Formed in 1984 in Henry County to address the issue of child sexual abuse, The Center for Child and Family Advocacy today serves five northwest Ohio counties (Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Paulding and Williams) with a wide variety of family violence treatment and prevention programs.
Roberta Mack (left), the agency’s clinical director, and Beth Gerken (center), the executive director, provided an overview of the services that The Center now provides, noting that the recent COVID-related restrictions have resulted in a significant uptick in the volume of services that the agency is providing.
Gerken explained that as families who may have been experiencing domestic issues before the pandemic spent more time at home together, there have been increases in domestic violence and referrals for services for both the victims and the offenders.
In Napoleon city alone the number of family violence calls to law enforcement was up 46 percent last year from 2019. Mack said that she has seen double-digit increases in other jurisdictions that she has been able to gather data on as well.
Based in Napoleon with offices in surrounding counties, The Center primarily deals with family violence issues; however, its staff also provides mental health and marriage counseling as well as trauma and bereavement therapy.
Staff operate a domestic violence shelter, family justice centers in Defiance and Henry counties to support victims of any type of crime, a sexual assault response team (SART) clinic to conduct adult and pediatric sexual assault examinations and domestic violence evidence-collection by trained professionals, and also operate a multi-disciplinary children’s advocacy center where trained professionals use a variety of video-taped techniques, including play and sand therapy, to gather information from children who are suspected victims of abuse.
As a result of video-taping the session, the child only has to share their story once rather than repeated times if it is determined that there is a case for prosecution. More information about The Center and its programs can be found on the agency’s website: www.theccfa.org