Protect tarrant county children from child abuse through teamed investigations, healing services and community education.

Children & Youth , Children & Youth Services , Civil Rights

Counseling program - is currently comprised of 20 full time staff and 1 part time staff member. The full time staff include the director of clinical services, four clinical supervisors, ten clinical therapists, 2 intake specialists and three clinical assistants. In addition, we have one part time clinical assistant and contract with 21 contract therapists for our weekly group counseling program. We provide 26 group counseling sessions per week for children (grouped by age and gender) and their protective caregivers in english and spanish. In order to best serve our clients we are housed in four locations throughout tarrant county. In fiscal year 2017, the clinical department provided individual counseling services to 499 victims of trauma and our group counseling program served 235 protective caregivers and 254 children with confirmed cases of child sexual abuse bringing our total number of adults and children served throughout the year to 988. The clinical department offers a number of different modalities to serve clients. Our group counseling program, offered september through the end of june, is a 16 week open-ended format utilizing trauma focused cognitive behavior therapy (tf-cbt), an evidenced based practice in the field of trauma. For the first time we also added additional summer groups that consisted of art therapy as well as a group for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Our individual counseling program primarily consists of parent child interaction therapy (pcit), another evidenced based practice when working with children experiencing behavior challenges as well as tf-cbt for individuals. During fiscal year 2017 we have been able to expand our individual modalities and have started to incorporate eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (emdr), an evidenced based practice used to assist trauma victims in processing severe trauma, memories and beliefs as well as play therapy for our younger children served. forensic interview program: consists of the director of program services, the forensic interviewer supervisor, and four forensic interviewers - all specialized and highly trained regarding child development, memory, suggestibility, linguistics, dynamics of abuse, and question typology. Forensic interviews conducted are investigative in nature with children that have possibly experienced or witnessed abuse or a violent event. Our forensic interview program provides these highly complex investigative interviews with availability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In fiscal year 2017, 1,535 children received a forensic interview, where skilled interviewers talk with victims to determine if the child experienced or witnessed child abuse or a violent crime. family advocate program: consists of the director of program services, the family advocate supervisor, 5 family advocates, and a children's services advocate. They provide case management services to children and families affected by allegations of child abuse. In fiscal 2017, 1,351 families received our family advocacy services. Family advocates help families stabilize in many ways, such as guiding them through the complex and sometimes confusing investigative and court systems, providing short term financial assistance, assisting families in accessing community resources, referring families to appropriate counseling services and other key services that support families through the trauma of abuse. Our family advocate program also provides specialized healing services through our children's services advocate to further support and healing.