Original Link: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/04/09/will-county-childrens-advocacy-center-new-location-crest-hill/
By MICHELLE MULLINS | Chicago Tribune
Will County officials this week unveiled the new Children’s Advocacy Center, designed to help children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse, exploitation, neglect or violence.
Housed in a former TLC Learning Center in Crest Hill purchased by the county last year, the 27,000-square-foot building has been refurbished and was publicly revealed Monday in a dedication event attended by Will County officials and dignitaries from throughout the area.
“I believe in divine interventions,” said Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow, who founded the Will County Children’s Advocacy Center in 1995. “They just keep happening when you are doing the right things for the right reasons. You put your head down and good things happen.”
The Children’s Advocacy Center, known as the CAC, is relocating from its 7,000-square-foot building in downtown Joliet, which was small and lacked adequate parking.
For the first time, the center has space designed for its specific needs rather than employees having to make do with makeshift space, Executive Director Lisa Morel Las said.
It’s aesthetically pleasing, calming and gives a sense of reassurance, she said.
“We’ve made it a welcoming and comfortable space that allows children to get the services they need,” Morel Las said.
This is especially important for the work that the center provides, she said. Each year about 700 children between the ages of 3 and 17 receive support services at the facility.
Some have suffered severe physical abuse, Morel Las said. Some have witnessed a murder. Others have been sexually abused and may be so young they don’t comprehend what happened or are old enough to understand and unfairly feel ashamed, she said.
Sometimes children come forward weeks or months after the abuse occurred.
Whatever the situation, trained professionals are available to help with child-sensitive interviews for law enforcement purposes and to provide referrals for specialized pediatric medical exams, short-term therapy services, and long-term counseling and community resources.
“It may be the hardest day of their lives,” Morel Las said. “We are in the business to help the child heal. Our whole focus is to not retraumatize the child.”
The child-focused center has a multi-disciplinary team of police officers, prosecutors, advocates from children protection services and therapists who work together to get the child the help they need and secure what prosecutors need to go after the offender, she said.
The child can tell their story to a single trained forensic interviewer who asks questions that will not traumatize the child again, and the team of experts makes decisions together on how best to help the child.
Prior to opening the advocacy center, children who suffered sexual abuse were required to make multiple statements to law enforcement, child welfare workers, medical professionals and others, which both increased their trauma and helped predators exploit minor differences in those statements, they said.
Therapists are bilingual in English, Polish and Spanish, and the center is part of the National Children’s Alliance. It earned full accreditation in 2004.
In 2012, Glasgow established the Paws-4-Kids pet therapy program, and its therapy dogs offer comfort and support to children who come to the center.
“I am positive this beautiful new building will undoubtedly help expand the ability of this amazing staff to continue offering a safe place for the most vulnerable members of society,” Joliet Police detective Kristoff Petro said.
Since being founded in 1995, the center has helped more than 11,600 severely abused and neglected children, officials said.
“While we all recognize the sadness and the need for this service, I am sure we can all be inspired by the commitment of our CAC staff to make the families and children who walk through these doors feel safe and comforted,” Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant said.
With the exception of the time during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, the number of cases has increased annually, Morel Las said. During the pandemic, schools were closed and activities were paused so teachers, school social workers, coaches, Girl Scout and Boy Scout leaders or other trusted adults couldn’t report possible abuse cases, she said.
The new building offers areas for group, individual and play therapy, and there is room for interviews to be done confidentially and privately. It also has customized space for staff members to perform their work, Morel Las said.
“From the first moment we all walked in (to the former day care building), we knew it was home,” said Mike Fricilone, a former advocacy center board member.
Fricilone, also a former Will County Board member from Homer Glen, said he happened to be talking to a real estate agent about something else when the conversation turned to the advocacy center. The TLC Learning Center hadn’t even gone on the market yet when he learned it was available, he said.
The project’s total cost, including the property acquisition and renovation, was just under $5.2 million, county executive’s office spokesman Mike Theodore said. Had they built a new center, the cost would have exceeded $13.5 million, he said.
County Board Chair Judy Ogalla said the building came to fruition with “a little luck, a lot of conversation and a near total eclipse of the sun,” noting that the ribbon-cutting event coincided with Monday’s eclipse.
“It’s a perfect setting in which to serve the children of Will County and their families,” Ogalla, a Republican from Monee, said. “As we know, children are our future, and protecting and healing them is the important role that the CAC staff works hard to do every single day.”
Michelle Mullins is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown and the Naperville Sun.