Resources for Military Partners

Over 900 Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) are available to provide services to children and families across the country. Learn more about the CAC model, CAC services, and how you can partner to provide coordinated services to military families by exploring the resources below. 

Have questions or need additional information? Please reach out to Heather Provencher, NCA's Senior Manager for Federal Partnerships.

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What is a CAC?

Diagram: Without CACs, children and families have difficulty connecting to services. With CACs, services are coordinated and aligned to serve children and families.

When police or child protective services believe a child may be experiencing abuse, the child is brought to the CAC—a safe, child-focused environment—by a caregiver or other “safe” adult. At the CAC, the child tells their story once to a trained interviewer who knows the right questions to ask in a way that does not not retraumatize the child. Then, a team that includes medical professionals, law enforcement, mental health, prosecution, child protective services, victim advocacy, and other professionals make decisions together about how to help the child based on the interview. CACs offer therapy and medical exams, plus courtroom preparation, victim advocacy, case management, and other services. This is called the multidisciplinary team (MDT) response and is a core part of the work of CACs.

The process of a CAC and its partners

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2023 National Standards of Accreditation for CACs

To ensure that all children across the U.S. served by Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) receive consistent, evidence-based services that help them heal from abuse, more than 750 of our member CACs have become Accredited by meeting our National Standards of Accreditation, and all 50 State Chapters have met the Standards for Accredited Chapter Members. About every five years, these standards are updated to reflect the latest evidence and practice. Then, we work with our Accredited Member CACs and Accredited Chapters on a five-year cycle to help them meet these new, higher standards of practice and, for CACs, we perform site reviews to ensure children receive the highest quality services possible. 

The collected National Standards of Accreditation for Children’s Advocacy Centers, comprising 10 individual standards and representing the work of more than 130 child abuse intervention professionals and experts working from the latest research, are the benchmarks by which Accredited Members of NCA are measured. The current standards became effective on January 1, 2023.


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Why CAC-military partnerships?

Click a video below to watch.


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Webinars and Trainings

NCA developed these webinars and training events for CACs and their military partners to expand their knowledge of the role each play in serving military children and families in responding to allegations of child abuse and how they can partner for effective coordination of services. Please see the product listing below. Users must be logged in to access trainings. 

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Trauma and Resiliency in Military Families, a One in Ten Podcast Episode

When we think of military families, we rightly think of sacrifice and duty. But do we also think about resiliency, perseverance, and a sense of community? The unique sense of identity that comes with military service comes with a complex set of supports and struggles for service members. Dr. Stephen Cozza, a researcher and professor at the Uniformed Services University, joins us to explore the unique strengths and challenges of military families. What are the risks and protective factors that we should be aware of in working with military families? How does the phases of deployment and re-entry create some points of unique vulnerabilities that we need to attend to? And at a time when many soldiers are returning, how can we support families? We invited Dr. Stephen Cozza, a researcher and a professor at the Uniformed Services University, to speak with us about the unique strengths and challenges of military families. Take a listen.

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When Abuse Strikes Twice, a One in Ten Podcast episode

What causes revictimization? How can we prevent it? There are common factors that contribute to child abuse and neglect that may affect any family: job stress, food insecurity, and intimate partner violence, to name just a few. But military families face additional stressors. Miranda Kaye, Ph.D., associate research professor at Penn State’s Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness, and her colleagues set out to examine what, at the individual, family, and community levels, contributed to revictimization. And the findings about community were perhaps some of the most surprising.

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Ready to Serve: When CACs and Military Agencies Team Up, Kids Are Better Off

Overall, our field is still in the relatively early stages of building partnerships between CACs and military installations. But every CAC can take action to ensure military families have access to the services they deserve. 

In Ready to Serve, released in November 2021, we use 2020 CAC Census data to explore how centers across the country are building relationships with their partners in the military, where we’re succeeding, and where we have additional opportunities to ensure every child in our community who needs it can benefit from trauma-informed, child-focused CAC services.

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Where is the closest CAC to your location?