To help raise awareness about services in Pennsylvania for child victims of abuse and orient new team members, JPL summer interns created an immersive 360° virtual tour of a Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC). The tour showcases the child-friendly place and team-supported process that CACs provide to ensure child victims and families receive comprehensive support. Children’s Advocacy Centers of Pennsylvania (PennCAC) is the statewide coalition of more than 40 local CACs that together serve 15,000 child victims of abuse each year.
Nicoletta Ariano (Temple University), Grace Hoffman (Muhlenberg College), Natalie Mihal (University of Minnesota), Phillip Patches (Elizabethtown College), Sanij Shrestha (Gettysburg College) and Jaylin Wyatt (PennWest Edinboro University) teamed up with some JPL team members to showcase the child-friendly environment as well as the team approach that CACs offer according to national best practices for supporting children and families during and after child abuse investigations.
“This is such a great opportunity to get a new kind of creative asset that we can use to help share what CACs are, why they matter, and let people know about what is often a hidden resource in their community,” said PennCAC Communications Manager Rebecca Buckham.
“With the support of this wonderful intern team, we are giving people a behind-the-scenes immersive tour, so they can walk through each room and imagine being in the shoes of a child victim or their caregiver as they see what happens here,” she added.
JPL has been providing pro bono communications and marketing services to area non-profits through the intern program for more than 20 years. To learn more about PennCAC visit their website.
About Children’s Advocacy Centers of Pennsylvania
A Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) provides a child-friendly place where child victims can feel safe and comfortable to disclose abuse that may have occurred, and a team-supported process whereby a multidisciplinary team (MDT) of professionals—child protective services caseworkers, police, forensic interviewers, victim advocates, prosecutors, and medical and mental health professionals—works together to investigate and respond to allegations of child physical and sexual abuse in a way that reduces trauma and helps children and families begin to heal.
