HUNSTVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Blue pinwheels, the symbol of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, have been placed in communities across North Alabama in April, representing the joy a child should be able to feel while growing up.
On Monday, Madison County leaders emphasized their ongoing support for an organization that provides resources for children who have experienced abuse.
For 40 years, the National Child Advocacy Center has provided forensic interviews and counseling for children experiencing child abuse in Madison County. The goal is for these children and their families to find justice and healing.
“We really are making an impact,” Lynn Scott, the State Executive Director of the Alabama Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, said. “We’re the prevention to things that we see later on if children do not resolve some of the issues and the trauma that they experienced.”
The center was born out of a desire to better assist children who had been abused.
“Many times, those resources that we were trying to target to help our children within each department were limited,” Madison County Commission Chair Mac McCutcheon said.
McCutcheon is a former law enforcement officer who said he remembers Madison County leaders working with Congressman Bud Cramer to create the center.
“We began to talk about it would be nice if we had one stop location where we could combine those resources,” McCutcheon said. “It would be beneficial. It would be for the children and, of course, the parents of the children and making cases for the court.”
In 1985, the National Children’s Advocacy Center was formed in Huntsville. As the first of its kind, the center reformed how child abuse cases are investigated, prosecuted and treated. Over time, thousands of centers were established following this model, with 36 going up in Alabama, nearly a thousand in the U.S. and more across the world.
“You look at the results we have here,” McCutcheon said. “This is the model of how things could be done and should be done.”
McCutcheon, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and Madison Mayor Paul Finley signed a proclamation and stated their intent to support the goals of the National Children’s Advocacy Center.
In its 40 years of operation, every child who has been helped at the center has received those services for free.
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