Human Services Council's Children's Connection Combats Child Abuse While Strengthening Families

Photo caption: from left to right: Tucker Murphy, Kiwanis, and Kari Pesavento, Director, Children’s Connection

Human Services Council’s Children’s Connection Combats Child Abuse While Strengthening Families

-- Multidisciplinary approach minimizes trauma to child and family, while ensuring better case preparation and follow up services. –

New Canaan, CT, May 20, 2016— Kiwanis recently welcomed the Human Services Council’s Children’s Connection Director, Kari Pesavento, to present their Multidisciplinary Approach to prevention, protection, investigation, and treatment of child sexual abuse and severe physical abuse and neglect.

Ms. Pesavento explained that, “Children’s Connection has been responding to the needs of physically and sexually abused children and their families for more than 35 years. We work to raise awareness about the issue of child abuse through seminars, workshops and media campaigns. Our mission is to create a world where no child is harmed and no family is left without guidance.”

As a program of the Human Services Council, Children’s Connection is a fully accredited Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) which provides a comfortable, private, child-friendly setting that is both physically and emotionally safe for children of all ages. The purpose of a CAC is to provide a coordinated collaborative multidisciplinary team (MDT) response to allegations of child abuse.

Coordinated by Children’s Connection, The Multidisciplinary Team of Greater Norwalk was developed in 1997 to address limitations and gaps in services that individual agencies in the Greater Norwalk area were coming across while trying to face child abuse cases on their own. Their goal is to provide a coordinated, multi-agency response that would enable all systems to better serve these families.

The Multidisciplinary Response includes specialized medical evaluations, therapeutic intervention, victim advocacy and support, case review and tracking, information and referral, community outreach and education, an investigation and prosecution. This Multidisciplinary Approach significantly decreases the number of interview to which a child is subjected, supports the child and family through the entire investigative process, strengthens the criminal prosecution by coordinating the investigative process, and sustains cooperation among all involved agencies. For more information on Children’s Connection goals, education programs, and partners, or the other wonderful programs of the Human Services Council please visit www.hscct.org.

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Kiwanis International is a global non-profit organization of members of every age, who are dedicated to changing the world, one child and one community at a time.

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