Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) are county-level partnerships between the agencies tasked with responding to child abuse allegations. CACs provide child and family-friendly settings where children can feel safe to talk to specially-trained investigators about abuse allegations, and where service providers can help children and their families recover in the aftermath of abuse.
The Safe Center houses the Nassau County Child Advocacy Center (CAC), a partnership between Nassau County Police, Child Protective Services, the District Attorney’s Office, County Attorney’s Office, Nassau University Medical Center/NUHealth, and The Safe Center LI. These partners form the multi-disciplinary team (MDT) at the CAC and collaborate to investigate allegations of sex abuse, severe physical abuse and human trafficking.
Each MDT partner benefits from the inclusion of expertise from the diverse team members. The coordinated response helps investigative team members obtain the most accurate and comprehensive information possible to evaluate child abuse allegations. Given a disclosure of abuse, this coordinated approach helps produce successful criminal and family court prosecutions of perpetrators. Perhaps most importantly, it also ensures children do not have to repeatedly tell what happened over and over. This process helps avoid a protracted investigative process for the child and allows the healing for the child and family to begin immediately.
In 2016, the CAC investigated more than 800 allegations of child abuse.
In July of 2016 the Nassau County CAC underwent its accreditation process and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Site Reviewers from the National Children’s Alliance commented on the high-quality response available through the coordinated multidisciplinary team and the comprehensive services available through The Safe Center.