Welcome to Child Advocates of Fort Bend and to the many programs, services and resources available to children, families, volunteers, parents and the community to help children who have been abused and neglected find safety, healing and justice while preventing other children from experiencing abuse. 2025 marks our 34th Anniversary. Since 1991, we have delivered transformational services to over 23,500 children in Fort Bend County who have suffered physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect.
The past year marked many milestones in serving children and families as well as launching new initiatives. We reviewed 5,275 reports of sexual abuse and severe physical abuse for Fort Bend County children – a shocking number and equal to 5 elementary schools. We provided direct services to 2,507 children and families, many with far higher incidences of severe, complex and multi-symptomatic cases of abuse. We provided a safe place for children to tell their stories of abuse during 755 forensic interviews where we heard harrowing stories from children who had endured sexual and severe physical abuse often for months or years before they spoke up. We provided a CASA Volunteer Advocate for 100% of children in foster care so that their voices were heard and their best interests could be realized.
Trauma-informed care and mental health services are a key focus of our work to help victims recover, build resiliency and move forward. We expanded therapy services by a highly-trained team of licensed therapists to meet the ever-increasing needs of children experiencing trauma with nearly 2,500 therapy sessions across a variety of trauma-focused, evidence-based therapies. We launched teen and caregiver group therapy lead by our Clinical Family Advocates. We provided onsite psychiatric services through our partnership with UT Health Sciences Pediatric and Adolescent Psychiatry Program. And we are leading a countywide collaborative in trauma care called Trust Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) which trained hundreds of child welfare professionals, school personnel, law enforcement and CPS in trauma treatment.
To ensure that we maintain our excellence in the latest research and treatment for abuse and neglect, our Training team hosted an extensive calendar of trainings and educational workshops for volunteers, staff, partners and the community with 35 training courses delivered throughout the year so that the entire community understands abuse, knows what to do if a child is being abused, and understands their obligations and accountability to collectively ensure our children are safe. We reached 19,061 children, caregivers and community members with child abuse education.
After five years, we completed the expansion of our Davis George Campus with the opening of a beautiful Wellness Garden that incorporates the five senses in a nature-filled protected outdoor space in nature designed for both our children and our staff to use for solace, healing, and stress management.
In addition to all of these advancements, three new initiatives were groundbreaking and are moving us beyond or traditional approaches.
Wraparound Services offers every child at Child Advocates of Fort Bend the opportunity to access any of the 18 services that we provide, regardless of whether they entered our agency through CASA in foster care or through our Children’s Advocacy Center. CAFB is uniquely positioned to be able to provide incomparable breadth and depth in specialized services because we are one of the only agencies that has both a CASA Program and Children’s Advocacy Center. We developed a needs assessment, inter-agency referral process, staff training of all our services, tracking and measurement systems. Still in its early stages, 30 children have already benefited from Wraparound Services and we are excited about hundreds more children accessing a full array of services going forward.
Recognizing the importance that all children who have experienced sexual abuse have access to a forensic examination for their healing and medical treatment, we were excited to open an Onsite Medical Clinic on our campus. Staffed by forensic nurses under the direction of a Medical Director, children and families now have the convenience of being able to see a nurse after they complete their forensic interview right here at our CAC. This has been a game changer for families who no longer have to drive to the Texas Medical Center or to a hospital emergency room for this service.
One of the most significant advancements we are making is to move upstream from restoration and recovery of child victims to the Prevention of Abuse. Launched in 2023 as a concept, our Child Abuse Prevention Collaborative (CAP-C) made huge strides in 2024 and is changing the way we approach the incidence of child abuse and our role as a catalyst for prevention as well as recovery. Over the past two years, we have accomplished 10 key milestones in CAP-C. We convened a countywide CAP-C Collaborative of 40 organizations serving this population of children which meets monthly to share best practices and advance our common understanding and language around child abuse. We completed a large research study of 76 stakeholders with lived experience who shared with us what could have prevented abuse and gave us insightful ideas about what needs to change. We wrote a research paper summarizing our findings. We then collected and catalogued over 1,000 informational and educational materials to develop a resource library. This will be provided to professionals via a new CAP-C Website under development. We developed a Blueprint and Framework for how to create change – by identifying focus areas (daycares, medical community, youth serving organizations, the faith and other communities of prevention, and the schools) and are developing targeted approaches by segment for messaging. Our goal is to pilot our Prevention Education in these different areas to create social change and bring high levels of awareness, knowledge and accountability across our community about Child Abuse Prevention.
Our child and family advocates, clinicians, therapists, social workers, forensic nurses, interviewers, educators and prevention experts here at CAFB are working round the clock to ensure that children don’t fall through the cracks, that they get the services they need, that they have access to every support available so that they can move beyond the abuse to be healthy and happy and so that children are safe and protected from abuse. We stand firmly, Healing their Hurt, and Breaking the Cycle of Abuse and committed to our mission of Strengthening the Voices of these Children Neglect. Our core values of CHILD provided the bedrock to do the work we do in the face of challenges: Collaborative, Healing, Inclusive, Life-Changing and Dedicated. Our vision — To End the Cycle of Abuse and Neglect – is our moonshot and keeps us focused and dedicated to put every resource available towards early identification, intervention, treatment and prevention.
We renewed our commitment to provide diverse, equitable and inclusive services, recognizing the disproportionality of children of color in the child welfare system. We engaged a culture coach and have trained staff in the historical context of racial bias and updated practices and training to ensure cultural sensitivity for all children.
We hosted three hugely successful fundraisers including our “Once Upon a Time” Gala, Voices For Children “Transforming Lives” Breakfast and 33rd Christmas Home Tour. We are deeply grateful to our loyal donors who joined us and were so very generous. We enlarged our portfolio of private foundations with new grantors and maintained the continuing support from our long-term foundations. We deeply thank our individual, foundation and corporate donors for their continuing support.
Today, we are stronger than ever. With thirty-four years of experience, countless innovations in programming and service delivery, a dedicated staff of professionals committed to doing whatever it takes to improve the lives of children who have been abused, generous donors and diversified funding, and a committed Board of Directors, Child Advocates of Fort Bend is steadfast in our vision to end the cycle of abuse.
Ruthanne Mefford
Chief Executive Officer
