Hope for Children is a collaboration of Triangle Family Services, Interact and SAFEchild, offering coordinated services to identify, assess, and treat children exposed to family violence. Before Hope for Children, there were a number of significant gaps in Wake County's capacity to address the problems of children who witnessed domestic violence. Because of Hope for Children, we now have:

 

• Coordinated Screening and Referral Protocols, expanding the identification of children and assessment for additionally needed services.

• Children's Case Management that gives the existing core agencies (Triangle Family Services, Interact and SAFEchild) the capability to provide service coordination or follow-up for children who enter the programs.

• Crisis Intervention Services for traumatized children and short-term crisis planning that formerly was very limited and available primarily to children who resided in the domestic violence shelters with their mothers.

• Therapeutic Visitation Services offered to treat the trauma experienced by children who have witnessed family violence and/or to promote the child's recovery by enhancing the parenting skills of the non-custodial parent.

• Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Treatment specific to the treatment of this type of trauma and expanded access for uninsured and underinsured children.

• Hispanic/Latino Services that treats Spanish-speaking children exposed to domestic violence in a way that is effective and culturally competent.

• Treatment for aggressive adolescents who have themselves begun to display violent behaviors as part of the cycle of family violence.

Wake County’s children benefit through increased access to services because of the coordination of services and expansion of inadequately resourced services. One of these limited resources was culturally competent services for Spanish-speaking families who experience family violence. Now through the development of targeted new service components that provide a full continuum of services and maximum use of existing community resources (financial, technical, and staff), Wake County has the infrastructure to serve the varied needs of English and Spanish-speaking children. Multiple points of access and a consistent screening protocol across agencies increase identification, assessment, and appropriate referrals of all children. There has also been an expansion of the existing collaborative to include other child service agencies such as Wake County Human Services, Wake County Public Schools and Juvenile Court in screening and referral of children. Because of the community-wide efforts, Wake County serves as a model for breaking the cycle of violence and reducing the negative psychological, social, and emotional health effects for children who have witnessed domestic violence.

To learn how to recognize signs that a child has been traumatized from witnessing family violence, please visit the Hope for Children Web site at www.hopeforchildrenwake.org. To make a referral or learn more about training opportunities, contact us at 919-829-5913.