Child Advocates Of Fort Bend’s Post

Transcript

The coordination and collaboration between CPS, law enforcement, District Attorney's Office, our medical team and our CC staff usually involves us reviewing the intakes, bringing the children in for forensic interviews, providing them with family advocacy services, Criminal Court services and case review team meetings. So here at our center, we have two multidisciplinary team coordinators that review about 5 to 600 CPS reports a month and they determine if they meet our criteria. I am in charge of reading all the CPS reports for Fort Bend, Austin and Waller. Counties, I decide if they meet our criteria, which is all sexual abuse, serious physical abuse, witness to a crime, and if there's a child death in the home and in there's other children in the home when that child died, those children come in for a forensic interview. So if a case meets criteria, I reach out to CPS and law enforcement and then I scheduled the cases for the forensic interviews. Forensic interviewing is a developmentally sensitive legal sound method in how we gather information for DFPS and for law enforcement. So they can use that in their investigations and that's also collected in a neutral and objective manner. And a forensic interview. It's the child and myself in her room. We build rapport, get to know the child a little bit. And then we go into the reason the child's here today. And the child is in the room to talk about the things that they've experienced or the thing that they've witnessed. And they're able to use that time, use their own words and talk about everything that they that's occurred. It is important because it allows a child to have a safe child. Only place where the hope is that they only will have to tell their story one time. It makes a difference because it allows partners to come together in one space and collaborate on their case. Before CC's were created, children were interviewed by multiple people at different locations. I love what I do. I love talking to the kids. I love helping them to feel comfortable, to letting them know that it's OK to talk about the things that's happened to them. I want them to understand that talking about the things that have happened to them is part of the healing process. It helps you to continue life and to continue going on because you're able to talk about, you're able to take that power back. I am the coordinator for a case review team. If the child makes a disclosure, then they're part of the case review team. Case review team meetings are held here at our office twice a month. We review open cases that are either criminal or civil for CPS and law enforcement to determine where the investigation is at that time and to be able to provide updates for families and then what every partner needs to do from there. Yeah. So when we have the case review team meetings, we have partners that are from CPS, we have law enforcement, we have district attorneys office, sometimes county attorneys. We have representatives from the medical team, our CAC staff, and everyone is able to provide the status on what they have and we're able to collaborate to determine what is needed for that family. The case review team is very important because all the partners that are there during CRT, they provide a voice for the child. I hope kids gain self worth. I hope kids gain just the feeling of who they are that they're not who the perpetrator made them think that they are.