What is it about?
This paper reviews the existing evidence for the child advocacy center model, a common approach to responding to child sexual and physical abuse. Using a systematic search strategy the review identifies and synthesises the evidence for the efficacy of the approach, in particular for criminal justice and service delivery outcomes.
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Why is it important?
This article constitutes the first major review of the evidence for child advocacy centers. While many of the components of advocacy centers have their own evidence base, it is important to put together the evidence base for this commonly used approach. The review found that while there was fairly strong evidence around the criminal justice benefits compared to a variety of comparison conditions, there was a lack of evidence for child and family outcomes from the approach.
Perspectives
This paper I think is an important starting point to developing a contemporary research agenda around child advocacy centers and similar approaches, alongside a number of other reviews that have come out since. Putting together the evidence base was important for my own work in developing an evaluation strategy for a similar developing approach in Australia
Dr James L Herbert
University of South Australia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evidence for the Efficacy of the Child Advocacy Center Model, Trauma Violence & Abuse, May 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1524838015585319.
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