History & Mission

The Nashville Children's Alliance (NCA), formerly the Nashville Child Advocacy Center, was founded in 1992 by a community task force seeking coordinated services and better outcomes for children when there were allegations of sexual or severe physical abuse. The task force felt that children deserved a child-friendly, comfortable and safe place to receive services from the multidisciplinary team of professionals. The task force wanted to create a nonprofit agency called a child advocacy center, based on a model in Huntsville, Alabama, to serve as the hub of the multidisciplinary team (Department of Children's Services, Metropolitan Police Department and the Office of the District Attorney General).

The concept of a team approach to child abuse cases was unique and it continues to make NCA unique. The "Covington Bill" was passed in 1985 (TN Code Annotated Section 37-1-607) mandating that a multidisciplinary team work together to investigate child sexual abuse cases. The mandated multidisciplinary teams in Tennessee are called the Child Protective Investigative Teams (CPIT).

NCA opened its doors in 1992 to the Nashville community and to the Davidson County CPIT with a volunteer part-time director. A part-time director was hired a few months later and a program coordinator was added to the staff. The first full-time director was hired in 1996 and the staff has now grown to 8 full-time and part-time employees consistently serving over 600 children a year. NCA now has a CPIT Coordinator who works and meets with CPIT members daily to help ensure timely and quality services to children and families. A Spanish-speaking therapist helps meet needs of children of abuse and their families in Nashville's growing Hispanic community.

NCA works daily side by side with partner agencies on the multidisciplinary team. This helps ensure that children receive forensic interviews conducted by caring professionals at NCA, who have special training in how to talk to children, and that children receive therapy from specially trained counselors in working with children who have experienced trauma.

NCA is a licensed child abuse prevention agency by the state of Tennessee. NCA is also a fully accredited member of the National Children's Alliance and continues to fulfill the comprehensive requirements to acquire and maintain full accreditation.

The mission of NCA is to reduce the traumatization of child abuse victims and their families by facilitating a comprehensive multidisciplinary team approach to the detection, investigation, prosecution and treatment of child abuse.