SARC's executive director Christina Johnson (Photo by Ross Lavigne)

By Hayley Ferguson

Victim Support

Support centre for youth victims of abuse in development

Aug 27, 2019 | 5:06 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – The Southeastern Alberta Sexual Assault Response Committee has begun developing Medicine Hat’s own “Child Advocacy Centre. “

“A child advocacy centre is a location where children who have experienced sexual abuse, extreme physical abuse, or extreme neglect come when there are allegations of abuse. And they are provided a one-stop place where all the necessary services will be provided.” Explained SARC’s executive director Christina Johnson.

She says that all of the different people that help the children would come together in a more unified approach.

“Children’s services would be involved. Alberta Health Services, addictions and mental health, SARC ourselves would be involved. Medicine Hat Police Service and RCMP.” Johnson said.

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She says that most times after the abuse, children often have to tell their stories to all of those different groups.

Which she says can hurt them more.

“Where the child advocacy centre concept came from was actually in the US and it was actually a crown prosecutor who recognized that a child had been interviewed 18 times in order to find out what happened to them. And they felt like this was absolutely wrong because every time we interview a child, we increase the trauma the child experiences.” She said.

Currently, there are four of these types of centres in the province.

All have been receiving a lot of positive feedback.

That’s why the provincial government and child services approached SARC to do an assessment to decide if a was need for a centre in Medicine Hat.

“Our community, our local stakeholders, absolutely saw a high need for an integrated approach to dealing with child abuse.” Johnson continued. “I have never worked with such a motivated table of stakeholders who are saying ‘how do we get this done because we believe we can do better.’ We do well, but we believe we can do better.”

Johnson says that there is still a lot of work to be done before the doors will be opened.

“We’re working diligently to create information sharing documents. We’re creating partner guides so that we can work together again in that integrated fashion.” She described. “Right now we’re working on securing funding for the program as well as looking at designing where and what this centre will look like so that we can serve the community in a really user friendly way.”

At this point, there is no date for when the centre could open, but fundraising efforts will start this fall at SARC’s ‘Light the Night Ball’ on Halloween.

“We’re coming together to give the night back to kids. When child abuse happens, trauma happens, it’s hard to celebrate. So together we’re asking the community to come out, costumes encouraged, and give that night back to kids so childhood is fun. So that we can do a good job at investigating and healing childhood trauma so that we can create change.”

Tickets can be found online.