The Vermont Children's Alliance

As an accredited state chapter of the National Childrens Alliance (NCA), the Vermont Childrens Alliance (VCA) continued to grow in its ability to support and serve its 13 member child advocacy centers (CACs). In hiring an Outreach Education Coorinator and a Training & Special Projects Coordinator, we are not only able to better serve our programs and ensure MDT members are properly trained to serve children and families affected by abuse, we are able to bring awareness to communities across the state.The VCA supported several programs attendance required or otherwise desired to enhance and support the capacity of each program to serve its local community. The VCA provided funding in 2023 for Basic as well as Extended Interview Training and continued to contract with a a specialist to offer statewide Forensic Interview Peer Review. Additionally, we teamed up with the Zero Abuse Project and offered LGBTQIA+ Children in the Forensic Interview training to our statewide partners on top of supporting attendance at various trainings and conferences like the International Symposium on Child Abuse, Crimes Against Children, and the International Forensic Nurse Conference. The VCA continues to engage in public awareness/social media campaigns intended to enhance the publics knowledge and awareness of child abuse and sexual violence. Finally, we continued to oversee the Outcome Measurement System (OMS) throughout our state; the OMS enables our programs to obtain valuable feedback from their clients and partnesrs about areas of strength as well as areas of challenge.