Advocacy

1. Advocacy

CARI’s primary aim is to provide therapy for children and young people who have been affected by child sexual abuse.

CARI also provides information, support and concealing to non-abusing parents, carers and siblings as appropriate.

2. Campaigning

While CARI focuses on service provision, it also strives to campaign on issues related to child sexual abuse. CARI contributes to radio and newspaper coverage and government legislation consultation processes.

Some of the issues we have previously campaigned on are:

3. Ferns 4 National Steering Committee

CARI is also represented on the Ferns 4 National Steering Committee and is committed to the proposed development of sexual abuse services which incorporates all resources currently applied across sectors to sexual abuse services into a single, national service which provides standardised, best practice models of service available from a network of Centres.

It is essential that the core components of sexual abuse services (Child Protection, Garda Investigation, Medical/Forensic Examination, Assessment, Therapy, Court Process) are integrated through a multiagency model. Children who have suffered sexual abuse must be provided with an accessible, child friendly and seamless service and this model can provide the foundations for an excellent service. However, additional resources will be required to make this happen (July 2012)

4. Networks

CARI rely on our involvement in networks to increase our advocacy in order to impact change on behalf of our clients. Networking creates invaluable ways of impacting our clients.