From National Training to Local Impact: Bringing the Best in Child Advocacy Home to West Georgia

When a child in Carroll, Haralson, or Heard County walks through the doors of the West Georgia Child Advocacy Center, they meet a team trained to respond with skill, compassion, and care.

Behind that team is something children and families rarely see: the ongoing training, collaboration, and professional development our staff and multidisciplinary partners pursue at the state and national levels.

For WGACAC, conferences are not about padding résumés or simply collecting continuing education hours. They are an investment in stronger forensic interviews, more effective investigations, better multidisciplinary collaboration, earlier access to trauma treatment, and ultimately better outcomes for the children and families of West Georgia.

And in 2026, our team has not only traveled across the country to learn from leaders in the field—we have increasingly been invited to share what is working here in West Georgia.

Huntsville: CAPTA Support Meets National Learning

In March, WGACAC staff and multidisciplinary partners traveled to Huntsville, Alabama, for the National Children’s Advocacy Center’s International Symposium on Child Abuse, a gathering of child-protection professionals from across the United States and around the world.

Participation was made possible in part through funding from the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which supports stronger systems for preventing, identifying, investigating, and responding to child abuse.

The investment allowed professionals from multiple disciplines in West Georgia to learn together. Participants included representatives from WGACAC and partner agencies, strengthening not simply the skills of individual professionals but the multidisciplinary response children encounter when a report of abuse is made.

Training addressed forensic interviewing, multidisciplinary investigations, trauma-informed response, child abuse prevention, online exploitation, problematic sexual behavior, emerging investigative challenges, and professional wellness.

Those topics are directly connected to cases handled in Carroll, Haralson, and Heard Counties. A better question in the forensic interview room can produce clearer information. Greater understanding of technology-facilitated abuse can strengthen an investigation. Better communication among disciplines can prevent cases from falling through gaps. And supporting the well-being of professionals doing this difficult work helps sustain a strong response for the next child who needs them.

CARE on a National Stage

WGACAC did not travel to Huntsville only to learn.

Executive Director Allen Babcock and CAC Program Manager Desireé Kendricks were also selected to present on WGACAC’s Child At Risk Evaluation, or CARE, initiative.

Developed in collaboration with Vimes, CARE is designed to help law enforcement and multidisciplinary partners identify concerns earlier, communicate critical information more efficiently, and shorten the time between an initial law-enforcement response and specialized services for a child.

The presentation gave professionals from other communities an opportunity to see how technology can support—not replace—strong multidisciplinary practice.

That distinction matters. Technology alone does not protect children. Skilled professionals who have timely access to the information they need do.

Sharing CARE nationally was also an important recognition of something happening here at home: West Georgia is not simply adopting promising practices developed elsewhere. Our local professionals are developing solutions to real challenges and contributing those lessons back to the broader child-advocacy field.

Washington, D.C.: Advocacy, Leadership, CFTSI and CARE

That national engagement continued in Washington, D.C., where WGACAC participated in the National Children’s Alliance Leadership Conference.

The trip began with advocacy for victim services on Capitol Hill—bringing the realities facing Child Advocacy Centers, victim-service organizations, and the children and families they serve directly to federal policymakers.

That advocacy is especially important as victim-service organizations across Georgia navigate significant changes and uncertainty in federal and state funding. Maintaining high-quality services requires more than doing good work locally; it also requires helping decision-makers understand what is at stake when resources for victims are reduced.

WGACAC was also honored to contribute to the conference as presenters.

Allen Babcock and Savanna Knowles shared WGACAC’s experience implementing the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention, or CFTSI, to address mental-health treatment wait times in a rural Child Advocacy Center setting.

CFTSI is an evidence-based early intervention designed for children and caregivers following a potentially traumatic event or disclosure. For WGACAC, it has become an important tool for reaching families during the critical period after a child enters the CAC system rather than simply placing them on a waiting list for traditional therapy.

Allen and Desireé also presented on CARE, sharing how WGACAC is using coordinated technology, law-enforcement partnerships, and data to improve the response to children at risk.

Together, the presentations reflected two sides of the same challenge: how can rural communities help children receive the right response more quickly—both when abuse is first identified and when a child needs help beginning to heal?

New Orleans: Taking Our CFTSI Experience to APSAC

The conversation about timely access to trauma treatment continued at the 2026 APSAC Colloquium in New Orleans.

Allen Babcock, Mental Health Coordinator Savanna Knowles, and WGACAC Clinical Supervisor Helen Juarez, LCSW, presented on “Combatting Therapy Wait Times in Rural CACs: Implementing the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention.”

The APSAC Colloquium brings together professionals across disciplines to strengthen the collective response to child maltreatment, including extensive training focused on trauma-informed assessment, treatment, and healing for children and families.

WGACAC’s presentation focused on a problem familiar to rural communities across the country: identifying that a child needs mental-health support does not mean that specialized treatment is immediately available.

Our team shared how WGACAC has incorporated CFTSI into the CAC response to help bridge that gap, engage caregivers, assess trauma symptoms, and provide structured early intervention following disclosure.

Having Allen, Savanna, and Helen present together also reflected the collaborative model behind the work. Effective mental-health programming requires more than adopting an evidence-based model. It requires organizational commitment, trained providers, clinical supervision, careful assessment, outcome measurement, and continued attention to whether families are actually able to access and complete services.

Dallas: Learning Across the Multidisciplinary Team

In August, WGACAC staff and multidisciplinary partners headed to Dallas for the 38th annual Crimes Against Children Conference.

Hosted by the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, the conference is one of the largest gatherings of professionals working in child abuse investigation, prosecution, advocacy, forensic interviewing, prevention, and related fields.

The West Georgia delegation reflected exactly why multidisciplinary training matters. Participants from WGACAC joined professionals from the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Carrollton Police Department, Haralson County Sheriff’s Office, and Bremen Police Department, allowing lessons learned in Dallas to come home across multiple agencies and disciplines.

Over four days, participants followed different training tracks based on their roles while repeatedly encountering the same central message: protecting children requires professionals to understand not only their own responsibilities, but how their work connects with everyone else involved in the response.

Sessions explored investigative interviewing and forensic interviewing, technology-facilitated crimes against children, offender behavior, evidence and alternative hypotheses, prevention, caregiver engagement, multidisciplinary teamwork, conflict management, professional wellness, and other complex issues encountered in child-abuse cases.

The value was not simply in learning something new. Participants identified practical strategies they could bring directly back to West Georgia—from strengthening investigative and interviewing practices to improving communication across agencies, supporting caregivers more effectively, recognizing emerging risks to children, and protecting professionals from burnout in work that can take a significant personal toll.

Different Conferences. One Purpose.

Huntsville. Washington, D.C. New Orleans. Dallas.

Different conferences, different audiences, and different areas of expertise—but one purpose connects them all.

Bring the best ideas in child advocacy home to West Georgia.

A forensic interviewer learns a better way to approach a difficult interview. An investigator gains a deeper understanding of technology-facilitated abuse. An advocate finds another way to support an overwhelmed caregiver. A mental-health professional strengthens early trauma intervention. A multidisciplinary team learns to communicate more effectively. And sometimes, an innovation developed here in West Georgia becomes something our team can share with professionals from communities across the country.

That is how professional development becomes direct service.

It is also why WGACAC intentionally invests in training across disciplines. No single professional—and no single agency—can effectively respond to child abuse alone.

Bringing It Home to West Georgia

Ultimately, every conference session, presentation, conversation, and new professional connection comes back to the same place.

It comes home.

It comes back to the forensic interview room in Carrollton. To a family receiving services closer to home in Haralson or Heard County. To a law-enforcement officer responding to a report involving a child. To an advocate helping a caregiver understand what happens next. To a multidisciplinary case review where professionals from different agencies sit at the same table. And to a child who needs adults around them to be prepared.

Children in West Georgia deserve the same quality of response available in any community in the country. Maintaining that standard requires trained people, strong partnerships, evidence-based practices, and the resources to keep learning and improving.

Community support helps make that possible.

When you support West Georgia Child Advocacy Center, you are helping ensure that the knowledge our team brings home becomes stronger services for children and families throughout Carroll, Haralson, and Heard Counties.

You can also support this work by joining us for Art & Antics for Advocacy 2026, WGACAC’s signature fundraising and community-awareness event this November. An evening of dueling pianos, art, food, fun, and community support helps make serious work possible all year long.

National learning. Local partnerships. Better responses. Stronger outcomes for children.

That is what we bring home.