Child Advocacy Center

The Child Advocacy Center (CAC) is a regional center located at the Suzanne Gresham Center where interviews and investigations of children who have experienced abuse are conducted in a concise manner.
The CAC allows the community law enforcement and legal teams to pursue reports of child abuse more effectively and efficiently, resulting in higher prosecution rates. Most importantly, the CAC offers protection in a nurturing and healing environment for victims of child abuse.

The Child Advocacy Center has received full national accreditation by the National Children’s Alliance. Only 11 of Indiana’s 27 facilities have met the rigorous standards to receive this accreditation.

The Child Advocacy Center is a safe and calming space for children who have faced such trauma and it has a friendly and park-like appearance. The center allows for a multidisciplinary response team and conforms to best practice of only interviewing the child once to minimize trauma. The interview gives a space where the child can be heard, while assessing the safety concerns for what may come next. Across the nation, interviews are conducted in an impersonal and sometimes frightening facility, the Child Advocacy Center has a welcoming environment for a child to feel more comfortable.

Last year, donations made on Giving Tuesday and through December at Holidays at Gresham, provided 400 Hope and Healing Comfort Kits to children at the CAC. The kits included: a blanket, stuffed animal, snack, toothbrush, and other age-appropriate activity items all enclosed in a drawstring backpack.

You can make a difference in a child’s life by donating today!

Meridian’s Child Advocacy Center (CAC) has a beautifully designed mosaic Listening Tree found on one of the walls at the center. Children who receive services from the CAC are part of a family of hope and love. To show unity, and offer a feeling of togetherness, children are invited to add their name to a copper leaf and place it on the Listening Tree.