Manatee Children's Services

The child advocacy center (cac) serves more than 13,000 children annually that are either victims of child abuse or suspected of abuse. The cac maintains its exceptional accreditation by the federally recognized national Children's alliance and continues to accomplish the goal of providing potentially lifesaving evidenced based Services to children and families. Prevention Services include parenting education to high risk parents that have abused or neglected their children in an effort to reunify them safely with their children. Pregnancy prevention Services are offered to youth at risk of pregnancy, drug abuse and other forms of delinquency. Personal safety skills designed to prevent child abuse are taught at every elementary school in Manatee county, reaching thousands of school aged children. Kinship Services such as support groups, basic needs referrals and Services are provided to over 150 grandparents annually to preserve relative placements for abused children. Therapy programs provide evidenced based treatments to children that have been physically and sexually abused, witnessed domestic violence, violent crimes or suffer from extreme parental neglect. More than 95% of children seen in this program were able to overcome abuse related behavioral and emotional difficulties and developed safety skills to prevent further abuse and healthy ways to cope with past trauma.

The child protection team provides alleged child victims of abuse with specialized, non leading interviews and expert court testimony. A trained child abuse medical provider provides medical exams to collect physical evidence of abuse as well as expert testimony.

Residential Services are comprised of an emergency shelter and 3 group homes. The program accomplished 100% of annual goal to provide safe shelter to abused children to over 100 children in 4 residential settings. All homes meet the needs of children suffering from abuse, neglect, and abandonment. The emergency shelter, includes 24 hour awake staff that serves children ages 6-17 temporarily until a stable placement is found for them. Group homes serve children ages 11-17 on a long-term basis for youth that often have behavior issues.