The Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center provided counseling and other services to 2,800 victimized children and their families in its 2006 fiscal year.
Robin Hood Portfolio: Early Childhood & Youth
Website:
www.safehorizon.org
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In New York City, over 50,000 cases of abuse and neglect are reported each year, 17,000 in Brooklyn alone. The Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center, the first and largest such organization in New York State, handles over 15 percent of these Brooklyn calls. The parent agency, Safe Horizon, is one of the leading organizations for victims’ assistance in the United States, serving more than 400,000 New Yorkers annually.
The center fully co-locates services by working on site with the police, the D.A.’s office, the Administration for Children’s Services (A.C.S.) and forensic and medical personnel. The idea is to streamline the investigative process, making it less traumatic for child victims to disclose abuse and to provide uncontaminated evidence that can lead to swifter prosecution. Robin Hood support makes it possible for four professionals to serve families in need: the clinical director, one of the center’s two social workers, a counselor and a client advocate.
The center was founded in 1996 in response to a 1994 policy report commissioned by Safe Horizon, which was then known as Victims Services Agency. The report found that children were interviewed or examined an average of eight times per sexual abuse case. This protocol wasted resources and invited inconsistencies and confusion in victim and witness accounts.
The center’s founder, the late Jane Barker, a social worker specializing in child sexual abuse at Safe Horizon, led a two-year planning process involving the Brooklyn district attorney, the police commissioner and precinct chief, Nicholas Scoppetta, then head of the Agency for Children's Services, and leaders of community-based organizations. Together they established the Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center to co-locate police, prosecutorial, medical, foster care and counseling functions at one child-friendly and efficient headquarters.
The center, renamed for Barker after her death, coordinates, shares and records the interventions of public agencies, which reduces trauma and confusion for abused child and their families.
The Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center is featured on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Robin Hood Stories. To hear this or other Robin Hood Stories, visit www.sirius.com/robinhood.
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