New Orleans Children’s Advocacy Center

The Place
The New Orleans Children's Advocacy Center is located in a child friendly homelike setting. It is a very friendly doctor's office with specially trained pediatricians that provide medical evaluation and care to any child who may have potentially been abused or maltreated.

The heart of the New Orleans Children's Advocacy Center is to provide a safe environment for abused children and their non-offending parent during the investigative process. The NOCAC staff coordinates intervention services through a multidisciplinary team of professionals and agencies. The team focuses primarily on the child's best interests by providing assistance and protection, reducing the trauma to child victims of abuse.

The energy New Orleans Children's Advocacy Center (NOCAC) is first and foremost a child's place. NOCAC provides a coordinated multi agency approach for the investigation and treatment of child sexual and physical abuse. Offering a therapeutic approach for each child and the family and providing a safe place where healing begins. We strive to educate and refer each child's family members for crisis intervention, through on-site community referrals.

The voice Our cottage is a place where children and families feel at ease in a home-like setting. The voice of NOCAC is a child friendly interview room where each child tells his or her story to a carefully selected trained forensic interviewer. Each room is decorated with a themed setting the pre-teen room is a surrounded with hot air balloon waiting to escape and the teen room is a colorful array of the New Orleans French Quarter with bright red contemporary chairs that adjust for the child's height and comfort. Each child is given time to become comfortable with the cottage environment by playing play station, sitting in our rocking chairs on our front porch, watching a selection of movies, or helping themselves to snacks provided by the Women For a Better Louisiana. We want each child to fell be in charge of their interview and enter the room at their own accord. After rapport is developed with the interviewer, the child's statements are recorded and viewed in accordance with statutory guidelines. These taped statements are then admissible in court as evidence making the potential trial experience easier on each child.