When society hears about child abuse cases, their thoughts automatically turn to the child’s welfare. Most want to know what happened to the child, who hurt them, who will help them, and how they will heal from this traumatic experience?
At Dallas Children Advocacy Center, we first find out the answers to these questions and then provide critical healing services for these children. When child abuse occurs, it is our responsibility to provide a safe place for children to come and share their accounts of the abuse.
But DCAC is not only here to support the child during these traumatic times. In order for clients to remain on a path to healing, caregiver support is essential.
Since March is a month set aside to observe and celebrate the contributions of women, I would like to take the time to recognize and celebrate all the brave women that are helping to lead their children and families through these challenging times.
Recently, we had a caring mother share these thoughts with us:
“I feel confident in what my family is going to accomplish during this journey and extremely optimistic about our future. Prior to these services, I was clueless about how to deal with this trauma in our family. I had no idea where to even start, but now I feel like we are part of a bigger plan.”
Often when child abuse occurs in the home, our mothers immediately and unexpectedly become the primary caretakers and sole financial (and often emotional) providers for their families. They are responsible not only for juggling work all day but also for bringing their children in for a forensic interview, weekly evening counseling sessions, and support groups. Some are even grandmothers that have taken on the responsibility for caring for their grandchildren after the abuse. Simply put, these mothers and grandmothers are the silent heroes in these cases that hold their families together when all threatens to fall apart.
This month, we at DCAC celebrate all the strong, influential, brave mothers and caregivers that ‘might feel clueless about how to respond at first’ but are brave enough to keep on the journey until we figure it out together.
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