2019 Annual Report is Now Available!
The Baton Rouge Children’s Advocacy Center continues to grow forward in its mission to serve as many traumatized children and teenagers as possible in the four parishes we serve: East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Iberville and Pointe Coupee. 2019 was a year of increased recognition and deeper partnership with our community to make amazing things happen for children in our community.
Through the generous contributions of local foundations, individual donors and governmental partners, we opened the doors to a new “Annex” which was established for the sole purpose of providing a private and child-friendly space for healing and recovering from trauma. The Mid-City older home was retrofitted to provide four additional offices for individual work with young people, two new group rooms for our trauma groupwork, and even space for community workshops and yoga classes.
This new addition then allowed us to increase our work in forensic investigations in our Main Building- the “yellow house.” We’ve welcomed a new forensic interviewer, a new family advocate, a new youth trafficking coordinator to meet the demand for additional responding to child abuse reports. And, we have increased our leadership capacity as well to allow for greater quality assurance and to support the tremendous growth of our organization. We’ve welcomed a Chief Operating Officer and a Chief Financial Officer to join me in leading the CAC to continued growth. In 2019, we also began planning for a new partnership with EBR Parish Schools to provide trauma-specific services to children within the school system impacted by trauma while also training teachers in recognizing and responding to the needs of children in their classrooms at risk for trauma.
It’s often stated that the health of a community can be assessed by how it cares for it most vulnerable citizens, especially its young people. If this year is an indication of where we are headed in improving the well-being of children, then there is much hope and promise.
– Toni Bankston, Executive Director