OJJDP News @ a Glance - July/August 2006

Conference Highlights New Research on Child

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Advocacy Center Effectiveness

Regina B. Schofield, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, addressed the opening plenary luncheon of the National Children's Alliance (NCA) 2006 leadership conference, held May 21-24 in Washington, DC. Designed for leaders in the Children's Advocacy Center (CAC) movement, the conference drew attendees from 46 states.

NCA, an OJJDP grantee, is a nonprofit organization that promotes a coordinated, comprehensive response to child abuse and supports the efforts of more than 600 CACs throughout the Nation. CACs are community-based programs that bring together professionals and agencies in multidisciplinary teams that take a child-focused approach to investigating abuse cases and responding to the needs of victims. The goal of the CAC network is to ensure that children are not revictimized by the system intended to protect them.

NCA's annual conference provides CAC leaders with education, networking, and advocacy opportunities. Attendees at the 2006 conference learned about two recent studies that document how CACs are helping children and providing cost savings to communities (see "CAC Research Highlights"). In her remarks, Assistant Attorney General Schofield observed: "These are important studies, because they validate the tremendous contributions of child advocacy centers to the welfare of our children."

For more information about NCA, visit www.nca-online.org.

CAC Research Highlights

Multisite Evaluation

This OJJDP-funded study conducted by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes against Children Research Center evaluated the impact of CACs on children, families, systems, and communities. Researchers gathered data on more than 1,000 cases of child sexual abuse from four CACs and from comparison communities without CACs. The study's findings highlight some of the benefits of CACs:

Coordination of investigations: Police in CAC communities were involved in 81 percent of child protective services investigations of sexual abuse, compared to 52 percent in other communities. Team interviews (two or more observers) were more common in CAC cases (28 percent) than non-CAC cases (6 percent).
Medical exams: In the CAC sample, nearly half (48 percent) of child victims received a forensic medical examination, compared to less than a fourth (21 percent) of non-CAC cases.
Mental health services: Sixty percent of CAC children received referrals for mental health services (compared to 22 percent in non-CAC communities). Of the CAC children referred, 31 percent were counseled onsite by a therapist specializing in treatment of child abuse victims.

In addition, the findings establish research-based support for the CAC model and suggest areas for improving the CAC response to children.

For more information, including an executive summary of findings, detailed results, and a list of related publications, visit the study Web site at www.unh.edu/ccrc/multi-site_evaluation_children.html.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

In a recent National Child Advocacy Center (NCAC) study, researchers conducted a cost-benefit analysis of child abuse investigations in a county that uses the CAC's multidisciplinary team approach and in a county that uses traditional joint investigations by child protection and law enforcement agencies. The CAC approach proved to be less expensive on a case-by-case basis and more highly valued by community residents.

The average cost for a CAC investigation was $2,902, compared to $3,949 for a non-CAC investigation—a 36-percent savings on a case-by-case basis. Although the CAC annual operations budget was 45 percent greater than investigation costs in the non-CAC community, the caseload processed by the CAC team was 202 percent that in the non-CAC community. Citizens placed greater value on CAC services than on traditional investigations, and they valued CAC services at much more than it actually costs to provide these services.

An executive summary of study findings is available on the NCAC Web site (www.nationalcac.org).