Kids First

Consider Volunteering at the Child Advocacy Center

We are looking for volunteers to help with various areas in our organization. Those areas include:   helping with fundraisers/events, answering the phone, providing snacks/greeting clients who come into our center, and help with collating the quarterly newsletter for mail out.   Assistance is also needed with keeping an eye on our younger clients while they are in the waiting area and playing with them when asked by the child.   In these instances they are too young to be left alone while the non-offending care-givers are meeting with the therapists, or some of our older kids want us to play games with them while their parents are in with the therapists.

In order to volunteer a background check will need to be performed since our agency works with children between the ages of 3 and 17. You are also required to have had a recent TB test and statement of good health from your primary physician.   If you find that you would like to volunteer,  please contact Darcy at the Child Advocacy Center at (865) 986-1505 or by email at dnavratil@cac9jd.org or submit a volunteer application through our website on our “How You Can Help Page”.

Our business hours are from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday-Friday

Volunteer’s would be needed approximately a couple of hours a week.

Thank you for your interest!

Kids First Child Advocacy Center of the 9th Judicial District

Kids First Child Advocacy Center of the Ninth Judicial District serves children that have been identified by the Department of Children’s Services as having been severely physically and/or sexually abused.

In 2016-2017, Kids First CAC provided services to 352 victims of child abuse. The over-whelming majority of the children were victims of sexual abuse with the average victim an 8 year old female. The belief is that most children are abused by strangers but statistically nothing could be farther from the truth. Most children know their offender. In 2016-2017, 133 offenders were identified as a parent, step-parent other relative or a parent’s live-in paramour, and 71 offenders were known to their child victims (for some children there could be multiple offenders).

It is for this reason we deliver a school-based intervention/prevention program, Stop Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) to schools within the Ninth Judicial District. SCAN is a school-based program and is offered to children in kindergarten, first, third, fifth and seventh grades. The young children enjoy a puppet show while older grades enjoy a video/dvd and discussion about safety and boundaries. The program teaches children about safe and unsafe touches and who to tell if ever in a situation that makes the child uncomfortable or if someone asks the child to keep “secrets” about touches, movies, pictures, etc…

This fiscal year allowed us to serve 24 schools, 3,864students through our SCAN Program. A second piece of our Outreach Program is our Teen Mom Education Program. This fiscal year we served 8 teen moms representing Loudon and Meigs Counties. We have been providing our SCAN Program and Teen Mom Education Program to schools for 6 years. The Teen Mom Education Program is a 14 week curriculum, school-based, designed to educate teen moms on child development, age-appropriate discipline, community resources, stress management and potty training. Based on the pre and post test scores, comprehension of child development is demonstrated by these young moms. The program encourages teen moms to graduate high school and is a support group as many of these moms feel isolated. So far, we have seen most of the teen moms we serve graduate high school, not give birth to a second, unplanned child, and there have been no referrals to the Department of Children’s Services for child abuse related to the Teen Moms having completed our program. Our therapy program offered 1,181 therapy sessions with most of the children and non-offending caregivers successfully meeting their therapy goals using Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

Through grants obtained by Kids First Child Advocacy Center of the Ninth Judicial District and compliments of the Good Neighbors Shoppe of Lenoir City, we have been able to provide an annual district-wide training to our child abuse investigators, department of children’s services (CPS) caseworkers, the District Attorney’s Office, Juvenile Justice Officers and the staff of Kids First designed to improve communication among team members, heighten awareness of physical abuse, detect discrepancies among perpetrators, and to rejuvenate the team members that investigate, protect and prosecute offenders of children.

Kids First CAC has also recently begun using the nationally recognized prevention program “Darkness to Light: Stewards of Children” throughout the community.  Executive Director, Chris Evans-Longmire, is an authorized facilitator of the program which aims to increase awareness of child sexual abuse as well as change and encourage child protective behaviors.  The program, delivered in a 2.5 hour session includes videos and commentary by adult survivors and experts in the field as well as a discussion component.  Businesses, local organizations, schools, churches and individuals are encouraged to contact Chris at our office to schedule the presentation.  More information about the program can be found at the Darkness to Light website at www.d2l.org.  Help Kids First be proactive in their efforts to become Stewards of Children and work toward changes that will protect the children in our community from sexual abuse!