Backgrounder: Child Advocacy Centres

A Child Advocacy Centre (CAC) adopts a seamless, co-ordinated and collaborative approach to addressing the needs of child and youth victims of crime. A CAC seeks to minimize system-induced trauma by providing a child-friendly setting for a young victim or witness and his or her family. 

The funding from the Government of Canada will assist Family Services of Greater Vancouver to develop a feasibility study, a business plan, and a governance structure that will stand as a strong foundation for a Child Advocacy Centre to serve the Vancouver region in the future. 

Professional services offered by CACs include co-ordinated interviews by law enforcement and Crown Attorneys, examination of the child by a paediatric 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 approach enables children to provide more reliable and credible evidence, which may 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 a child with a safe and comfortable environment in which to be interviewed by criminal justice professionals, minimizing the number of interviews 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 children and the justice system. CACs may also provide education and training to justice professionals on 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. 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, reduce costs and speed up prosecutions. 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
October 2011