build strong relationships with children in their community.

Mandated Reporting:
Mandated reporting is the early recognition of child maltreatment with the goal of preventing further abuse and reducing the adverse consequences of maltreatment. This training is offered to communities, professionals, or groups.

A Child's Voice is proud to serve as the local council of Prevent Child Abuse Georgia for Walton County.