Backgrounder: Child Advocacy Centres

Child Advocacy Centres (CACs) are a seamless, coordinated and collaborative approach to addressing the needs of child and youth victims of crime. CACs seek to minimize system-induced trauma by providing a child-friendly setting for young victims or witnesses and their families. 

Professional services offered by CACs include coordinated interviews by law enforcement and Crown Attorneys, examination of the child by a pediatric child psychologist, and trauma counselling. One goal of a CAC is to minimize the number of interviews and questions directed at a child, thereby minimizing any additional system-induced trauma. This reduction in trauma enables children to provide stronger evidence, which can lead to an increase in charges laid, guilty pleas, convictions and appropriate sentences.

CACs help children and their families navigate the justice system in a number of ways. These include providing the child with a safe and comfortable environment in which to be interviewed by criminal justice professionals, minimizing the number of interviews for the child and ultimately leading to better communication between agencies supporting young victims. Interviews recorded by video, as done by CACs, have proven to be an effective method for gathering valuable information to help both the child and the justice system. CACs may also provide education and training to justice professionals on the best practices for interviewing child victims and witnesses. 

Through extensive research, it has been shown that CACs improve experiences for children who have been abused and for their non-offending caregivers. Their experience at a CAC is designed to support their healing and assist them in recovering from the severe stress and trauma of abuse.  CACs have also been shown to increase collaboration in child abuse cases. This collaboration assists both the agencies charged with protecting children and youth and law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating criminal activity.

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Department of Justice Canada
June 2011