Title: Mental Health Professionals in Children's Advocacy Centers: Is There Role Conflict?
Abstract: Abstract Two recent chapters in professional books have criticized children's advocacy centers for creating role conflict for mental health professionals because of their work with criminal justice and child protection professionals in children's advocacy centers as part of a coordinated response to child abuse. This article argues that these critiques misunderstand children's advocacy center practice and overestimate the risk of role conflict. Children's advocacy center standards set a boundary between forensic interviewing and therapy, which in most children's advocacy centers are done by separate professionals and never by the same professional for a given child. Many mental health professionals serve children's advocacy centers as consultants with no treatment role. Children's advocacy center therapists are rarely involved in investigation, and their participation in multidisciplinary teams focuses on children's interests and well-being. Keywords: child sexual abusechild abusechildren's advocacy centerschildren's mental health professionals Acknowledgments We would like to thank Chris Newlin, Libby Ralston, Jeff Wherry, and Teresa Huizar for their help in providing information for this article. Additional informationNotes on contributorsTheodore P. Cross Theodore P. Cross is a research full professor at the Children and Family Research Center in the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He directed the Multisite Evaluation of Children's Advocacy Centers and has published numerous studies for more than 21 years on the investigation and response to child abuse. Janet E. Fine Janet E. Fine, MS, is the executive director of the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance and for the past 28 years has been a leader in victim rights and services and the development of multidisciplinary teams and Children's Advocacy Centers (CAC). She was a founder of two CACs in Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Children's Alliance, chaired the committee that created the national standards for CACs, and currently serves on the National Children's Alliance Board. Lisa M. Jones Lisa M. Jones, PhD, is a research associate professor of psychology at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. She has been conducting research on issues of child victimization intervention and prevention for more than10 years, including research on CACs, child maltreatment trends, children's experiences with sexual abuse investigations, and Internet crimes against children. Wendy A. Walsh Wendy A. Walsh, PhD, is a research associate professor of sociology at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. She conducts applied research on the system response to child maltreatment, including Children's Advocacy Centers, access to services for victims, and criminal justice outcomes.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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Cited By Count: 22
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