Child and Adolescent Protection Center

The Center’s team of medical professionals provides comprehensive examinations (conducted by child abuse pediatricians and sexual assault nurse examiners) and treatment of sexually transmitted infections or injuries. Medical services are available by appointment or on an emergency basis, and forensic medical examinations for recent sexual abuse/assault are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Center’s team of mental health professionals (clinical social workers and a psychologist) provides crisis intervention for children and families, and trauma-informed mental health services for children and youth who have experienced abuse. Mental health services are provided by clinical social workers and psychologists who are child victimization specialists. Our psychologist can also provide educational, psychological, developmental, psychosexual and parent-child relationship assessments.

The Center's other services for families include:

• Psychological testing
• Juvenile offender and Problematic Sexual Behavior therapy services
• Educational, psychological, developmental, psychosexual and parent-child relationship assessments
• Individual victimized child and adolescent therapy for victimized children
• Individualized therapy for children exposed to domestic violence and parent survivors of domestic violence
• Education and training

The Center staff also provides consultation to colleagues inside and outside the hospital. Additionally, the Center’s team members provide training to a variety of professionals, both medical and non-medical, for whom the identification, intervention and treatment of child abuse is necessary.

Children's National also offers a free training called Stewards of Children for child sexual abuse prevention. More information about the training can be found on the website of Darkness to Light, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering adults to prevent child sexual abuse. To schedule a training please email Victim Services Coordinator Siobhan Copeland or call her at 202-476-6718.

It is important to educate ourselves, our colleagues and the community on the effects of child abuse, including how to identify it, steps after identifying and how we can become more involved in preventing it. Please stop by the Child and Adolescent Protection Center for more information or visit the National Child Abuse Prevention Month website.

The District of Columbia's Multidisciplinary Team includes the Freddie Mac Foundation Child and Adolescent Protection Center, as well as the following agencies:

• United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Unit and the Victim/Witness Assistance Unit)
• Office of the Attorney General (Family Service Division)
• Metropolitan Police Department (Youth Investigations Branch and Special Victims Unit)
• Child and Family Services Agency (Child Protection Section)
• Safe Shores, The DC Children's Advocacy Center