Types of Multidisciplinary Teams

MDT's can take several forms and may involve different locales:

• Some are part of a children's advocacy center (CAC), which provides a child-friendly facility where forensic interviews, and sometimes medical examinations and treatment, are conducted. The CAC may serve as the site for team meetings and trainings and may also house representatives of member agencies. CAC's also often do community outreach and public education. There are more than 400 established and developing centers nationwide.
  
  
• Other MDT's may not provide the more comprehensive services of a CAC but may establish a particular place for conducting interviews. Such teams may be based in hospitals, prosecutors' offices, or within child protective services agencies. The San Diego Children's Hospital and Health Center has specially trained interviewers who use an area designed specifically for interviewing children.
  
  
• Hundreds of effective teams are not part of a CAC and do not have special interview facilities. These teams use available resources to accomplish, in different but effective ways, many of the same purposes — reducing trauma to victims and families, improving the accuracy of information obtained during the investigation, and easing the strain on member agencies and investigators.

No single type of team is best. The model you choose will depend on the resources available and the way various agencies function in your community.