The VOCA Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) National Subgrant Program supports subgrants for local CACs, state chapters of CACs, and multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) that provide a coordinated investigative and comprehensive response to child abuse. CACs are child-friendly facilities where law enforcement officers, child protection and victim advocacy professionals, prosecutors, mental health specialists, and medical staff work together to investigate child abuse allegations, hold offenders accountable, and help children heal from maltreatment. The program supports the following activities: 1) developing innovative funding strategies that support the provision of coordinated and comprehensive multidisciplinary services to child abuse victims and their families; 2) developing and publishing requests for proposals (RFPs), as approved by OJJDP; 3) providing training and technical assistance (TTA) to support OJJDP-approved RFPs; 4) managing a national peer review process to evaluate applications for funding; and 5) providing fiscal oversight and necessary grant award administration functions for successful award recipients in accordance with the DOJ Financial Guide. Through this program, NCA will increase the number of child victims of maltreatment receiving CAC services, with an emphasis on increasing and enhancing services in underserved areas, including rural, remote and tribal areas.
With FY16 continuation funds, NCA will release an RFP to enhance existing CAC programs, state chapters and MDTs that improve access to, and quality of, services for abused children, including services in areas with high levels of child abuse and children's exposure to family, community and other types of violence. The RFP will also fund the development of new CAC programs, state chapters and MDTs. Specifically, NCA will provide up to 5 dedicated subgrants and TTA to CACs and MDTs serving AI/AN children and youth. NCA will also support up to 20 subgrants to encourage CACs to develop and utilize evidence-based treatments for child victims of trauma, to include trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, parent-child interactional therapy, child and family traumatic stress intervention, and cognitive behavioral therapy for children with sexual problematic behavior. NCA/NCF