Child Protection Projects and Initiatives

CPD supports programs that:

  • Improve overall multisystem prevention of, intervention with, treatment of, and response to child victimization and exposure to violence.

  • Enhance the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases.

  • Protect the rights of, secure safe and permanent placements for, and disseminate information about abused and neglected youth.

  • Prevent, interdict, and investigate online crimes against children.

  • Prevent and increase awareness of the negative consequences associated with children’s exposure to violence.

  • Support law enforcement agencies in the search for missing children and enhance the investigation and prosecution of abduction cases.

The following are some of the OJJDP-sponsored programs and initiatives that are funded through the Child Protection Division. Contact information for each is provided at the end of this Bulletin.

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Court Appointed Special Advocate Initiative

The purpose of this initiative is to increase the number of abused and neglected children who are represented in court by a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). CASA programs benefit abused and neglected children who are under court custody (or are at risk of being removed from their homes) by providing them with timely, sensitive, and effective representation in dependency hearings. The initiative is run by the National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association, which strives to increase CASA representation of dependent children through several strategies:

  • Providing specialized training, technical assistance, information, and resources to support program startup, expansion, and management; volunteer recruitment and retention; resource development; community outreach; and media relations.

  • Distributing grants to implement and expand CASA programs nationwide.

  • Providing planning grants and technical assistance support to tribal courts and nations for the development of tribal CASA programs.

There are about 850 CASA programs in 49 States, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. More than 47,000 volunteers and 44 State organizations offer support services to programs within their States. Training and technical assistance services are available to courts, judges, attorneys, CASA program staff and volunteers, community organizations, and the general public.

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Child Abuse Prosecution Training and Technical Assistance

The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse (NCPCA) offers training and technical assistance in the prosecution of child abuse cases. NCPCA staff provide prosecutors at the local, State, and Federal levels with information on case law and developmentally appropriate forensic interviewing, individualized support for trial preparation and presentation, access to experts and presenters, and assistance with investigating and prosecuting cases of child abuse and neglect. Workshops, conferences, and informational materials provided by NCPCA also benefit law enforcement officials, social workers, therapists, and other personnel involved in the investigation of child abuse cases. Training and technical assistance services are available to prosecutors, investigators, and related personnel nationwide.

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Children’s Advocacy Center Program

The purpose of this initiative, which was established through the Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990 and is implemented by the National Children’s Alliance (NCA) and four Regional Children’s Advocacy Centers, is to increase the number of communities with children’s advocacy centers (CAC’s) through training and technical assistance, information resources, and funding support. CAC’s are facility-based programs that employ multidisciplinary teams to investigate and respond to cases of abuse and neglect. CAC’s bring together police, prosecutors, medical and mental health professionals, and child protective services workers. As a result, these individuals are able to better coordinate and manage child abuse and neglect cases, reduce trauma to the child victims, and improve support and treatment for victims and their families. More than 500 CAC programs are affiliated with NCA, of which about half are full-member programs, nearly 100 are associate-member programs, and the rest are developing programs. Currently, 26 NCA chapters (including a Native American chapter) work with NCA and the four Regional CAC’s to increase the number and capacity of CAC’s. Training and technical assistance services are available to individuals, agencies, and communities.

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Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program

OJJDP established the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program in response to the FY 1998 Justice Appropriations Act, Public Law 105–119, which directed OJJDP to stimulate creation of “State and local law enforcement cyber units to investigate child sexual exploitation.” Currently, 30 task forces—composed of more than 125 law enforcement agencies—participate in the program. Each task force provides forensic, prevention, and investigative assistance to parents, educators, prosecutors, law enforcement personnel, and other professionals working on child victimization issues. Under the ICAC Task Force Program Investigative Satellite Initiative, OJJDP also provides small one-time grants for State and local law enforcement personnel to acquire specialized training and equipment. Additionally, OJJDP will sponsor—depending on the availability of funds—annual conferences for agencies participating in the Task Force Program Investigative Satellite Initiative to discuss emerging trends in software and hardware and their relevance to criminal activity and investigative efforts.

NCMEC also provides important elements of the ICAC Task Force Program by offering the multitiered Protecting Children Online training program and the CyberTipline, which has received more than 25,000 reports regarding suspicious activity on the Internet since March 1998.3

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Missing and Exploited Children’s Training and Technical Assistance Program

This program, funded through a grant to Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC), provides training and technical assistance to State and local agencies that serve missing, exploited, and abused children. FVTC currently offers five different week-long training programs:

  • Child Abuse and Exploitation Investigative Techniques.

  • Child Fatality Investigation.

  • Child Sexual Exploitation Investigation.

  • Responding to Missing and Abducted Children.

  • Team Investigative Process for Missing, Abused, and Exploited Children.

Program descriptions, schedules, and registration information are available on FVTC’s Web site (www.foxvalley.tec.wi.us/ojjdp).

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National Center for Children Exposed to Violence

The National Center for Children Exposed to Violence is a training and technical assistance and resource facility addressing the issue of children’s exposure to violence. NCCEV was established to support the Safe Start initiative’s demonstration sites (see section Safe Start), enhance public awareness of the negative consequences to children of exposure to violence, and increase community capacity to respond to that exposure. NCCEV operates a national clearinghouse and resource center that serves as a repository of information about the developmental risks and long-term consequences to children of exposure to violence. Training and technical assistance services are targeted primarily to the Safe Start sites. Some support is also provided to Child Development-Community Policing sites.4 Information resources—including NCCEV publications and a bibliography database—are available to the general public through NCCEV’s Web site (www.nccev.org).

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National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a private, nonprofit organization mandated by Congress that works in cooperation with CPD to assist law enforcement agencies throughout the United States in the search for missing children. Since 1984, NCMEC has worked with law enforcement on 71,537 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of 53,581 children. NCMEC provides law enforcement, prosecutors, social workers, doctors, therapists, and other multidisciplinary professionals with training, technical assistance, research, and publications in many subject areas:

  • Child exploitation.

  • Crimes against children.

  • Sexual abuse.

  • Physical abuse.

  • Child fatalities.

  • Computer-assisted exploitation of children.

  • Domestic violence and its nexus to child abuse.

  • Domestic abduction of children.

  • Community prosecution.

  • Sexually violent predators.

  • Trial advocacy for prosecutors.

  • Victim assistance.

  • Registration of sexual offenders.

NCMEC services include a national computer network linking NCMEC with State, Federal, and international law enforcement agencies; Project ALERT (America’s Law Enforcement Retiree Team), a volunteer corps of 110 professionals who have retired from Federal, State, and local law enforcement; and missing child alerts, which are posted on the Internet and distributed via satellite through televised public service announcements produced by Fox Television’s “America’s Most Wanted.”

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National Center on Child Fatality Review

The National Center on Child Fatality Review (NCFR) was created to improve child safety and to promote more effective risk assessment, accountability, and child abuse prevention by collecting and sharing of information regarding severe and fatal child abuse and neglect. NCFR serves as a clearinghouse, collecting and disseminating information and resources related to child deaths from abuse and neglect and providing training and technical assistance to child death review teams. NCFR enables local, State, regional, and national entities to communicate and learn from one another to improve programs and develop activities targeted at decreasing the number of child fatalities caused by abuse and neglect. NCFR’s Web site (ican-ncfr.org) provides information that can help child death review teams and other professionals design effective intervention and prevention services. The National Advisory Board developed by NCFR encourages a better understanding of child fatalities from abuse and neglect and provides a national focus on suspected child abuse and neglect.

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Parental Abductions Prosecution Training and Technical Assistance

CPD funds training and technical assistance related to the prosecution of parental abduction cases through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which also provides training on the investigation of family abduction cases. Training includes the role of the prosecutor in family abduction cases, relevant law, and prosecutorial considerations. In addition, NCMEC provides technical assistance for prosecutors in the areas of trial strategies and tactics, conducts legal and nonlegal research on relevant topics, and publishes articles and monographs on various topics in the field.

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Parents Anonymous ®

OJJDP began providing grant support to Parents Anonymous, Inc., in FY 1994. The purpose of OJJDP’s support was to enhance the capability of Parents Anonymous’ State and local organizations to prevent child maltreatment and juvenile delinquency by strengthening families through self-help programs. Parents Anonymous provides consultation, training, and technical assistance to agencies, policymakers, and parents. Parents Anonymous supports new programs that use a shared leadership approach and promote parent and professional partnerships in all aspects of family strengthening. Parents Anonymous builds on past program activities to provide services to a range of cultural groups (including American Indian, African American, Asian, Latino, and Appalachian families) and to pilot materials designed to expand and enhance its Children’s Program. Support is available to parents, community-based organizations, State and local child welfare agencies, family support centers, schools, early childhood education programs, and juvenile justice organizations, among others.

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Permanent Families for Abused and Neglected Children

Permanency planning is the process of helping children who are at risk of being removed from their families of origin to remain safely with these families or finding caring and safe families for children who are in temporary out-of-home placement. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges’ Permanency Planning Project disseminates information on improvements in court practices regarding child abuse and neglect cases, focusing in particular on lessons learned from the Model Dependency Courts authorized by the Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990. The technical assistance available through the project provides judges, court personnel, and related professionals with up-to-date information on successful court efforts to bolster the following nationwide efforts:

  • Preventing unnecessary foster care placements through early identification of and service delivery to families of at-risk and abused children and adolescents.

  • Making it possible for the families of children already in care to receive therapeutic and support services and to be safely reunified.

  • Ensuring permanent adoptive homes for children when family reunification is not feasible.

The project’s training and technical assistance services are designed to inform judges of the frequency and severity of child abuse and neglect. These services provide judges with education and resource tools to improve the government’s response to these children and emphasize the continuing need for permanency planning in each child’s life. In the time since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, training has also focused on increasing understanding of and compliance with this law.

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Safe Kids/Safe Streets

The Safe Kids/Safe Streets initiative is a 5 1 /2-year demonstration project designed to break the cycle of early childhood victimization and later juvenile or adult criminality. The initiative seeks to reduce child and adolescent abuse and neglect (including children’s witnessing of violence) and to prevent child fatalities.

Funded jointly by OJJDP, the Violence Against Women Office, and the Executive Office for Weed and Seed, the initiative is administered by CPD through a cross-agency management team. Safe Kids/Safe Streets provides fiscal and technical support for local efforts to restructure and strengthen the criminal justice, juvenile justice, child welfare, family services, and educational systems in their efforts to respond to child victimization. Five demonstration sites—Chittenden County (Burlington), VT; Huntsville, AL; Kansas City, MO; Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Sault Sainte Marie, MI; and Toledo, OH—develop, implement, and/or expand interagency strategies to be more comprehensive and proactive in helping children and adolescents and their families. The initiative includes national and local evaluation components and provides coordinated technical assistance. Safe Kids/Safe Streets sites are engaged in a range of activities related to prevention, intervention, and systems reform. These activities include implementing tailored responses by child protective services agencies to maltreatment reports, developing home visitation programs, implementing CAC models of multidisciplinary investigative teams, creating neighborhood-based programs, instituting court reforms, coordinating domestic violence and child abuse responses and services, and expanding family strengthening services.

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Safe Start

The Safe Start initiative seeks to prevent or at least reduce the impact of family and community violence on young children (primarily from birth to 6 years of age) by creating more comprehensive service delivery systems. Safe Start communities work to expand existing partnerships among service providers in the following fields: early childhood education/development, health, mental health, family support and strengthening, domestic violence, substance abuse prevention and treatment, crisis intervention, child welfare, law enforcement, and the law. This comprehensive service delivery system should improve access to, delivery of, and quality of services for young children already exposed or at high risk of exposure to violence. A national evaluation and local evaluations at each site are currently being conducted, and training and technical assistance are being provided by NCCEV. The Safe Start communities are Baltimore, MD; Bridgeport, CT; Chatham County, NC; Chicago, IL; Pinellas County, FL; Rochester, NY; San Francisco, CA; Spokane, WA; and Washington County, ME.5

3 Additional information about CPD’s Internet Crimes Against Children Program is available online at the following Web site: www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/fedreg/081799.pdf

4 The Child Development-Community Policing Program (CD–CP) is a collaboration between law enforcement, juvenile justice, and mental health professionals on behalf of children and families exposed to violence in their communities. CD–CP was developed by NCCEV in partnership with the New Haven Department of Police Services and the New Haven County Office of Juvenile Probation, with support from OJJDP, the Office for Victims of Crimes, and the Violence Against Women Office.

5 Additional information about the Safe Start initiative is available online at the following Web sites: www.nccev.org/, www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/fedreg/safesstart.pdf.



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Keeping Children Safe: OJJDP’s Child Protection Division Juvenile Justice Bulletin • March 2001