Miami County welcomes Child Advocacy Center at Isaiah’s Place

0

By Amantha Garpiel

[email protected]

TROY — The Child Advocacy Center at Isaiah’s Place held their Open House and Ribbon Cutting event to share with the community the collaborative efforts of Miami County to centralize investigations of child abuse allegations.

The Child Advocacy Center provides a coordinated, trauma informed approach to assessing, investigating and prosecuting case of child abuse in Miami County. The center is a county wide collaboration of local law enforcement, child protective services, prosecution, victim advocacy, mental healthy and medical providers throughout Miami County.

The Child Advocacy Center, 61 S. Stanfield Road, Troy, provides a safe space for victims of child abuse to share their experiences with professionals for a collaborative investigation, limiting the re-victimization by providing a safe, neutral and kid friendly environment for children to be interviewed, meet with their investigators in one location and receive immediate mental health and medical referrals for services.

Departments that will use the Child Advocacy Center for collaboration during child abuse investigations include law enforcement across the county including the Miami County Sheriff’s Office, Troy, Piqua, Tipp City, West Milton and Covington Police Departments as well as the Miami County Prosecutor’s Office, Child Protective Services, victim witnesses, local mental health providers and Dayton Children’s Hospital.

“It’s a lot of agencies, and those are all the core people involved in these cases,” said Jessica Knisley, program director of the Child Advocacy Center at Isaiah’s Place, “To have all of them on board has been amazing.”

Not only are all of these various departments and offices involved, the Child Advocacy Center at Isaiah’s Place will serve as a central meeting point for these professionals during investigations as a way to help alleviate the stress on the child.

By providing these services the center will support children and their families to optimize safety, promote healing and pursue justice for child victims.

The center provides education and awareness opportunities for community members interested in learning how they can help prevent and respond to child victims accordingly.

“I’m just grateful for this community stepping up. We know there’s a lot of things that people can be spending their money and time investing in and I don’t know what’s more important than investing in kids. It’s really refreshing to see that this community is doing that,” said Knisley.

No posts to display